What kind of appetizers do you like to fix and/or eat?  Appetizers aren't a
regular thing for me but sometimes they're fun and good!

55 responses total.

Sometimes when I eat out, I'll get an appetizer instead of a main meal to save
some money. One of my favorites are potato skins.

The other evening when at a Christmas dinner a number of appetizers were
served.  One that I really enjoyed was cream cheese covered with [apricot?]
jam and something that wasn't too hot but it definitely had a kick to it [I'm
not sure what that something was; any ideas?] served with crackers. Another
good one was one of those layered dips served with tortilla chips.

Recently I received a gift pack from Hickory Farms that includes some beef[?]
sausages as well as some cheese balls. Though I haven't tried this yet, I did
buy some crackers to go with this stuff.

I think it depends on the meal I'm serving.  We had a barbecue for my 
husband's car club last February - the barbecue was catered in, so I 
handled appetizers and desserts.  I think I did spinach artichoke dip, 
a 7 layer dip, a veggie tray, deviled eggs and homemade hummus.  

I know what you mean though - I sometimes get apps as they tend to be 
less food and cheaper.

I generally eat appetizers as a meal if I can find a good one.  I rarely
eat appetizers as they are intended.

My three main appetizers I like to get when available are:
Seared Ahi Tuna with wasabi
Lettuce wraps
Hummus (though I prefer to dip in veggies than bread)

For home use, I rarely make an appetizer other than shrimp cocktail or
chips & salsa.

Oooh - I do love seared Ahi Tuna.....and lettuce wraps rock too.  I 
sat next to a manager for the PF Cheng's in Lansing(?) and he said the 
lettuce wraps were the #1 appetizer.

Veggie trays are almost always good [as I prefer raw vegetables over cooked
ones--except for yucky things like broccoli and cauliflour that often show
up on these trays; these 2 things aren't good whatever way their served!]
Deviled eggs are always good, too, as is the hummus.  Hmm, I've never had a
lettuce wrap though I remember seeing someone at another table having what
appeared to be some kind of lettuce wrap...

I never serve raw broccoli or cauliflower.  I always blanch them first 
and then shock them in cold water to stop cooking...takes away the 
totally raw flavor/texture, and always brightens their color.

Man. I *love* hors d'oeuvres! In fact, I kind of like cocktail parties 
with lots of good nibblies better than I like dinner parties (although 
I like those too). 

One of my favorites is to take a block of cream cheese and then cover 
it in crap meat (or Krab meat if one is poor) and cocktail sauce. 
Another favorite one that I used to make back when someone I know used 
to make the yummiest jalepeno jelly was to put jalepeno jelly on cream 
cheese (remember that Jeanne?)

I have recently become fond of pastry hors d'oeuvres that can be bought 
frozen and just heated up. My favorite ones have a white cheese and 
onion filling. 

Someone define an appetizer - is it something you eat while you are waiting
for the cooked part of the meal to be cooked?  We eat apples or bread.

Appetizers are usually served in restaurants - and i guess that is the idea
- to have something to eat while they prepare your meal. Of course you can
have them at home when you throw a dinner party to serve your guests while
the actual dinner warms up.

Basically smaller portions of food - that are usually finger foods but not
always.

I don't understand how a restaurant lists a quesadilla as an appetizer. Do
they really expect you to eat a full meal after that?

yes lynners, I remember.  I haven't made that in a long time.  That is a
yummy appetizer for sure.

Appetizers (hors d'oevres) are one course of a meal.  Sometimes they are
served separately with alcoholic beverages.  (other courses include the soup
course, the fish course, the main or entree course, the salad course, the
dessert course.  

In modern american usage, appetizers can mean just about any food served in
smaller-than-entree sized portions.  They are usually not sweets.  They are
usually served around in late afternoon or evening, at approximately "dinner"
or "supper" time.  Some restaurants combine soup, salad, and appetizers into
a single pre-entree offering.  

Appetizers are often constructed from small pieces of bread or crackers, with
other foods layered on top of them.  Sometimes they are constructed on small
skewers or tooth picks.  And sometimes they are pureed and served as dips.

Appetizers are sometimes hard to distinguish from snacks, so the timing of
their presentation can be a good indicator.  

That is a rather vague category - something eaten in a small quantity before
you eat a larger quantity of something else.  Is salad an appetizer and if
so why not?  

Of course it's vague.  As is the term:  entree, or even salad.

In the formal sense, salad is not an appetizer.  It is a separate course
served after the entree, and before the savory or sweet course.

In american semi-formal usage, the fish course has been eliminated, and the
salad course moved after the soup and before the entree.  It is still not
considered an appetizer.  

In american restaurant usage, salads are often listed as a choice under
Appetizers, along with soup as well as more traditional appetizers.

According to www.dictionary.com

appetizer     /.p..ta.z.r/ 
Pronunciation[ap-i-tahy-zer]
.noun
1.      a small portion of a food or drink served before or at the beginning
of a meal to stimulate the desire to eat.
2.      any small portion that stimulates a desire for more or that indicates
more is to follow: The first game was an appetizer to a great football season.
[Origin: 1860.65; appetiz(ing) + -er1]
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.0.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary,  Random House, Inc. 2006.

Hmmm...in restaurants, i view appetizers mostly as profit-boosters, and
don't bother.  At home (feeding just me), i do lots of appetizers, both
to get more variety and as quick snacks while i'm making the entre.  But
they're really simple things - homemade baked beans, sauced pink salmon, 
scrambled eggs, almonds, fruits or veggies, desserts, cheese, and such. 

Last night Dave and I went to Streets of New York for dinner.  We had 
an appetizer and got a pizza.  We ate the appetizer and ate one piece 
of pizza each and then took the rest home.  Lunches abound...

I've done that before--being filled up when I get an appetizer and then have
some good leftovers for future meals. :-)   At a steak restaurant a friend
of mine from NC and I would eat at, we rarely got an appetizer but often get
a somewhat bigger steak to have the leftovers for the next day. It was easy
enough to fill up on the salad and bread and just a bit of the meat [and the
larger pieces of steak didn't cost too much more].  Wish I could afford a
steak dinner now! Oh well, some day...

A little earlier today while watching a video [Little Women], I had some
crackers and a bit of a cheese ball that came with a holiday gift pack. :)

I found a recipe on Allrecipes.com this holiday season that I am posting
here cause it was REALLY good.  Just a twist on Shrimp cocktail.

  Amount  Measure       Ingredient -- Preparation Method
--------  ------------  --------------------------------
  2             pounds  Fresh or Frozen large shrimp
  2             cloves  garlic
     1/2      teaspoon  lime zest
     1/4           cup  lime juice
  2        tablespoons  olive oil
  2        tablespoons  green onion -- finely chopped
     1/4           cup  Anaheim pepper (or Jalapenos) -- Finely chopped
  1         Tablespoon  cilantro -- snipped
     1/2      Teaspoon  sugar
     1/4      teaspoon  pepper
     1/2      teaspoon  salt

Thaw Shrimp if frozen, Peel and devein (if necessary), cook if necessary. 

In a food processor combine garlic, lime peel, green onions, pepper and
cilantro

Add mixture to a bowl and add lime juice, olive oil, sugar, salt, pepper
and mix.

Put mixture in a plastic bag with shrimp.  Turn bag to coat shrimp with
marinade mixture.  Marinate for at least 3 hours. (Over night is fine.)

To serve, drain the shrimp, discarding the marinade.  Can be served with
cocktail sauce.

Yum!  That makes me think of a ceviche.

Several times in the recent past [mainly at the weekly HHs], I've gotten
an appetizer to  have as my main meal.  To me, though, at least at the
Cubs AC where the HHs have  been, the appetizers have been big enough to
take home leftovers for another meal.  The  only time that I didn't
bring leftovers home was when I ordered something off of their  weekly
specials menu...

As talked about earlier in this item, appetizers used to be a smaller
portion of something  served prior to the other courses [or the main
course and side dishes when served at the  same time].  And in the past,
I recall appetizers being less expensive than everything else  *because*
they were served in smaller quantities.  But not any more... It seems
that at  many [most?] places, these cost just as much [or close to] as
the main dish stuff.  So,  ordering an appetizer for one's dinner in
order to save a few bucks isn't working any  more...

Sad, isn't it? It goes along with the super-sizing of America, I think. 
As meal portions get larger, so do the portions on the peripheral 
items, like appetizers and desserts. God forbid you should want a small 
portion of something - perish the thought!

Yep, and with the increasing size of portions being served, the prices
go up as well.   And many people can't eat the whole item/serving in one
sitting [without feeling like  you've over-indulged].  And at the end of
a meal, if you want dessert--who can eat it all  when the serving is as
big as the meal is [and often, big enough for several people to  share].
 Thus, who wants to pay that much for something you can't finish or take
home  with you [in the case of stuff like ice cream based desserts or
with sauces [think  caramel, hot fudge, etc] or whipped cream, because,
if saved til later, the underlying  item will be soggy and/or melted by
the time you get it home].  So servings SHOULD be  smaller and if ya
want more, you can order more.

And the cost of alcoholic beverages are outrageous, especially mixed
drinks. Often, the  prices of one drink is as much as the main dish or
meal.  [And when dining, I tend to  like to wash down my food with more
than one glass of fluid; hence, I rarely get  alcoholic beverages while
dining out. With the exception of an occasional beer.]  With 
non-alcoholic drinks that have free refills, those prices have really
gone up as well.

Hmm, I guess everything has gone up in price...

An easy solution is to cook for yourself.  Nobody is being forced to eat at
restaurants.

Sindi, please note that when I say this, I very much respect and enjoy 
reading you.

You don't get it.

resp:24 If I know I'm going to a place where I will want to eat dessert
(and have budgeted accordingly ;) ) I make sure to divide my entree in
half and ONLY eat half of it. We occasionally go to Olive Garden, and I
know I'll eat a lot of breadsticks and their salad- but I also know that
I will have half of my entree boxed up to take home with me. Therefore
for the price of that meal I'm actually getting two meals. :) 

I honestly wish I could do that, and make it work. I'm really good at 
boxing stuff up, but not so really good at remembering to make another 
meal of it. They generally end up being science projects/biohazards. 
Lots of pretty colors.

That's a trick I sometimes use even if I'm not getting dessert.

I tend to sit and pick at what's on my plate, even if I know I'm full. 
Much easier to box it up at the beginning of the meal.  

I've gotten alot better at taking home a part of my meal to save for
later...

Sindi, *of course* eating at home is an option and I'm sure that most
people do eat at  home much of the time.  Though whether or not
*cooking* may or may not be an  *easy* or even a desirable of an option
as it seems to be for you.  Like for me, I do  eat most of my meals at
home.  Sometimes I'll cook--and when I do cook, I often will  make
enough for leftovers.  Other times, for various and valid reasons, I
can't or don't  cook. Instead, I'll make a peanut butter sandwich, or
nuke a frozen item, or have a  pre-made whatever out the 'fridge or
pantry.

But like so many people, I do enjoy dining out from time to time.  We
may want to do  so for various reasons--including not having to cook and
clean up afterwards, to try  new and different things, very often [most
of the time!] I can get better tasting [and  sometimes better for me]
meals. First off, going out to eat is/can be fun and enjoyable. 
Sometimes its easier and sometimes quicker to have someone else do the
actual  preparations for the meal.  And meeting other people for dinner,
drinks, or dessert  [whatever] is a fine way to socialize and catch up
with one another.  I'm sure there are  lots of other valid reasons for
enjoy eating away from home, too.

That said, that doesn't mean we have to like the trend of restaurants
increasing the  portion size and/or the price of what they serve.  There
ARE options in dealing with  this-like, as already being
discussed--taking stuff home for another meal. Splitting an  entree [or
dessert, appetizer or whatever] with someone is another option.  Not
dining  out quite as often is another possibility.  Or choosing less
expensive places to dine. 

But not going out to eat/drink/whatever all of the time isn't a viable
option for many  people.  

Eating at home all[most] of the time is fine with you, Sindi, and that's
perfectly ok. You  seem to prefer it; but that doesn't mean that
everyone else's interests/needs have to  reflect yours.  And that's ok
for us, too.  So please try not to be so 'preachy' [is that a  word??]
when people discuss things they enjoy doing. After all, this IS a
conference  relating to food and dining/restaurants and such definitely
fit the bill. [And if the costs of  dining out outweighs the benefits
and/or means of being able to do other stuff, then we  do cut back
somewhere--either in dining out less often, go someplace cheaper, or cut
 back in some other areas of one's budget.]

:-)

resp:28 Well yeah, that sometimes happen. But what's made it less likely
is to plan- at the time- what meal the leftovers will be for. See, my
hubby and I have lunch together most days- but not dinner. So if we go
out to eat over the weekend I have my leftover for dinner during the week.

Re: #27
Fill up on salad and breadsticks at Olive Garden, then have your whole
entree boxed - three meals for the price of one!  :) 


I eat out some, but i generally don't drink out, even on somebody else's
tab.  Paying $4 for the kitchen's work, turning 40 cents of ingredients
into a pile of pancakes, sounds reasonable to me.  Paying $4 for a quick
flick of the bottle opener, on a $1 beer, does not. 

I'd guess that appetizers are growing for the same reasons that other
portions are - with huge fixed costs, giving 100% more food for 50% more 
money is much more profitable for the restaurant. 

I ate out with over a dozen people Friday, at a newer local restaurant.
Nobody had appetizers, nobody ordered dessert, and still many took half
their food home in a box.  Not sure how that helps the restaurant...but
we decided to eat there, not some place else, so if both places have
empty tables and fixed costs...

I finished off my meal Friday, but i couldn't keep that up if i ate out
very much.  Not sure what i'd do if i had to eat out more often.  Learn 
to call a $4 soup and $2 side veggie a dinner?  Eat an entree every 2 or 
3 meals, and near nothing the rest?  Outside of family, splitting an 
entree seems seldom viable. 

Sindi,
Response 25 was unusually rude.  

People on Grex have been polite to you no matter how frequently or
stridently you've presented your viewpoint .  Please offer them the same
courtesy.  

I do not consider response 25 at all rude.  I consider 33 rude, along with
several other responses you have made to me, such as attacking me for listing
'your' height, weight and age, which were actually my own, for which you never
apologized.  I try to ignore your rudeness, which is probably not intentional
but just how you react to things and not intended to annoy.

I presume the reason restaurants are serving larger portions is that most of
their customers want them, probably because the customers are larger than they
were.  Instead of complaining online, people could ask the restaurants to
serve smaller portions.

"I presume the reason restaurants are serving larger portions is that
most of their customers want them, probably because the customers are
larger than they were.  Instead of complaining online, people could ask
the restaurants to serve smaller portions."

Yeah, right.  That is so untrue, Sindi, that restaurants serve larger
portions because  people are larger then they used to be.  [And if you
hardly ever eat out, how would you  know this??  It's your
presumtion/bias, not the restaurant's].  As already discussed in  other
items here in this conference, there are many reasons why a person may
be 'large'  than eating too much.  [or not exercing enough, etc]. 
You're continually trying to place  your biases onto what you think
society is and should be.  

I've noticed that Cubs AC has very large "appetizers" as well.  I think
part of what we are seeing is that it is not primarily a restaurant.

When people order appetizers there, the food is not meant as a prelude
to the rest of the meal.  It is a snack to be consumed with drinks.  

And, it is a snack that is often shared.  So their sizing and pricing
are more for "snack-shared-by-beer-drinkers"  rather than "small amount
of food meant to whet the appetite of an individual".  

I frequently order an appetizer plus (side, soup, salad, another
appetizer) instead of a full meal.  Or, if there's creme brulee, an
appetizer and dessert.  I *always* check the dessert menu before I
order.  

Why would a restaurant serve larger portions unless they thought the
customers wanted them?  Denise, I am not accusing anyone of anything, but it
is a well known statistic that the average weight of Americans has gone way
up in the last 50 years, and people who weigh more generally eat more.
Soda (pop, tonic) has also gone from 8 oz standard size bottle to 2 or 3 times
that.  In both cases, the cost of ingredients is a small fraction of what the
product is sold for, so even people who don't want all of what they buy are
unlikely to complain, and the restaurants probably think they are making the
most people happy by serving larger amounts.  Their overhead (rent, utilities,
labor) is the main cost of a restaurant meal.  For an extra dollar or so
people have twice as much cooked food.  And I presume most people don't mind
getting more than they really wanted, and are happy to either take it home
or throw it out.  But those of you who don't want to do either of those could
ask the restaurants to offer the option of smaller portions for a bit less
money.  Or put something on the kids' menu other than hamburgers, spaghetti,
fried chicken and macaroni and cheese (which I think is what the local Greek
restaurant offers kids - Zingerman's also offers peanut butter and jelly).
Doesn't Zingerman's offer two sizes of sandwich already, to adults?

A quick web search reveals that one NYC restaurant 'needs to run a 22% food
cost in order to make a 14% return', which I think means they spend about 1/5
of their budget on the actual food.  Some other place used to spend 40% on
food but bought some software that helped them cut it to 32%. (This is a
cheaper place.)  So the fancy place could double portion size while adding only
about 20% to the cost of a meal, and possibly bring in a lot more customers
by doing this.
If McDonalds spends 1/3 on food, let's say $3 for a meal costs them $1, they
could sell double the portion for $4 and make about the same profit, but more
people might want to buy the larger portions so they would make more total
profit.

It's not that simplistic.  One of the main jobs of the kitchen manager
in a restaurant is to keep track of the food left on the plates by
customers. There is software to do this, because it is a big issue in
profitability.  Restaurants don't "think they're making people happy by
serving larger amounts".  Any restaurant that doesn't run on data is
going to go broke very quickly.  

Most restaurants fight every day to keep food costs under 30%.  It's not
easy, and you don't  do it by doubling the amount of food you buy.  

When I was running the restaurant, a large part of my time was spent
trying to cut expenses.  Wages and equipment are fixed costs for the
most part, except for the $2.15/hour waitresses, which we could send
home at any time during their shift to cut expenses.  One waitress gone
for a whole day saved us less than $20, so that didn't help anywhere
near as much as cutting the food bills.  

Doubling portion sizes doesn't bring in that many customers, either. 
Again, this is based on shared industry data, not untested assumptions.
 Your web search gave you very superficial data, and your lack of
knowledge about restaurants led you to some pretty wild conclusions.

So why do you think portions sizes are getting larger?

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