March Garden Club Meeting

The March Garden Club meeting fell a week before St. Patrick's Day so I did a green and rainbow food theme.  

Below is a rainbow veggie tray. I paired it with homemade ranch dressing served in a 4 leaf clover shaped glass bowl. 

These are rainbow veggie pizzas.  I took Naan bread and smeared it with marinara sauce and sprinkled it with the italian blend shredded cheese. Then I heated 6 cloves of whole garlic in a large pan with olive oil until it softened. I didn't want to have big chunks of garlic on top of the pizza since that might be a bit much for people (not me personally), so I left them whole to impart their delicious flavor.  I individually sauteed carrot rounds, diced yellow peppers, fresh chopped broccoli and diced red/purple onion.  I chopped up fresh tomato and left it completely raw.  Then I sprinkled everything with a tiny bit of kosher salt and pepper.  I didn't do any seasoning while sauteeing so I thought this was important.  When I got to the garden center, I threw the flatbreads in the oven to heat and toast.  These are all before pictures since I didn't get any afterwards. These were a huge hit and not a single piece was left.

I made artichoke dip and broccoli and cheese bites since they went over so well at the January meeting, but didn't get any pictures of these.  

For dessert, I was supposed to make these rainbow cupcakes, but could not find one of my favorite candies that was essential to making them. I searched the entire candy aisle at Kroger along with all of the checkout lanes, but nope.  Ironically, the All You magazine was on all the aisles, just not the one ingredient I needed to make them. So, with not much time to spare, I resorted to plan 2. 

I was not really happy with how they turned out. They tasted great and the idea was cute, but it wasn't what I wanted.  They definitely would have looked better if I'd actually piped the icing on, but Monday was a very difficult day with Stella. It was NOT happening.  

The idea is that the bowl of marshmallows is a cloud, then you have the rainbow cupcakes and the 100 Grand candy bar is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow (you'd be surprised who didn't make that connection). I did a fruit tray a few years ago and used a bowl of gold wrapped Rolos as the pot of gold. That works better, but again, this was a last minute change and I happened to have the candy bar.