I love the spinach dip! It's way more impressive than the work it takes, too.

Unlike potstickers, which is the other thing I just thought of. If you make them yourself, I mean....

I had a great grilled veg platter at a tapas place recently, and that's easy. It came with some stuff I will try to look up now.

Wontons are pretty easy and fun to make.

I saw a health blog suggesting prunes wrapped in bacon (actually, prosciutto) and baked, and that sounds like fun. (Not... necessarily healthy. They were trying to get people to eat prunes. And calling them "dried plums," like we don't know what prunes are.)

Yes! Which is why "prune juice" has always bugged me. Why would you juice something that's DRIED? Isn't it really plum juice?

Romescu! It was delicious. It also caused the waitress to ask us, very seriously, if we were allergic to nuts -- which was a good call, since I wouldn't have known there were nuts in the romescu, either before ordering it or before eating it.

Starfruit slices, apricot halves, and cherries were a big hit at the last party I threw.

I also swear by cucumber slices on sundried tomato bread. And homemade mini-pizzas (pita bread topped with Classico tomato & basil or roasted garlic pasta sauce, parmesan cheese, and crumbled feta cheese).

The goal is lots of finger food-ish stuff, largely vegetarian but with both some vegan and some meat.

The last convention I attended had marinated skewers of dried tomato, mozzarella cheese balls, artichoke hearts, and olives. So very yum.

eta: there was fresh basil in there too!

skewers of dried tomato, mozzarella cheese balls, artichoke hearts, and olives. So very yum.

Hmmm. I was planning all these components in different ways, but on skewers... handy and fun!

(continuing to mark all the party foods!)

Oh yeah, my mother does something similar -- cheese tortellini, artichoke hearts, cheese, maybe pepperoncini, I forget what else. Antipasto skewers. Delish!

The last party I went to (apart from the F2F), they had bacon. Just bacon, on a plate, on the table with the chips and whatnot.

They said they'd seen it at a party, and damned if it didn't get eaten real quick, so they thought they'd try it, and it all got eaten quickly.

Antipasto skewers.

Exactly! Because I always, always, always want antipasto (not just for parties, really. name your meal.), but it ends up being either a fork and plate thing, or an everyone-gets-their-fingers-in-everything thing even if you try to do things on toothpicks. The skewers are brilliant.

bacon

Mmmm. bacon.