Sunday, December 5, 2010

Christmas Open House

I have a friend who sells Scentsy and she decided to do an Open House at her home for Christmas and invited myself, Jillybeans Treats, Avon and Pampered Chef to come set up a table and sell our stuff. So I got to try a couple more recipes!
I decided my menu on Friday for the Saturday Open House. I decided to go with things I had the stuff for and would not be opening new containers more inventory in hopes of selling that instead of taste testing it all! So the menu for my table became the Garlic Lemon Chicken and Pumpkin Pie Cheesecake Ball. The menu for stuff to go on the food table with everyone else's stuff was Garlic Basil Dip and BLT Dip.
Friday night I put together the 2 dips and mixed the cheesecake ball. Now I know from experience you can cheat with cream cheese and "soften" it in the mixer. I learned you can't cheat with butter this same way, but if you mix and find it doesn't work just leave it on the counter to soften the long way and mix again and all is well. This was thankfully my only snag in making my foods for the open house. The cheesecake ball was super simple cream cheese, butter (softened) and the mix. If you really soften the butter and cream cheese first it would take only the time it takes your mixer to mix these 3 things. If you try and cheat like I did it takes about an hour cause you have to let the butter soften. The two dips were equally as simple, and since I have the pantry staples for both it was measure mix and done!
The hardest part was that the open house started at 9am. First I had to decide if I should even bother with something like chicken or if it would be wiser to just do the dips. I went with the chicken hoping it would inspire more in sales. I did get one comment from Jillybeans treats about the smell of garlic at 8am (while we were setting up), and not everyone tasted the chicken, but that was a risk I took, not sure if I would have done better with different choices or if it was a mute point. Anyway the chicken I chose was the Garlic Lemon chicken. I partly chose this because it was my only pantry staple I had not yet used, and in case I didn't like it I could give it away to my host or one of the other ladies there. I was worried about my liking this one because I don't like lemon as a primary flavor. Thankfully it's not an overpowering lemon flavor. If you like lemon the 4 meals in 4 minutes recipe you can use margarita mix which I am sure will accent the lemon flavor. Back to what I actually did. I used 2tablespoons of butter a quarter cup of water some of the seasoning and then 3lbs of chicken. I went ahead Friday night and put the butter, water and seasoning in the crockpot, then set my alarm for 5am to wake up dump the frozen chicken in the pot and go back to bed. That is exactly what I did, and I think it turned out well. If I were doing it again I would have put water, butter and seasoning in on top of the chicken so it would maybe get more of the seasoning flavor, but when I am thinking about doing something in the middle of the night the less I have to do the better!
In all the open house went well, I got a few orders and possibly a few new customers that may or may not become regulars. I also decided I would "trade parties" with the Scentsy consultant to possibly help both of us out, and I want some Scentsy, but can't think about spending money on it right now.

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