My fiancee and I have been working on the menu with my dad, who is a chef and will be preparing the food with some of his chef buddies. Living on the Eastern Shore (Maryland/Delaware) we want to incorporate a crab feast and pig roast with Smith Island cake at our reception. And since my fiancee is a brewer for Dogfish Head, we’ll be having Dogfish Head beers, local beer from Evolution brewery and our own homebrewed beer and homemade mead.
Here’s our buffet-style Eastern Shore picnic with all food and drink sourced locally:
Eastern Shore Steamed Blue Crabs
<img src="http://offbeatwed.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Steamed-Maryland-Crabs-600×398.jpg" alt="Photo courtesy of Primal Palate” width=”600″ height=”398″ class=”size-large wp-image-86573″ /> Photo courtesy of Primal Palate
Bought directly from the watermen in Chincoteague Island, Virginia.
Eastern Shore Oysters
Whole Roast Pig
Fried Chicken
Potato Salad
Caprese salad
Italian Wedding Soup
Blueberry Cheesecake
Two kinds of Smith Island Cake
Homebrewed Beer and Mead
Want to share YOUR menu with us? Head over here to find out how to submit!
34 responses to “Steal this menu: Buffet-style, locally sourced, Eastern Shore wedding picnic”
screw the food, can we talk about THAT PINK DRESS?!?!
[BUT REALLY, the food does look freaking amazing]
Seriously, though. Polka dotted pink dresses are my new wed-obsession. I don’t even think I LIKE pink normally…
Ditto. There was a wedding a while back with the cherry blossom trees and another beautiful dress, so obsessed.
mmmm…if i hadn’t had a few dozen crabs yesterday i’d totally be drooling.
aw what the hell, who am i fooling? GIMME. NOM NOM NOM.
So yummy looking!!! Drooling now…
That looks like one awesome wedding feast!!! Love the homebrewed beer and mead!
Thanks! I have a super awesome talented fiance. Chances are the DFH we’ll be serving would have been brewed by him as well! 😀
This is exactly what I want to do for my Eastern Shore wedding! I was trying to figure out how to serve crabs with out the brown butcher paper and rolls of paper towels! I’m borrowing your ideas! Thanks for sharing!!! Roni
Roni,
This is my menu and we are actually going to have colorful linens topped by brown butcher paper that I’m going to whip stitch down the middle and then cut into circles and paper punch the outside edge. The brown paper will actually be my ‘overlay’ instead of say organza or tulle!
Food like this makes me happy I’m a Washingtonian. Wonderful spread!
Do I know you? I know that sounds really creepy but we live on the Eastern Shore too and are planning a really similar menu for our commitment party… in fact that’s the only thing we have planned so far. But it’s hard to believe we haven’t met, it’s not like the shore is all that big. Especially for local food people. I’m up in Chestertown and often referred to as “that local food girl”… anyway just wondering… great looking spread regardless!
I grew up in Ocean Pines and I’m living in Seaford now – I get most of my food, plants, animals in Wicomico, Worcester, and Sussex counties!
Oh that makes sense! Don’t get down that way too often. So great that you are having a local food wedding too though! We are also homebrewers but don’t think we’ll ever make enough quantity for the whole party…
I have a problem making the FH scale down! lol We’re working on opening a meadery though, so he makes larger batches to practice for making EVEN larger batches of mead. He’s got the beer down pat. 😀
Well let me know when you get your meadery up and running! I do press for a lot of local farms (that’s my job!).
Omg another Slower Lower Delaware girl. Heeey! 🙂
I’m in Georgetown, looking to have our wedding at the Marvel Carriage Museum. Good luck to you!
We’re neighbors then! I’m having mine at the Nature Center at Trap Pond!
Even creepier, is that I go to college in Chestertown.
Washington College? I graduated from there in ’06 🙂
I’m from Northern Delaware, but my FI and I met while working at a camp in Centreville! We are going to have a welcome barbecue/crab feast, and it is seriously one of the things I am most looking forward to 🙂
Few things in the world are as delicious as eastern shore blue crabs!
DAMN RIGHT
😀
This is my dream menu!! (I live in DC so we love ourselves some maryland blue crabs)
I couldn’t imagine doing anything else growing up on the shore. I’ve collected friends from all over the world in my travels and I want them to taste the local, delicious foods I grew up with!
OK…a couple things:
Recipe for that fried chicken breading, OMAGAWD it looks killer.
Im drooling over the potato salad and I hate mayo. That says something!
Im totally looking up a smith island cake. A store here makes something similar but with tinier layers. (Mexico Beach, Fl)
Smith Island cake is delish! Super moist and even though the cake itself is super thick, the actual slices are fairly thin and delicate. It’s wonderful!
LOL! I started drooling the first paragraph between the food and our love of DFH. I sent this to my fiance and said “Just read the first paragraph if you’re busy.” His response? “Jesus Christ! I want to marry them!!”
Haha! Thanks! All of our guests have the heads-up now and are super excited!
First day of a diet and you show us this scrummy menu – looks great1
This menu sounds great! I’m from the Eastern Shore (Salisbury) and am planning something similar for my rehearsal dinner, but I hadn’t thought of Smith Island Cake! I’ll have to get my mom to bring one down to VA for me.
I’m from Salisbury, too, and I’m pretty sure we know each other. Did you go to Parkside? 😀
Nope, sorry. Salisbury Christian School
So cool to see so many offbeat brides in my area with fantastic ideas!! PS I live in Ocean City!
Smith Island cake is THE BEST cake! So jealous of your DFH hookup! My little Eastern Shore heart is drooling with contentment… this is awesome!