I can be kind of reclusive.  I can easily be reclusive for very long periods of time.  Like…..years.  Usually, when we spend time with friends….which is a lot….we do it at home because I usually cook.  And I like to entertain so it totally works out.  I even work from home now, which is glorious.  So when I stick my head out into society to see what everyone else is doing, sometimes I can be accosted with all kinds of new concepts and fads that either make me cringe or make me amazed upon discovery.

That brings us to this new thing I’m learning about called the grazing table.  How is this different from any other sort of buffet selection type offering of food?  Well, hold onto your hats all you people with food issues.  Apparently, it’s like an over the top cheese plate, without plates, and all the food is just mashed together willy nilly.  Silent scream.

It reminds me of any medieval type movie or show that has banquet hall scenes.  The table where the royalty of whatever is sitting at is just covered with obscene amounts of food…in heaping piles.  This is where we are now.  The first time I saw it in real life, I didn’t know what I was looking at.  It was a yearly wine event here where each winery has a food pairing with their wine.  Great!  Awesome!  Then in the middle of the event is this table that looked, to me, like it had been mauled by children having a food fight.  I couldn’t go near it.  It just looked like a sloppy mess.

Two years later, I go to a wine event at a local winery here, and again there’s heaps of food on a table….just ON the table, no serving platters or anything….and it’s all crammed together willy nilly.  What is happening?!  Crackers are just laying on the cheese in disarray.  Olives are touching the blackberries.  Ew.  There’s no tongs so people are just using their fingers.  Gag.  I can’t.  Is this what catering has come to?  I asked Elizabeth.  She matter of factly explained to me that this is how cheese, fruit, and crudities are done now.  I was horrified.

Ok, let me explain.  I’m not a person that is grossed out by my food touching.  On my own plate.  But in a buffet style offering, I’m not going to dig blackberries out from underneath olives….with my fingers.  And I’m not going to eat food that twenty other people touched.  AND…I stood there and watched all the draping sleeves and shirt bottoms that got dragged across the food while people reached in to grab things….without tongs!….with their hands that they just wiped all over their faces or had just used to dig around in various designer purses.

I realize I’m late to the food styling party.  Most of you have probably seen this before.  I get it.  But let me have my moment, ok?  Am I the only one objecting to this nonsense?  How can soggy crackers and contaminated berries be appetizing?  I consulted The Googles and naively typed in “cheese board” and clicked images.  It was only after going down that rabbit hole, that I discovered there was actually a name for what I was looking for…”grazing” “table”.

Because eating is no longer good enough.  We now need heaping piles of food that we can destroy while picking at to feel luxurious.  And then it goes right to the trash.  This makes it even more unappetizing to me.  The gross amount of uneaten food, in the name of aesthetics, that will go in the trash.  We’re not talking about the kale leaves of the 80s, the inocuous lemon wedge of the 70s, or the parsley sprigs of the 60s.  I’m talking about small hills of grapes.  Literally food piles as garnish.  Who started this nonsense?  What culinary school is teaching this madness?

I had to see what Martha had to say about all of this.  I needed my culinary mommy STAT.  The first link showed that even she had succumed to a “grazing” board.  I clicked with intrepidation.  To my relief, the pic was as it should be.  The olives were sequestered, but present, and the fruit was intended for eating.  No crackers were getting soggy and all the nuts were shelled.  There were no globs of dip plopped or smeared…they were in bowls of their own.  I knew I could rely on her good common sense.

I continued my research.  Williams Sonoma suggested I source festive props.  I’m not sure I want “festive props” on my cheese plates.  That’s just more stuff to clean.  Some other website had a how-to on grazing tables that referrenced medieval times and described the new trend as a “lavish food buffet”.  Clearly they’ve never been to Vegas.  Their festive prop was a chalkboard that read “let us graze”.  Well….I’m not a cow…so….and I wouldn’t describe presliced cheese and packaged crackers as lavish per se.

Apparently, the grazing table, as it were, is being touted as the alternative to serving an actual meal on plates.  So it’s not even an appetizer, it’s now the entire meal.  Do you have any idea how pissed off I would be if I was invited to dinner and was expected to eat some messy pile of fruit, cheese, and nuts as the meal?  I’d be like….well I’m off to grab a pizza and goodnight.

Surely, there’s another way.  I mean, I get the aesthetic….if it’s done well.  The problem is, it’s mostly not.  I see food laying directly on surfaces it probably shouldn’t be, flavor contamination issues, huge waste problems, and silly props ranging from old crates to fake plants.  And lots of signs with the word “graze” on it.  Because people need to be told how to eat this way like we’re all five years old.  Or maybe we do.  I know I was very confused by the slop menagerie I now know as a grazing table.

If you’re entertaining at home, save your dollars on all the food you’ll throw away when the novelty of being a ruminant animal wears off after ten minutes and people stop actually grazing on the mess you spent two hours arranging to look messy yet medieval.  Do focused food instead.  Grazing platters, perhaps.  I had a few opportunities over the holidays to try my hand at it.  Hubs and I entertained for four days straight.  I had at least a couple of cheese plates, a cold seafood platter, a lox and bagel brunch platter, and cookies for days.  This is what I came up with:

A dessert grazing platter complete with cookies, fruit, and candy

Some cold seafood of shrimp and lobster, some cocktail sauce, and meyer lemons

A little seared ahi flavored with radish, onion, and ponzu for the shellfish allergic

And some lox with all the trimmings…my first try at making my own lox!  It looks a little from the 50s, but I don’t care.  It was amazing.  I’ll post a how-to on it soon.

Veggies!  Hubs made a smoked salmon spread and a clam dip…so retro!  The platter included kohlrabi from the garden, zucchini, cucumbers, sweet bell peppers, teeny tiny pac choi, tomatoes, thai basil, and some chili crackers.