Michaela's 2nd Birthday BBQ



Holiday & Party Recipes

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For Michaela's 2nd Birthday Party I decided to throw a BBQ. I was hoping that the weather would be nice and I figured that the kids would have much more fun playing in the backyard than inside the house. Plus it would give us more room for all the guests.

We decided to make it a "drop in whenever you want type of party", staring at 11:30 and going on until dusk (when it gets too cold to be outside). Children this age have naps at different times, and we wanted them to be able to come at a time which worked for them. Rested children are happy children. This ended up being a good strategy vis a vis space - as our guests came at different times during the day we never ran out of chairs or places where to put them. However, it made it very difficult for Mike (the grill-man) to socialize, as he was constantly attending to requests from one guest or another. Next year we will have to think of something else.

I wanted to come up with a menu that would please -if not wow- everyone: meat-lovers as well as vegetarians, toddlers as well as sophisticated palates, that would keep everyone full and happy. Another consideration was not requiring steak knives, as they are a potential danger to toddlers and we had limited table space. I did serve a little bit of tri-tip to some of our latter-arriving guests (and the guests raved over Mike's abilities as a bbq'er), but that was in part because I wasn't confident everyone would love the anticuchos so I didn't marinate all the meat I bought.

Everyone raved about the food and I was quite happy with how everything turned out. The final menu consisted of:

We had two cakes because I wanted all the children - both those who left early and those who came late - to be able to have cake and ice cream. It worked out well, 2 9" cakes were just enough for two dozen adults plus several children.