Four Bariatric Post-Ops & LOTS of Sriracha

I debated whether or not to share my post-op sriracha party. Why?

While I’m not afraid of the food police, just like the rest of you I kind of get sick of being food policed. I mean, sure, it comes with the territory of being a food blogger but at a point even I can get testy.

But, in the end this was just too fun to share.

Ok so…you know how we always say, “I wish every social event didn’t revolve around food?”

Yeah. I still think that. But while every occasion shouldn’t revolve around food, I think it’s 100% ok for some occasions to be food-based. This is one such case.

I am blessed with a group of fantabulously successful post-op friends. (When I say friends I mean in the sense of people I see in real life…you all are great friends online!) Every once in a while we get together and we make food and we eat it. Some of you might remember our last major gathering which involved a lot of Laughing Cow Light cheese!

Anyhoo…I love post-op food gatherings because who knows better how wonky eating can be as a post-op but a post-op? For example, we know:

Not to make enough food to feed a small country
Protein, protein, protein
That there needs to small plates and other things to do besides eat

This party had all that and more. This time we decided to base it around the theme of sriracha…because we all love sriracha! I even carry a mini-size bottle of the stuff on my keychain!

So without further adieu I would like to share some pictures from our post-op sriracha cooking party. I don’t have recipes for stuff (yet) but I will be sure to collect them and put them up as I get them!

At the top of the post is my contribution: Sriracha hummus. As you can probably guess it’s store bought (hey…the struggle was real that day!). It’s made by Tribe. We served it with fresh veggies. Yummy!

My friend Denise made honey-sriracha chicken wings. Oh. My. YUM. Party wings are something I only do…well, at parties. Because the sauces can sometimes trip you up. This was sooooo good, though. It was sweet but not too sweet. Spicy, but not offensively spicy. And then there’s just the savory goodness that is chicken wings. This got two (sriracha covered) thumbs up!

My friend Margaret made a beautiful meatloaf packed with all sorts of veggies that was topped with sriracha-ketchup. Have I ever told you how much I heart meatloaf. If not…I really, really heart meatloaf!

My friend Julia brought homemade peach sriracha sauce, which we all sampled. But she was also nice enough to send us each home with our own jar! OMG. This stuff would KILL on some shrimp. Be looking for that soon, Foodies.

Then a total play with your food moment happened. We were musing about the sauce and shrimp, which put us in the mind of shrimp and grits, to which Margaret responded by whipping us up some bacon and cheese grits topped with sriracha. Oh. My. WORD! It was good! At this point I feel like Margaret’s hubby was also very happy that we came over because he’d been sampling stuff right along with us. She has the best hubby in the wide world, so it makes me smile that he gets bonus goodies too!

And last, but certainly not least, we have sriracha popcorn. Surprisingly we didn’t dive head first into this. Thus proving, once again, that when you eat your protein first, there isn’t much room for other stuff!

Of course we also did stuff other than eat. For instance…

I spent some serious chill time in Margaret’s hammock. I wish I had taken a picture of her yard. It’s gorgeous! Rolling green landscape and a beautiful garden with a koi pond! But as it were I was too busy chilling. Check out Margaret’s uber-adorbs doggie, Widget, photo bombing! (NOTE: I also wish we’d gotten a group pic so you can see my friends…but that didn’t happen either!)

We also played Yahtzee. Well…they played Yahtzee and I got my butt kicked but still. We played. And I had fun!

So there you have it. Why I love post-op eating events. In my world it’s ok to gather around food so long as food is not the main reason you gather. It was not for us. We gathered for girl-time, laughter, fun, and lots and lots of hugs. The food just made it all the more yummy!