The Buffet Table

Personally, I love a good appetizer and snack focused buffet table.  Interesting dips, meatballs, crackers with good cheese and foods encased in puff pastry are a few of my favorite things.  Top it off with a good cookie table and it's perfect.  If I'm there alone.

With my daughter around, a couple of hours of happy grazing turns into a couple of hours of math and negotiating.

When there is a buffet table, one is expected to graze.  You have a mini hot dog, meet the relative in from out of town, try a couple of dips, chat about the school play, make your way to the meatballs where you spend time with the party host; and on it goes.

The first problem with this scenario is that each snack requires a math problem and a bolus.  When every conversation is interrupted with 'I took 4 meatballs, mom,' or 'I just ate 7 corn chips,' it's hard to carry on a conversation. When I'm interrupted to nix the plea for a 4th cookie, my already limited cocktail party-related social skills take a big hit.

The second, but related problem is an extension of the standard regular-people buffet party challenge.  If I have a drink in one hand and a little plate in another, I already must find a third hand to eat.  Add the meter remote to that third hand and I'm out.  Even with the understanding that every mother develops a third hand (a.k.a. the ability to juggle well), this scenario becomes impossible and I remain hungry or thirsty so that my kid doesn't end up high.

So a buffet party turns into me with a drink OR food in one hand, following my kid with the meter remote while trying to make small talk and perform carbohydrate equations in my head at the same time.

Ironically, I suppose, we throw one of these parties every year.  The difference is that I painstakingly create a list of every food with its carbohydrate content and post it on the fridge.  My daughter takes the meter remote and is able to do her own juggling act while I play hostess and eat my fair share of mini quiches.

In a perfect world, we'd be handed a cheat sheet at the start of every party, and one of these cool plates .