Need Food/Beverage Ideas!
 

I'm planning formal recruitment for my chapter and I'm having some problems coming up with food/drink ideas for Chapter Night (used to be themes) and Prefs Night. The whole decor theme is The Fabulous Life of... for Chapter night and I wanted something fun, relatively easy and well, fabulous! :) I'm thinking about Shirley Temples for the drinks on this night.
As for Prefs I'm thinking petit fors and chocolate covered strawberries.

Does anyone have any suggestions or new ideas?
Thanks!

I would go with upscale type hors d oeuvres, you can actually get a lot of great pre-made stuff from places like Sam's or Costco in bulk for pretty cheap. Maybe you could display them on silver trays or have sisters that aren't talking to PNM's walk around with silver trays and offer them with cocktail napkins. I think that would very elegant and go well with your theme.

As for drinks, put anything in a champagne or martini glass and it will automatically dress it up!

Well, we can't use champaign or martini glasses during rush because it references alcohol. Are there other glasses that could dress things up?

I'd try to avoid plastic glasses - not being able to use any alcohol-related glasses limits you. Maybe iced beverage glasses (with a short stem?)

I start to post something earlier, but I was worried that I'd seem like an alcoholic.

It seems to me that at all elegant functions for adults, the glasses used are designed for one form of alcohol or another, for the most part.

You'd have ice water or ice tea glasses in most crystal patterns, but almost any table that would typically be set with them would also be set with wine goblets.

I'll be the curmudgeon here: banning a certain type of glass no matter what's in them because they "reference" alcohol is silly.

ETA: as a result of my apparently booze-o-centric knowledge of glasses, I couldn't think of anything for the OP for a while. Maybe you could use the punch cups that come with punch bowls, particularly silver punch bowls because they seem the most elegant to me. It seems to me that we may have used glass punch cups during some rounds of our rush, so apparently it can be done on a large scale, now that I think about it.

Depending on what your budget is, you can get petit fours, maybe even decorated with your symbol/mascot.

In the Pleistocene era when I went through rush (yes, in 1973, we were Rushees...) one of the houses had, in addition to other goodies, a large beautifully carved watermelon basket filled with icy cold fruit kabobs on little decorative skewers. The basket was garnished with edible flowers and there were more flowers strewn around it on the table.

Double whammy, as it served as both a gorgeous centerpiece and yummy refreshments. On a 100+ degree afternoon in Oklahoma, it was lovely...

True story. I wonder what whoever came up with that rule would think of the campuses that serve Mocktails during rush??

Oh, this sounds good. And with them being kabobs, serving is easy.

Upscale hor deourves (sp?) can be easily found at costco or bjs. However, you may want to look into your campus food/catering service.

The year I was recruitment chair, we had a sister who worked for campus catering and they supplied us with a fantastic list of different foods and they were realitvely cheap (even less expensive than the bulk stores.) For preference, we ended up having proscuttio wrapped melon, mini-veggie spring rolls, and cup cakes (both chocolate and vanilla) with vanilla icing and a sugar rose on them. The cupcakes were beyond delish!!!! (Just be sure to serve them on a plate WITH a fork!!!-- we didn't do that at one party and it was an issue!)

For drinks, we served lemon aid and iced tea -- not super upscale, but a big thing of country-time goes a longgggg way!

Oh wow, that sounds really good! Where would you get an ornately carved watermelon though? Because I gaurantee we couldn't do it ourselves!

I also like the lemonade/tea idea....for some reason I was thinking drinks needed to be much more difficult than necessary. Would those go in punch cups or should I try water goblets?

For our drinks, we just used clear caraffes from, yet again, campus catering. We just tied double blue and gold ribbons around the neck of them and made them look decorative.

the dollar store is your friend...

one next to my house had these adorable hand painted glasses with flowers on them...they were tall like orange juice glasses, so a Shirley Temple would look very nice in them...Walmart also has a line of glasses like that for a dollar a piece i believe...they would make great souveneirs!

I know that you can order them at my local Jewel Store (Albertsons). They usually require 48-72 hour notice, but they are very nice. I actually had them carve one in the shape of a baby carriage for a shower I hosted.

I would assume any large grocery store chain could do this for you if you wanted.

Carved Watermelon basket
 

One thing that chapters on our campus do with drinks to make them a little more 'special' is to put a scoop of flavored sherbert in each cup along with sprite or whatever. It is fun to drink and very refreshing! Plus you can get a huuuuge tub of sherbert at wal-mart for cheap!

You can also purchase or get an alum to donate a beverage fountain -- that will look pretty (so long as it isn't one of the cheesy ones). I think the Shirley Temple idea is a good one-- pretty color and tastes simple enough.

You know, I'm not a fan of dumping sherbert into punch. The first time I ever saw this was at sorority prefs at my university and I couldn't stand to drink the stuff.

Whatever you serve, just make sure it is simple and it will appeal to a variety of tastes. Make sure you also have an alternative for diabetics.

Do you have Trader Joes in your area? They have some sparkling juice drinks that would be really pretty and a little upscale. My kids like like the sparkling cranberry, blueberry and even the pomegranite. We don't drink a lot of sodas, so I serve these at the holidays and parties.

if you like the Starbucks passion fruit iced tea drink, it's pretty easy to replicate the same flavors with regular iced tea and adding the welch's passion fruit or cherry juice blend drinks.

Also, a source for a carved melon may be a local culinary school. If you have a local community college with a culinary department you may be able to find out from the chef/instructor a talented person to carve you one or to have it done as a class assignment.

The most basic punch I do is a simple 1:1 blend of Pineapple juice and Ginger Ale spiked with a touch of Almond Extract. It light, not to sweet, drinkable if its hot outsided, is not thick and gooey and staining. A simple ring of pineapple juice and fruit frozen makes a pretty garnish if served in a punch bowl.