Cold finger Food Suggestions

[Ham]

It's  my MiL's funeral Friday week, in Coventry, after the (Humanist) ceremony we will be adjourning to a Social Club room, where there is no food heating facility. I looked at buying in sandwich platters and stuff, but I reckon I can do better than that for her (quality wise). So I'm going to be doing the catering (for about 40 or 50).  Sandwiches, dips carrots etc, cheese, biscuits are easy, I've been trying to think of what else might work. Any thoughts? Anything like sausage rolls will have to be cooked up 4 or 5 hours beforehand.

[mrcharly-YHT]

caek

Cheese table with crackers (that can get pricey though)

[Canardly]

Just a thought. The few family funeral receptions I have attended in the last several years always had lots of food waste afterwards.

[Ham]

Just a thought. The few family funeral receptions I have attended in the last several years always had lots of food waste afterwards.

There will be a few families that should help hoover up, but you have the choice of running short or having too much, getting it right is impossible without a lucky guess. I'm afraid I know which way I would err.

[Vernon]

Tabouleh or Greek salad, perhaps with some split pitta halves to stuff them in.
Cooked finger food that would survive room temperature, such as falafel, samosas, mini spring rolls or scotch eggs.
Stuffed olives, cheese cubes, sliced sausage and other things you could stab with toothpicks.
Mini sweet things, such as baklava or Turkish delight. You should be able to pick up trays if these from a Mediterranean supermarket.
I think I'm going to demand a cheese and pineapple hedgehog at my wake, just because.

[T42]

Cue Shirley Bassey.

[Flite]

Bite-sized cheese choux buns - can make few days in advance, keep in airtight box.
Use veggie "Italian hard cheese" instead of parmesan to include more guests.
Individual veg flans, or large one cut in slices.
Hummus with pitta strips and vegetable sticks
Oatcakes with peanut butter and a slice of tomato
Label the veggie/vegan stuff - it saves a lot of hassle.
I once and to ask someone to taste and unlabelled dip to see if it was hummus or tuna mashed up in mayo!

[Ham]

Some useful things there, thanks. And yes, labelling is something I always do for parties, it's easy to ignore if you don't care, but a lot of people appreciate it for different reasons.

[CAMRAMan]

Depending on how conservative the tastes, veggie & meat samosas. Pakora, etc. Perfect finger food especially with some raita dip.

[Clare]

what cutlery and crockery is available? I was at a ‘bring at plate’ event at the weekend so I took a load of tabouleh. Unfortunately there were no forks, so we raided the tea and coffee display for teaspoons to eat the tabouleh with.

[Ham]

Were going for disposable, and finger food to avoid cutlery (or even forklery or spoonlery)

[Clare]

In that case, pickled egg and pepperami scotch eggs.

[barakta]

At similar style events I've done a £50-75 Tesco run and bought various bits and let people build their own (and we had plenty of poorer people willing to take half loaves and bottles of milk home with them).

I always had separate tables/spaces for veggie/vegan which definitely went down well as did leaving any ingredients packaging next to the item so people could check.

Good luck!

[Flite]

I did once go to a funeral tea where for each "course" the vegetarians/vegans were invited to start first, so the omnivores didn't eat all the veggie food.

[road-runner]

Sandwiches ... Any thoughts?

Open sandwiches provide a more colourful presentation and can save a lot of guessing the contents.

[hellymedic]

We have the occasional piano party chez nous.

I like to control the potential for noise and mess.

One of my 'box-ticking' favourite suppliers (from Sainsbury's) is called Great Foods or GOSH. Their products are vegan, gluten-free and Kosher. They're also tasty.
They do felafel, pakora and other finger foods.

I tend to leave these in their original containers to avoid contamination and confusion.

[Paul H]

Unless there's the opportunity to sit down at a table, then stuff that isn't going to fall off/out and all over you and the floor would be a good idea.  Although those open sandwiches from RR above look great, that egg looks ready to slide off the bread between plate and mouth. Unless you're aiming for a comedy element, keep it simple.  I think in the context boring is OK, I've not been to a huge number of funerals, twenty at most, I can't remember a single thing about the food at any of them.

[Ham]

Well, we did 'er proud.

I made too many sandwiches (5 loaves: Ham, Cheese, Tuna and cucumber, Egg and rocket (who knew you can't get cress in supermarkets?), smoked salmon. Got a load of things like chicken straws from Sainsbos, a couple of pizza, cucumber, carrot sticks, dips, crisps, a cheeseboard, a load of mini cupcakes and the like.

[road-runner]

Well, we did 'er proud.

That is the important bit. Well done!

[Flite]

Pleased it went well.