Someday I will throw a party for which I am completely prepared days in advance. A party where I'm not up until 3 a.m. the night before, baking and frosting things. A party where I'm not playing beat the clock, desperately hoping nobody actually shows up on time and sees me covered in powdered sugar, simultaneously shredding cheese, ditching piles of clothes behind a couch and trying to make the cupcake display look pretty.Alas, my Ocho de Mayo party on Friday was not such a party.
The First Annual Ocho de Mayo Celebration was an idea borne of some Thursday-night drinking. Out with friends M and R a month or so ago, I declared that it would soon be time for another party. I thought, Cinco de Mayo!, but upon consulting our cell phone calendars, we discovered that it was on a Tuesday. Uno de Mayo? No, R was out of town that weekend. Ocho de Mayo? Bingo.
We quickly agreed that Ocho de Mayo's main features would be bacon and a moustache competition. Don't ask me how or why. These things just fit.
I went to work on creating a buzz for the party, via email teasers to my friends. My goal was to create an annual event that would make Cinco de Mayo look like Arbor Day in terms of holiday status.
It worked.
Friday evening, my friends arrived just after my peanut-butter frosting disaster and my three (THREE!) trips to the store to pick up things I discovered I needed, but before I was in party clothes and before the dishes were done and the cheese was sliced. Fortunately, the early arrivals were happy to help, and they looked the other way when I shoved unwashed pans into the oven, to be dealt with later.
And then...
And then there were more friends, there was beer, there was music, there was loud laughing, there was a trip to the roof, and a trip down, and a trip back up, and a trip back down, there was a moral dilemma about "Do we open the really expensive whiskey that was brought in a box and left on the counter?" (answer: yes), there were shots of bacon vodka, there were Bloody Marys with garlic-jalepeno vodka, there was one contestant (and winner!) in the moustache competition, there were take-home containers, there was tequila, there was gooey butter cake, there were new sunglasses, there was a flag. That's right, an Ocho de Mayo flag. Admire its awesomeness:
One of the things I love/hate about planning a party is coming up with the menu. I love it because it gives me the chance to try things I've wanted to try, to share things I already love, and to plan out the perfect salty-sweet balance. I only hate it the night before and the day of the party, when I try to figure out how the HELL I'm going to get everything done. A few things I planned this time around didn't happen (like chipotle aoli) but what did happen worked out pretty well.
Ocho de Mayo Menu
*Seven-Layer Dip (1. refried beans, 2. guacamole, 3. sour cream mixed with taco seasoning, 4. shredded iceberg lettuce, 5. diced tomatoes, 6. shredded cheddar cheese, 7. sliced black olives) with chips
*Gooey Butter Cake with Strawberries (I add half a stick of butter to the "goo" part of this recipe)
*Cheese/Roast Beef/Proscuitto/Crackers/Bread
*Fat Elvis Cupcakes (banana cupcakes using this yellow cake recipe with added bananas mashed in the food processor, peanut butter frosting, caramelized bacon)
*Caramelized Bacon
If you have never had caramelized bacon (and this would not surprise me), be prepared for your life to change. It is weird and delicious, the perfect addition of sweetness to something that is already awesome. It's also pretty easy to make, and your friends will think you are a genius.
You need:
1 lb bacon
1 lb light brown sugar
a baking dish/pan (not a cookie sheet)
an oven heated to 350 degrees
Dump a bunch of the brown sugar into your pan, mush your bacon into it, coating the bacon thickly on both sides. Dump any remaining sugar on top, but save about a handful to toss on at the end for a final sugar coat. Put pan in the oven. Cook for about 8 minutes* on each side, then cool on a rack.
*Maybe a few minutes more, but watch the bacon very carefully. If you overcook it, it will be burned. If you undercook it, it will be chewy, rather than slightly crispy.
**When your pan is free of bacon, the melted sugar will harden quickly and you will think your pan is ruined. You might say something like, "Damnit, Snackhands! How could you let me do this to my favorite pan! Now I'm going to have to throw it out, jerk!" This is not true. Run superhot water over the pan for a while, and the sugar will melt off. Trust me.
If nothing else -- if my Ocho de Mayo party had been a tense and boring affair loaded with jerks, warm Corona, and only Hootie and the Blowfish and Limp Bizkit playing in the background -- I am confident that the caramelized bacon would have saved it. Fortunately, that worst-case scenario was not what happened, and the caramelized bacon was a small part of a great party. I think I have created a monster.
Viva la Ocho de Mayo! See you next year.
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