Picture this. You’re having a gorgeous time in and around the hot tub on a steaming hot summer’s day. The food’s tasty. The drinks are chilled. This is heaven. But look again and things get ugly. The surround of the tub is decorated with slippery BBQ hand prints. There’s mayonnaise sliding down the sides, sodden Jaffa cakes in the water and jelly on the ground, along with clumps of stray paper plates and cups, plastic glasses, napkins and straws.

OMG. You need tips. Here’s how to eat and drink safely, in style, while hot tubbing.

Choose snacks bearing water in mind

Crisps go horribly soggy. Biscuits disintegrate. Cake collapses. When eating foods that wilt when in or around water, with wet hands and wearing soggy bathers, things are bound to get messy. Add kids to the party and you only amplify the effect.   

Think of snacks that won’t cause mayhem and chaos if someone drops a bit in the tub, leaves it on the side, or abandons it in the middle of your lawn.

Fruit and nuts mightn’t be the most thrilling of snacks a but at least they won’t turn the hot tub water into soup or encrust the entire garden dining table with a thin layer of wet biscuit dust.

Cocktail sausages on sticks are good because they’re easy to grasp. If one does fall off the stick before it reaches a small person’s mouth, you can just pick it up or fish it out of the water without crumb or slime-related trauma.   

Bins and napkins

A few small rubbish bins can make a big difference. Those cute 30cm high flip-top bins for indoors work really well. Stuff won’t blow out of them in the breeze, the rubbish doesn’t smell the place out,  and the garden looks good from start to finish.   

You’ll want to go into paper napkin overdrive, too. Decide how many you’ll need, then double it.

Keeping hot tub party food simple

BBQ food tends to be simple fare. The way BBQs cook gives you that unique flavour and the excitement of eating alfresco. This is good news because it means you can keep things simple, and simple food is often nowhere near as difficult to handle in a hot tub setting than cordon bleu.

Beautifully roasted barbecue meat, fish, fowl or veg.  A crisp green salad. Chewy sourdough rolls that don’t fall apart into crumbs at the slightest touch. Chunky kebabs on sturdy skewers. 

Soggy sauces and salad dressings

Rich sauces for BBQ meat and fish, tasty salads and saucy pasta dishes, they’re inherently messy. While meat juices taste fantastic dripping off your barbecued chicken wing or rack of ribs, greasy drips and hot tubs don’t mix well.  You don’t really want to have to change the water any more often than the manufacturer recommends. 

You could try serving them in bowls instead of on plates, or use plates with a decent rim to keep things from spilling off the edge. Then people can wander off and eat wherever they like – in the shade, at the table, perched on the garden steps – without trailing dribbles of liquid behind them.  

Eat in one place

You can avoid a lot of this in two ways. One, don’t eat in the hot tub or around the rim. Two, make a comfortable eating area and keep to it. Then any spills, drops, and abandoned tableware will be safely contained in one place.