Appetizers for small group meeting

[pinkytoe]

Do you have any tried and true popular recipe ideas for appetizers? Only six people so want something simple and tasty (no meat).

[iris lilies]

To all of our neighborhood patio parties this summer we took sliced tomatoes from our garden with fresh mozzarella cheese on top, sprinkles of fresh basil leaves, and dressed with balsamic vinegar reduction.

I also often take sausage rolls, but you said “no meat “so never mind that.

Tomatoes are not finger food, they need a fork to eat them.

[Tradd]

Fruit skewers? Brie and crackers of various types is always a massive favorite of mine.

[herbgeek]

How fancy? If you're going for fancy, check out Pepperidge Farm for their puff pastry recipes. I like a palmier made with boursin cheese. Super easy (spread, roll up and slice/bake).

For friends/easy/casual: nice cheese plate, hummus and pita, cheese spreads and crackers, homemade crackers.

[catherine]

I vote for hummus and pita and crudité. With maybe some little cookies for people who have a sweet tooth.

Also, little tea sandwiches cut in quarters with arugula and cucumber.

[rosarugosa]

I've been to parties where they served tiny grape tomatoes, mozzarella pearls and small basil leaves threaded on a toothpick. This is similar to what IL mentioned, but in finger food form. I love these and it's so easy that even I can make it!

[Rogar]

This is an old stand by for me. Mix cream cheese, diced mild green chilis, and diced black olives together. Spread onto a flour tortilla in a thin layer and roll the tortilla up. Refrigerate and when cool slice cross ways into half inch thick discs. Routinely a crowd pleaser and no cooking involved. Fancy toothpicks inserted through the diameter of the disc and various cheese mix/tortilla layers make an upscale presentation

[GeorgeParker]

Not really an appetizer, but my mother's standard pot luck dish was stuff she called "Orange Goop". It's very easy to make and it was popular at every pot luck and family gathering she went to. Basically it's just cottage cheese, cool whip, and orange jello powder (dry Jello powder straight out of the box). She got the recipe out of Redbook or some similar women's magazine and made it for various occasions for at least 15 years.

When I googled "recipe cottage cheese jello" (without the quotes) I got scads of hits showing variations of this same recipe, so it's obviously still popular. The way the woman in this video makes is very similar to the way my mother always made it:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vefgKLHrSM

[pinkytoe]

Thanks all...I don't know why but I always get stressed out about bringing food to events. Also, my group has several vegetarians, one vegan and two diabetics so trying to please everyone is tricky.

[flowerseverywhere]

I love the roll up ideas. I often make sliced veggies, like carrots celery and cucumber and add a dip. Anyone avoiding sugar, fat or dairy can at least have something.

[iris lilies]

Not really an appetizer, but my mother's standard pot luck dish was stuff she called "Orange Goop". It's very easy to make and it was popular at every pot luck and family gathering she went to. Basically it's just cottage cheese, cool whip, and orange jello powder (dry Jello powder straight out of the box). She got the recipe out of Redbook or some similar women's magazine and made it for various occasions for at least 15 years.

When I googled "recipe cottage cheese jello" (without the quotes) I got scads of hits showing variations of this same recipe, so it's obviously still popular. The way the woman in this video makes is very similar to the way my mother always made it:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vefgKLHrSM
with all due respect to your mom, this is awful stuff.

[iris lilies]

Thanks all...I don't know why but I always get stressed out about bringing food to events. Also, my group has several vegetarians, one vegan and two diabetics so trying to please everyone is tricky.
If it is a shared food event (I dont host) I don’t worry about the extreme diets like vegan. They are on their own.In fact, in a shared food environment, I don’t worry about anyone’s special diet.


That’s a different responsibility if I am the host and providing all food.

[pinkytoe]

DH (who spent a lifetime in the food biz) tells me that the tortilla roll-ups are called high-rollers.

[GeorgeParker]

with all due respect to your mom, this is awful stuff.Everybody has different tastes, but the fact that the bowl always ended up empty when my mother took it somewhere, and the fact there are numerous variations of this recipe still being circulated 70 years after my mother first saw it in some magazine, has to be reasonable proof that a lot of people disagree with you.

Personally I liked a lot of other food she made more than I liked Orange Goop, but Orange Goop was her quickest and simplest potluck food.

BTW: The first three things she taught me how to cook were: Meatloaf, beef stew, and baked potatoes. She told me "With those three things and knowing how to cook veggies in a pot of simmering water, a boy will always be well fed."

Fixing any other kind of food was either "fun" or "fancy" for most teenage boys in the 1960s. And one of the fancy things she taught me how to make was egg salad with olive slices in it. In my early 20s I evolved that into egg salad mixed with tuna salad with leftover peas, beans, or whatever in it. My mother was bemused but not surprised by that, since it was a logical extension of me always mixing veggies and mashed potatoes together on my plate. (good times, those were.)

[NewGig]

Stuffed mushrooms or jalapenos.

Jalapenos are stuffed with panko, butter, and monterey jack (could do vegan alternatives as needed). Mushrooms are stuffed with bread crumbs, butter, minced mushroom stems, and beau monde seasoning (Mostly celery salt. Beau Monde is made by Spice Islands. I've had a really hard time finding it for about the past 5 years).

The mushroom recipe was my Dad's. The jalapeno version is mine.

[Teacher Terry]

If I have vegan or vegetarians coming to dinner I make my homemade spaghetti sauce and take their sauce out before I add meat. I have a friend that gluten makes him sick so rice noodles for him. It’s the only meal where I can accommodate everyone easily. For snacks I get crackers and cheese with fake cheese for vegans and you can get crackers for every diet.

[GeorgeParker]

If I have vegan or vegetarians coming to dinner I make my homemade spaghetti sauce and take their sauce out before I add meat. I have a friend that gluten makes him sick so rice noodles for him. It’s the only meal where I can accommodate everyone easily. For snacks I get crackers and cheese with fake cheese for vegans and you can get crackers for every diet.No offense to people who choose to eat it, but imho fake cheese made from vegetable oil is an abomination, and so is fake meat made from textured soy protein and every other highly processed "food" that is pretending to be something it isn't.

I'm fine with using buckwheat or beans or something else as a meat substitute when you make burgers or meatloaf-type dishes, because those are real foods prepared in the way you would normally cook them. What I'm against is the factory manufactured fakes designed in a chemistry lab. They are repugnant not only because their creation process makes them less healthy than real food, but also because of the hypocrisy of "I would never harm an animal just so I could eat it, but I refuse to deprive myself of the pleasure of feeling like I'm eating animals and other non-vegan foods" >:(

BTW: I'm not vegan, and I'm only slightly vegetarian. So please don't mistakenly think my opinion is a veggie-partisan rant.

[NewGig]

I've gotten used to the idea that people may not be able to eat whatever I usually make.

My dad, when I was young, had a heart attack and couldn't eat salt. So no shell fish, cheddar cheese, etc. etc. That was right after I started to cook, so I got to adjust to his new diet... My BFF has food allergies. My SIL can go into shock and die if she eats something she's allergic to.

My BFF can't eat corn, wheat, or tomatoes, amongst other things.... My SIL can't eat some wheats and can eat others. I haven't tried to cook for these folks in years. But I can't eat "modern" red tomatoes without having my stomach get upset, either. Because of this, I automatically mentioned substitutions above.

George, DH and I agree with you! I've never bought, nor am I likely to buy, "impossible meat" anything. If I can't have a hamburger, I'll make a bean burger, or something else. Or just do without.

[ApatheticNoMore]

Also, my group has several vegetarians, one vegan and two diabetics so trying to please everyone is tricky.

ok now that sounds impossible, at a certain point I'd just make salad: here's a salad: tada!

I do happen to make good salad. But then even the salad might have cheese or something. And no utensils either, ugh.

[ApatheticNoMore]

No offense to people who choose to eat it, but imho fake cheese made from vegetable oil is an abomination, and so is fake meat made from textured soy protein and every other highly processed "food" that is pretending to be something it isn't.

I'm fine with using buckwheat or beans or something else as a meat substitute when you make burgers or meatloaf-type dishes, because those are real foods prepared in the way you would normally cook them. What I'm against is the factory manufactured fakes designed in a chemistry lab. They are repugnant not only because their creation process makes them less healthy than real food, but also because of the hypocrisy of "I would never harm an animal just so I could eat it, but I refuse to deprive myself of the pleasure of feeling like I'm eating animals and other non-vegan foods"

I don't think committed long term vegetarians are the target market but some might be. And frankly though an omnivore I'm not the target market either, the type of people that going to a fast food place is anathema, are probably not the target market. And arguments: it's no more unhealthy than a regular burger at McDonalds/Burger King/In-and-Out just fly right over one's head. Uh my diet isn't perfect, but it's been decades since I've gone to a fast food place in the first place, so unless it was that or go Donner Party :). AS for vegan cheese, I have eaten things like cashew cheese and cream though, pretty good actually. But of course I usually eat real cheese.

[frugal-one]

Do you have any tried and true popular recipe ideas for appetizers? Only six people so want something simple and tasty (no meat).

Easiest would be as mentioned fruit and cheese on picks (skewers), salsa and chips, apples with dip. I especially like a peanut butter dip for apples.

[GeorgeParker]

I don't think committed long term vegetarians are the target market [for fake meat and cheese] but some might be.I agree. The target market is people who want to feel good about eating a humane diet or a "healthy(?)" diet or want to impress their friends with how humane/healthy their food choices are, but they aren't committed enough to vegetarianism to actually give up the pleasure or familiarity of eating things that taste like meat or cheese.

I, on the other hand, would love to be fully vegetarian, but I've done that short term several times, and when a crisis comes along I've just got to have some meat and cheese comfort food to get me through it. So I long ago chose to be mostly vegetarian while remaining a partial/minimal carnivore. To thine own self be true and all that stuff.

[iris lilies]

I don't think committed long term vegetarians are the target market but some might be. And frankly though an omnivore I'm not the target market either, the type of people that going to a fast food place is anathema, are probably not the target market. And arguments: it's no more unhealthy than a regular burger at McDonalds/Burger King/In-and-Out just fly right over one's head. Uh my diet isn't perfect, but it's been decades since I've gone to a fast food place in the first place, so unless it was that or go Donner Party :). AS for vegan cheese, I have eaten things like cashew cheese and cream though, pretty good actually. But of course I usually eat real cheese.

i agree. Vegetarian meals are easy, and avoiding the salty soy burgers is even easier.

[Rogar]

No offense to people who choose to eat it, but imho fake cheese made from vegetable oil is an abomination, and so is fake meat made from textured soy protein and every other highly processed "food" that is pretending to be something it isn't.

I have a country friend who runs a small butcher shop, mostly for big game during season, but also processing for small one or two pig or cow in the back type husbandry. I have helped process a few varieties of wild and domestic animal from beginning to end, and my take is that many or most omnivores would consider the sights, sounds, and smells of butchery an abomination, also. However, I'd also say as a mostly vegan, that fake meats and cheeses are no free ride on the health wagon. And there are a lot of other processed foods in the standard American diet that pretend to be something.

I don't try to make my personal choice of diet an issue in polite company and with some certain restraints will eat what is served as a guest in another's home. It's not that huge a deal every once in a while. On the other hand, my mother had Celiac disease, where eating wheat or gluten at a meal could be a very big deal.

[GeorgeParker]

I have a country friend who runs a small butcher shop, mostly for big game during season, but also processing for small one or two pig or cow in the back type husbandry. I have helped process a few varieties of wild and domestic animal from beginning to end, and my take is that many or most omnivores would consider the sights, sounds, and smells of butchery an abomination, also."The Omnivore's Dilemma" and "In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto" by Michael Pollan will answer that a lot better than I could.

No one wants to confront the messy smelly uncomfortable facts about how food, especially meat, ends up on your plate, and unlike previous generations, most of us don't have to because we have professional growers and butchers who get paid to do all that stuff safely out of our sight.

But, not to put to sharp a point on it, if we want to stay alive we have to eat something and as an omnivore we are free to choose from a wide range of foods, so why would we voluntarily consume manufactured food-like substances instead of real food? That is why the fake foods are an abomination.

The butcher shop is just an unpleasant fact of life that has always been with us for as long as humans have been capable of killing and eating other animals. Abominable it may be, but it only continues to exist because some people are willing to do that work and other people are eager to buy meat.

[Rogar]

That is why the fake foods are an abomination.

I would say abomination is in the eye of the beholder and not an absolute. In my eye the standard large scale industrial production of meat products is not only an abomination, but inhumane and bad for the environment. I'm uncertain in the difference between fake food and processed food.

Pollan has taken an interesting twist in his writing subject matter these days.

[GeorgeParker]

In my eye the standard large scale industrial production of meat products is not only an abomination, but inhumane and bad for the environment.Of course it is. And I never said anything to the contrary. The point I made in my OP was that people who refuse to eat meat (or other animal products) for philosophical, religious, or social reasons are hypocrites if they substitute a fake manufactured product so they can feel like they're eating the prohibited substance without breaking their self-imposed food rule.


I'm uncertain in the difference between fake food and processed food.Fake food is a product that is eatable and looks, smells, or tastes like something it is not because it has been deliberately altered using chemicals or other methods to change it's molecular structure, it's smell, it's taste, or some combination thereof.

Processed food is real food that has been prepared in a more or less normal way for eating, but was processed on a large scale as a way for the processor to make money and for the convenience of the consumer.

The problem with modern processed food is that so much of it has been over-processed and stripped of a lot of it's nutritional properties and/or loaded with things no human would intentionally eat, simply because doing so makes the processing more profitable for the processor.

Hominy, for example, is corn treated with an alkali so it will puff up and be softer, that's a traditional way of preparing corn whether it's done in your kitchen or in a big processing plant. But high-fructose corn syrup is not in any way, shape, form, or sense of the word "natural" because it has been over-processed (or mis-processed if you prefer) to create a man-made product with a higher retail value than the corn it comes from.

Side Note: High fructose corn syrup is a liquid sweetener made from cornstarch by breaking down corn into molecules of glucose (a type of sugar) and chemically changing half of those glucose molecules into fructose (another type of sugar that is sweeter). In the process all or the fiber and nutritional value of the corn is stripped away, leaving only calories.

[Gardnr]

Baked Brie and sourdough bagette. Side plate of fruit.