Euchre Party!

East Coast Traditions

A few weeks ago, we attended our very first Crab Feast. The crabs are obviously incredible out here. I typically order crab cakes or crab dip, so straight crab was a mystery. I discovered that it’s  delicious… it’s just impossible to get out of the shell. Now that I know what it takes, you will never hear me complain about restaurant “out-of-the-shell” crab prices.

There’s a whole technique to getting the most meat out of a crab, and I pretty much suck at it. I’m just glad I walked away without a scratch after wresting the crabs with my knife. Our neighbors were very patient with my lack of crab-cracking skills, and we had a great time. They explained that it was basically an excuse for people to get together, socialize, and drink beer. My favorite kind of tradition.

Bringing Euchre to the East Coast

I like to think of euchre as a similar social event. It can be complicated and a little overwhelming at first, but it’s an excuse for a fun party.

Growing up in Ohio, I had no idea that euchre wasn’t played all over the country. My parents used to be part of a euchre group in our neighborhood, and they’d get together monthly, rotating houses. Even as a kid in high school, when your parents seem their most “uncool”, I knew I wanted to do something like that when I got older. We had our first attempt this past weekend…

Drinks

We had to wait until the kids were in bed to get started, so it was too late for a meal. We just focused on stocking the bar and putting out some appetizers. We’re still new to the area and getting to know people’s drink preferences takes a little while. Therefore, the plan of attack for the bar was variety.

Wine is the obvious one. We made sure to have a few white options and a few red options. A cute little detail was the wine glass markers made out of playing cards…

I wish I could take credit, but it was a Pinterest find. Cute, right?

I couldn’t put all drink options out on the counter, so I used the chalkboard to make sure people knew what all we had. With such a wide variety, I couldn’t make the bar as cute and focused as I would’ve liked, but it served its purpose:)

My conclusion is wine and beer is always safe and necessary. As far as other cocktails go, my two favorites… the moscow mule and champagne with st. germain…. were the favorites of others as well. I think it’s safe to say that as long as beer and wine are there, you’re good. But as a cocktail person myself, I’ll probably always have at least one cocktail option.

Food

For food, I did BBQ meatballs in the crockpot which are beyond easy, and usually the favorite. I also tried a spinach and artichoke dip in the crockpot and LOVED it… recipe here. I will be making this all the time now. When hosting, there’s not much time to actually eat, so I may or may not have been stuffing my face with this dip after everyone left.

The other two appetizers were a little bit of a flop. One was the brie wheel. Usually another crowd favorite, but it really is better warm. A party like this needs appetizers that don’t have to be eaten right away. People tend to graze all night, and brie looks funky after awhile.

The last app was a pizza wheel made with puff pastry. It was another Pinterest find, and another Pinterest fail. It didn’t look anything like the picture and was much too dry for my taste. My mom said she loved it, but it’s hard to know if she’s being honest or just trying to boost my confidence;)

Dessert

Dessert is also crucial, second only to alcohol. Where I focused a lot of my energy. I picked somewhat easy desserts and all crowd-pleasers and just made one thing each night leading up to the party.

You’ll notice the bulk candy jars were carried over from our fire truck party… I eat that stuff all the time and STILL have barely made a dent. Wish me luck at the dentist tomorrow.

I loved how excited all the adults got over the bulk candy!

Truffles/cake pops are one of my favorite desserts. They’re easy to eat, the perfect size, and DELICIOUS. I definitely put these in the “easy to make” category, but the worst part? The candy coating. I can never make them look as pretty as the pictures I see.

Our new grocery store didn’t carry almond bark, so I had to make them with some vanilla candy coating crap. Next time, I’ll search high and low for the proper ingredients.

People were loving the caramel brownies too… they’re incredible! Brownies made with dutch chocolate cake mix, chocolate chips, and melted caramels for the win.

The plates with the cute little dice and cards are Nora Fleming. I have a bunch of the little “ornaments” to swap out to match different decor. Pretty genius.

The Game

This was our first attempt at a Euchre tournament, so I knew the actual game time wouldn’t be super intense.

It’s important to have your guests rsvp, so you know what your numbers look like. Once you know the number of people, you can decide on the amount of tables and create a tournament schedule.

Pretty much without fail, the number of guests will change last minute. It used to stress me out, but I discovered the website Euchre Fun. They have free printable tournament schedules for pretty much any number imaginable.  I’m no longer going to waste my time coming up with it on my own. This is what our schedule looked like…

We obviously didn’t play 14 rounds, but that’s how many you’d have to play to give everyone the same amount of playing time with substitutions. With this large of a group and this many “rounds”, we’d probably only have everyone deal one time before rotating to the next game. Then each person just adds up their points from each game to figure out their total score. The cool part about these rotations is that everyone gets a chance to partner with everyone. Perfect way to socialize your way through a party!

I also made these little cheat sheets since we had people who had never played euchre before. Pretty sure nobody actually read through them, but at least they had the option:)

It was such a fun night! The true test will be if we can get it to happen on a regular basis. Wish me luck!