After the Tim Burton inspired Halloween of 2016, 2017’s inspiration came from the Disney movie Coco, The Book of Life and the Mexican celebration of Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead.
Dia de los Muertos is a celebration of the departed loved ones, remembering the dead, visiting their graves, bringing them their favourite foods and decorating their graves and special altars. It’s a very colourful event and one of its symbols are the colourful sugar skulls, another one are yellow Marigolds.
Work had been extremely busy with lots of additional hours so there wasn’t as much time to create decorations for the event as I would have liked, so I concentrated on some stand out elements like the sugar skull decorations, most of them coloured in by hand.
The food was really popular, with most of it being vegan and only one dish containing meat. Both vegan quesos, or cheese dips, as well as the salsas were really easy to make. We also had vegan, non alcoholic Margarita cupcakes, salads, vegan empanadas filled with sweet potato, squash, raisins and spices, and empanadas filled with meat, as well as Mexican vegan rice pudding with raisins and cinnamon. Everything was gone in a flash and the feedback was very positive, especially considering that most had never tried vegan cheese before. There were quite a few more recipes that I’d have loved to try and introduce to my colleagues as they are so versatile and the different dishes represent part of a wonderful heritage that deserves to be treasured.
Jess Creates Events 