Countdown to Book Launch: The Food

2 Days and counting!

The invitations are long gone. Activities are planned and books packed and ready for transport. It's time to talk turkey! No, we're not serving THAT bird. In fact, we're not serving meat at all.

Several weeks ago, when planning began for my book launch, I had the idea that I'd make alligator cut-out cookies and frost them. I began a search online for an alligator cookie cutter. One of my critique partners had one she was happy to loan me. I was about to jump in and start baking when I realized that my over-stuffed freezer couldn't handle one more thing, so I waited.

Then, someone gave me the idea to get plastic buckets with shovels and make that MUDD or DIRT recipe where you layer vanilla wafers, chocolate pudding and cool whip into a pail, dump in some gummy worms and you're ready to impress the most devious of young boys. That sounded like a great idea to go along with the beach scenes from the book, the picnics and all things along the shore.

But, I had to consider the facilities where the book launch would take place. The children's library section of our local county library just didn't seem like the place to mix pudding, sticky fingers and books. So, back to square one.

I was still thinking about the cookies but had pretty much eliminated the idea of the MUDD, when a friend mentioned food allergies and kids who get sick at parties. My entire being came on alert. Sad to say, we need to think about the "what if's," even when planning something as innocent as a book launch.

In the end, I decided that cake, purchased from the local store, would be the safest on multiple fronts. If the store supplied the cake, I could not be held accountable for a child becoming ill on the food.

I ordered a 1/2 sheet cake and an 1/8th of a sheet cake. The 1/2 sheet cake will have Arlie on it with the Book Launch information --  Arlie the Alligator Book Launch, October 5, 2013. Thank you for coming. 

The 1/8 th of a sheet cake will have the book cover on it and will be decorated to look like a book with pages.

So let them eat cake!

Now, what about a beverage? Drink boxes? Fruit punch? Punch bowl? All good ideas but again, I had visions of sticky fingers on multiple library books. At the grocery store, I came across 8-ounce bottles of water, small enough for little fingers, not sweet or sticky, and I wouldn't have to answer questions about 100% juice vs concentrate with sugar added. Drink solved!

That's when my husband suggested making labels to paste over the water bottle label. 

Whaaa Laaa! I had a healthy drink; spring water, clean and fresh and good for all, all wrapped up in a personalized Arlie the Alligator label. The label gave me one more chance to add my website address and thank everyone for coming to my book launch. The water will not be refrigerated. Cold bottles create condensation that will ruin our special labels.  

The food is done. Plain and simple. Baked by an outside source freeing me of any claims of bad food. 

One more day! One more blog, well, pre-launch blog. The next blog, Book Launch Count Down: Checking the Details will wrap up all the fine details and cover the "what if's?" especially, what if I run out of books? I've got that covered but you'll have to read tomorrow's blog to see how I'm going to handle it. 

Don't forget to share YOUR book launch food ideas. As I've said before, I hope this isn't my only one.

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