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Tricks 'n treats for the coming season
Pauline Parry and the Good Gracious! Events team from Los Angeles have won numerous awards for their creative thinking. Here, Pauline shares some of their best ideas for planning stunning and stress-free holiday menus:
1. Pre-plan a variety of menu items and designs that you like and try to sell the same items to clients for all parties in the coming month. December will become a "production" of the same food items and the same design, which lends itself to consistency of product, helps with labor costs and limits errors.
 2. Think about doing twists on a menu items such as Holiday on a Stick: turkey, stuffing, red potato cranberry glaze on skewer; or a Stuffing Cup Cake: traditional stuffing made in a cake mould topped with fluffy mashed potatoes (with represents the frosting) with an olive on top (representing the cherry). It is all about taking items that you already do well and are easy to mass-produce and re-branding them for the Holidays.
3. Offer a "Party Card," which is essentially a gift certificate for your services. Clients can purchase these for their friends and families to use them for small home events or as a partial payment for larger events they have coming up like birthdays, anniversaries or weddings.
4. For dessert, serve hot chocolate soufflé in demitasse cups topped with a dollop of cinnamon cream. For price conscience events, do Holiday Candy Shops: red and green candies, salt water taffy, various brittle barks etc. Or try " The Joy of Cookies" Tree: use silver tree branches hung with frosted white star cookies. At the base of the tree, arrange gift boxes filled with triple chocolate cranberry oatmeal cookies, hazelnut  shortbread sticks, chocolate covered gingerbread kids and white chocolate peppermint cookie brittle cookies.
5. Add holiday sparkle with rose champagne and red raspberries or add pomegranate jewels to any of your salads instead of dried cranberries - very festive!
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Not your ordinary Jack-O-Lantern!
With Halloween upon us, you're sure to see many scary faces carved out of pumpkins on the doorsteps in your neighborhood. Tennessee caterer and Catersource Forum moderator Carl Jones, takes pumpkin carving to scary new heights and often uses his carved designs in displays for his customers. Carl offers these tips for creating some beautifully unique pumpkin designs.
 Pick pumpkins that have unique shapes, are visually appealing, evenly a deep orange color and are free from cuts, soft spots and bruises. The flesh should feel hard, and not give easily. Look for flat spots and use them as part of your design. Make sure the stem is attached.
Wash the pumpkins as soon as possible! Bacteria in the dirt is what starts the decaying process. Use a solution of 1:1 Listerine and water.
To carve designs on the outside, there is no need to cut the pumpkin open. Trace the design on the pumpkin. First cut: Make a 1/8 inch cut straight into the pumpkin along the lines you've traced. 2nd cut: Make another cut an 1/8 inch next to the line at a 45 degree angle cutting into the first cut.
 With these cuts, you can carve any image. Some carvers trace, use templates, draw with a pen first or freehand the design with their knives.
Remember, the image is there, all you have to do is use your imagination and carve away anything that blocks the image you see!
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The top chef discussion cools down
In our last e-newsletter, we asked for your opinion about forbes.com article on the top 10 "celebrity chefs." Your opinions were not as heated as those of forbes.com readers, "take 'em or leave 'em" being your feeling overall, here are some results from our opinion poll:
Celebrity chefs that rate the tops with our readers are Mario Batali with 48% and Anthony Bourdain with 47% saying you "love him!" Most "hated" were Rachel Ray with 32% and Gordon Ramsay with 29% of the vote. Interestingly enough, though Ramsay took a top hated spot, he also tied with Batali with 48% loving him as well!
50% of our readers REGULARY follow Mario Batali and 77% have used an idea of his on at least one occasion. 67% have also turned to Wolfgang Puck and Bobby Flay for ideas as well.
Other chefs considered noteworthy that were not mentioned in the forbes.com list? Thomas Keller, Charlie Trotter and Emeril Lagasse.
Some of your comments included:
"Ya gotta love 'em for taking a risk and building their successful ventures. While I don't watch or use their ideas much, I do appreciate their successes."
"$18 million off of EVOO....betcha there's a lot of chefs kicking themselves for not coming up with that stupid lil' wing of a word!"
"I would never hate on people like RR or PD because they have worked hard to achieve the level of success they now enjoy. And personally, if I were presented with the opportunity for fame and stardom based on my talent or skills, I'd take it too!"
"Half the list I would not call chefs. Pick the chefs that work in the kitchen everyday, not the ones who travel, write and tape shows that embarrass the rest of us that work hard every day."
Thanks again to everyone who participated in our opinion poll!
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More Catersource winners
Thank you to those that registered for the 2009 Conference & Tradeshow during our promotional period. Fifty attendees were drawn at random to win a copy of Mike Roman's book If You Don't Sell It, You Can't Cook It!
And one more BIG prize is still up for grabs if you register by end of day TODAY:
Register by October 31, 2008
for a chance to win a Luxury VIP Package for four.
A
limousine will pick you up at the airport and take you to either the
Hilton or Paris Hotel on the day you arrive. On Sunday night (February
22), enjoy dinner for four at Les Artistes Steakhouse at the Paris
Hotel and Casino. After your dinner, a limo will whisk you away to PURE
Nightclub where your party of four will be treated to a VIP table and
complimentary bottle service.
 February 22-26Las Vegas Hilton & Convention Center
Experience Las Vegas in true VIP fashion,
. . .
Simply GreenDon't forget, we want to know what YOU think about the green issues in the food service industry. How far are you willing to
go? What drives you, what holds you back? What are the benefits and/or
challenges you see? Submit your comments, questions, ideas and opinions
to our editor and stay tuned to see where Green is going to take us
next! Click here to email our editor . . .
Seeing is believing
David Peake's Catering for Caterers
DVD collection, available exclusively at the Catersource Store, offers dozens of service
techniques, recipes and catering tips and tricks that
are guaranteed to help you work
smarter and make more money! Click the image below for a sneak "peake!"
. . .
If you haven't been with us for our first full year of Get Fresh, you can now catch up on back issues of the e-newsletter by visiting our archives page. Some content may be a little 'past fresh', but still worthy - enjoy!
. . .
Get even more news!Get event news, resources and even more fresh ideas from our partner, Event Solutions. Click here to sign up for their e-mail newsletter. . . .
If you have a story, idea, question or comment for Get Fresh, please email us at newsletter@catersource.com
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