Easy Greek buffet lunch
When your kid asks for Greek food instead of the usual party rubbish, you can actually give everyone a healthy lunch!
My 10 year old as been studying Ancient Greece at school and so wanted Greek food for his family birthday party (the laser quest party with his friends was all pizza). Birthdays are a busy hectic time, with most of my emphasis being on the cake, so I needed some quick easy wins. And I found them:
Pittas and flatbreads (a mix as the flatbreads were more expensive so I could bulk up the table with pittas)
Feta
Olives (or ollies as my 2 year old calls them - they’re obviously always cut up for him) - some decent ones and some jarred
Couscous - more on that below
Lamb kebabs - these went down a STORM with everyone aged 2 - 87. They’re just from ASDA but they were a hit.
Roasted veg - courgettes, peppers, aubergine and onion (I didn’t check how authentically Greek this combination was, it was based on what I knew roasted nicely).
Hummus
Tomato and cucumber - mainly because kids love that
Tzatziki - we followed this easy peasy recipe which just needed Greek yogurt, cucumber, garlic, mint, dill, lemon, salt and pepper.
I had intended to make this roast vegetable couscous, but time ran away with me so we just had the roast vegetables in a bowl (not that it takes much time to stir them into couscous, but I forgot to ask my husband to dice them when he chopped them for roasting) and used sachets of asda tomato couscous and spicy vegetable (which wasn’t spicy - in a good way) couscous. I love that couscous takes 5 minutes to make in a bowl with a kettle of water rather than needing to be boiled on the hob like rice. And as far as I’m aware, you don’t have the concerns afterwards about cooling it quickly / reheating it properly like you do with rice. The only downside of couscous is that 5 kids aged 2 - 10 can make a hell of a lot of mess with it.
Anyway - the food went down an absolute storm, it made a great change from the usual pizza or hot dogs we serve at this kind of event, and I felt like I’d kept it relatively healthy (the lamb was pretty fatty but other than that it wasn’t too bad).