Posted: Tue Nov 28, 2006 4:26 pmOh, you just reminded me of a really funny thing that happened at my wedding:
This was the midwest and quite a few years ago. I was married in a tiny town where most weddings don't have any meal at all. For those of you used to big catered weddings, you'd flip. Normally what happens in the reception is held in the church basement, serving only cake, mints, and punch. There is no meal. While people are eating the cake and some green punch made with green HI-C and soda, the bride opens every gift, announcing what the gift is and who gave it. It may take hours. After every gift, the crowd is expected to ooh and ah and say how great the gift is. If you haven't been to one of these events, its definitely something to experience.
Anyway, we had a buffet at our wedding because we wanted people who were from out of town (nearly 90% of the attendees) to be able to stay and visit. We gave the caterer a list of things we wanted and one was nachos. Given that the caterer wasn't familiar with this, we gave her a recipe. But the nachos never arrived. We figured she forgot or couldn't get the ingredients. Later in the night, someone came up to me and said there was something funny in the great dip everyone was eating....it was strings of lettuce. The caterer not knowing what I meant by "spread the mixture over the chips" assumed that this meant she should take all the ground beef, lettuce, tomatoes, salsa, peppers, sour cream and cilantro and put it in a blender...which she did. This brown stringy dip was the result. It tasted really, really good, but looked terrible. No one knew what it was, but it was served with potato chips.
So I learned to write very detailed recipes.
This was the midwest and quite a few years ago. I was married in a tiny town where most weddings don't have any meal at all. For those of you used to big catered weddings, you'd flip. Normally what happens in the reception is held in the church basement, serving only cake, mints, and punch. There is no meal. While people are eating the cake and some green punch made with green HI-C and soda, the bride opens every gift, announcing what the gift is and who gave it. It may take hours. After every gift, the crowd is expected to ooh and ah and say how great the gift is. If you haven't been to one of these events, its definitely something to experience.
Anyway, we had a buffet at our wedding because we wanted people who were from out of town (nearly 90% of the attendees) to be able to stay and visit. We gave the caterer a list of things we wanted and one was nachos. Given that the caterer wasn't familiar with this, we gave her a recipe. But the nachos never arrived. We figured she forgot or couldn't get the ingredients. Later in the night, someone came up to me and said there was something funny in the great dip everyone was eating....it was strings of lettuce. The caterer not knowing what I meant by "spread the mixture over the chips" assumed that this meant she should take all the ground beef, lettuce, tomatoes, salsa, peppers, sour cream and cilantro and put it in a blender...which she did. This brown stringy dip was the result. It tasted really, really good, but looked terrible. No one knew what it was, but it was served with potato chips.
So I learned to write very detailed recipes.