Moon Pies for a Mom-to-Be

At the shower, trying to match babies' names with their celebrity moms. (Photos By Sora Devore For The Washington Post)

My best friend was having a baby. A baby. Once we stopped gushing with excitement over the news, I realized I had a project of my own: throwing her a shower.

The problem? I had never hosted a baby shower. To compound things, my friend is a professional cook. Her husband is a chef. All their friends (and therefore about half of my guest list) are also professional cooks at some of Washington's best restaurants. Clearly, a bag of pretzels, a cake from Giant and that fruity punch that only ever seems to get served at baby showers weren't going to cut it.

I knew that I couldn't possibly impress these people by going fancy. So I went simple -- picking a picnic theme -- and very Southern. As the guest of honor was a native Louisianan, like myself, I'd serve RC Cola and moon pies.

I worked backward on the menu from there. The main dish was easy: Nothing says picnic like fried chicken. Potato salad and vegetarian baked beans, two sides that I could make in advance, rounded out the menu.

Being able to plan and make things ahead of time was important. The moon pies themselves were constructed in stages -- the cookies, the homemade marshmallow, the chocolate coating. None of the steps was difficult, but they definitely got messy.

There was nothing I could buy at Williams-Sonoma that would display my fried chicken better than my 50-year-old cast-iron skillet. The rest of the decorations kept to the picnic theme: a blue checkered tablecloth (courtesy of the fabric-by-the-yard section at Ikea), cheery yellow paper plates and napkins from Target and some crisp-looking carnations and eucalyptus from Giant.

Besides food, we needed something to entertain ourselves between the "oohs" and "aahs" over wittle bitty blue booties and appreciative nods at Diaper Genies. On the Internet I found an abundance of suggestions for games. Some were gross (identify a candy bar melted into a diaper, anyone?), some seemed extremely wasteful (a baby-diapering race) and some involved way too much physical contact. (Who ever thought a pregnant woman would want to play Twister?)

The two I settled on were straightforward: matching celebrity moms with their babies and identifying unmarked jars of baby food by taste and smell. My friend Julie Hill, an expert celebrity gossip, created handheld placards with babies' names on the front and clues about their parentage on the back.

The baby-food game seemed apt for my guests: Would the professional foodies be able to tell their Gerberized squash from their carrots? Sadly, no.

To pull all of this together, I started early in the week and wrote out a schedule for myself. I worked up a shopping list and stuck to it, pulling together everything I needed by visiting four stores: Giant, Target, Ikea and Wal-Mart.

By the day of the party, I had things well under control, much to the disbelief of my friends. They kept calling, asking if I needed help. A few die-hard skeptics -- including mom-to-be Katie Juban -- still showed up early, "just in case."

But their worries -- and mine -- were for nothing. It all came off without a hitch. My food was a hit (there wasn't a moon pie left in the house), the games were entertaining and I could return to something way more fun: gushing about that new baby.

Little Lucas, now 3 months old, is going to have to wait a little while before I make him a moon pie of his own, though.