appetizer tasting

I guess it seems like all we do lately is eat and drink, in preparation for the big day. Actually, that’s sort of the truth. Two weekends ago, we invited some friends over to try out some of the appetizers that we are considering serving for the wedding.

We hadn’t intended on preparing our own food; in fact, we tried to organize both a catered affair and an offsite dinner with poor results. We’ve contacted four caterers, none of whom are interested in s 30ish person gathering on Memorial Day weekend. I guess we are the small fish in town, so to speak. So, we decided that we could do some of the legwork ourselves and get tasty things from local stores. We started out at our local warehouse store, where you can buy nearly anything frozen and wrapped in puff pastry. But the choices weren’t exciting and, once you add in the $50 membership fee, the prices really aren’t that swell either.

Our next stop was the yuppie standby: Trader Joe’s. We love TJs for everything from frozen food to unusual boxed goods. It’s less stressful than the real grocery store and can get you over the midweek hump with just a few quick dinners. So, we scavenged the frozen food section and came up with six possible appetizers.

* Pastry Bites: Ham & Cheese Puff Pastry
* Pastry Bites: Feta & Caramelized Onion
* Raspberry & Brie Phyllo
* Chicken Won Tons
* Onion/Carrot Tempura Nests
* Lemongrass Chicken Stix

We asked each of our tasters to rate these items on a scale of 1 (awful) to 5 (super great!) for each of the following criteria:

* Appearance,
* Crispness,
* Savoriness, and
* Overall tastiness.

Our chef also rated them on ease of preparation. Finally, we evaluated the cost per piece (number of pieces in the package divided by the total cost). After much eating and talking, the clear winners and the appetizers we will be serving are the Raspberry & Brie Phyllo and the Feta & Caramelized Onion Pastry Bites. The brie was hands-down the clear winner, with the highest marks in 3 of the 5 categories. These results were surprising, because from the looks of the items on the package we thought that we were going to love the tempura nests (“mushy”) and the lemongrass chicken sticks (one taster said these “tasted like Lemon Pledge”).

Here’s the chart of our overall results. Special thanks to our volunteer tasters!