Crazy Taste Test

Side Note: I love sandwiches. And that may be an understatement. I don't know what it is about them. It would actually be relatively easy for me to go a week and not eat anything but sandwiches. In fact, I've probably done this before subconsciously. So as for the food for our wedding reception, it was a no brainer. I thought, "Hands down, no question about it: we are definitely doing sandwiches for our reception." (Isaac fully supported me on this in case you were wondering). But after a while, I gave it a little thought... Do I want my wedding to feel like a picnic or do I want it to feel like a wedding? I tossed and turned at night thinking about this, what felt like, huge decision... my love of sandwiches or the propriety of my wedding. Oh, silly decisions. The thing that cinched it for me was imagining myself going to a pretty wedding and then being served sandwiches and chips. And although my love of sandwiches was tested, I realized that sandwiches would not be a meal I would expect to be served at such a lovely occasion. So we decided to go with a hot buffet meal (I'm sure many of you are thinking, "oh thank goodness!").

Now the decision was: what are we serving? So we set up our first tasting with the caterer to start figuring all this out. Like a good little fiance, I printed off the directions to their facility, and even changed the path to one that we were familiar with, thinking that would help. We left 45 minutes early, even though it only takes 30 minutes to get there, to ensure that we wouldn't be late. Isaac picked me up after he got off work and we were on our way, ready to eat some, hopefully, yummy food.

Ten minutes into the car ride I got car sick. Headache, hot spells, nauseousness... the whole nine yards... but was luckily able to control my cookies-with a lot of concentration. One thing we couldn't control with concentration? The directions. Yep, we got lost. And of course we didn't have cellphone service to call the caterer. Stupid tiny town. And this was about the time my irrationality started to kick in thinking that this was something out of a horror movie and we were driving to our death. Somehow or another Isaac managed to call the caterer and we finally found our way; after an hour or driving around. My car sickness started to subside by then and there was not a mass murderer waiting for us at the caterers house, but instead a really nice, likable guy by the name of Earl. Phew! Lucky us.

We sat down at the little table they had set up for us and prepared ourselves for the worst (just in case). As we waited for him to put the finishing touches on our food, Isaac dove into the salad while I looked at their portfolio.

(the only picture we got of the food)

After a couple minutes, I heard a little clunk and Isaac go silent. I looked up and guilty looking Isaac had dumped his cup of water on the table. We both just sat there and looked at the wet spot grow bigger and bigger, and then we started laughing. "Did you really just do that?" I laughed with tears in my eyes, as if this is one more thing to top off our fantastic evening.

I ran to go grab my camera (which I had spent all day charging the battery) from the car, thinking that I needed to document this crazy night, but I had left my memory card at home. UGH! Nothing is going right!

(Luckily Isaac has an iphone and was able to capture the moment)

We finally spotted napkins in the corner and quickly tried to clean up the mess before Earl walked back in with the food, but when he did, he was as sweet as could be and didn't mind the huge water spot on his table linen. Then Earl set two heaping plates of food in front of each of us. Chicken, pork loin, green beans, mashed potatoes and bread. It looked yummy, but I still braced myself (considering I've never had yummy tasting catered food). Two bites in, it finally registered: This stuff is good. A couple bites later: this stuff is realllly realllly good!

After we were done stuffing our faces (my plate was completely clean, and I may have eaten a couple bites off of Isaac's) we talked business with Earl, nailing down a few details and then left, bellies full and minds at ease. We have nothing to worry about with this guy as our caterer. He's got it all in good hands. So after our crazy night, there was one thing we were able to get right- the yummy food... even though we aren't serving sandwiches.