One of my favorite things to do is gather a group of friends together from all aspects of my life - childhood, work, adulthood, etc. and throw a dinner party to mix and mingle the friend groups!
Most recently I hosted a summer series, where the menu was crafted to celebrate in-season produce and get everyone excited for the start of summer. The menu was not paleo-exclusive, as most of the invitees don’t follow a paleo based diet. The intention here is to try to deliver healthful recipes without restriction!
To get ready for a dinner party, I recommend that you send around invitations at least 2 weeks in advance. I just crafted mine up on Canva and then texted it to my invite list separately. This gives everyone a chance to structure their schedules around the dinner party and ensure a better turnout! I think having a digital invitation makes it more of a spectacle - I always get compliments on them so it’s an added ego boost!
After you’ve gotten a sense of who can attend, it’s time to compose your menu - keeping headcount and dietary needs in mind! Once again, I pop over to Canva and make a little menu to send around a few days ahead of the party to get everyone excited.
Make sure you have evertthing you need and go shopping for whatever you don’t. I make sure I have enough side plates, dinner plates, silverware, napkins and other place settings, a cake plate (trifle bowls, cupcake liners…), candles, drink ware, etc.
Having an extensive menu for a large group can seem a bit menacing at first but if you break it down, it’s very manageable. Look through your recipes for the various courses and dish by dish, compile the ingredient lists. Then take another sweep through and write down everything you need to buy and mark off everything you have on hand. This makes grocery shopping a breeze and ensures you don’t forget anything!
Bonus tip: If you’re extra OCD like me, you can sort them out by item type in the aisle order they’ll appear in your grocery store.
Lastly, prep work is your friend!!! Starting the day before your event, prep anything you can to facilitate your dinner party. This could be as simple as marinating your chicken overnight, baking a cake in the morning, slicing some veggies; do anything you can to cut down on prep time during the event.
Now onto my menu!!
For starters, I made a strawberry bruscetta with whipped honey ricotta and passed that around to my guests while I built out the warm farro salad with roasted radishes and mint salsa verde. For a paleo twist, I made a smaller portion with rice instead of farro.
Farro Salad Recipe: https://oursaltykitchen.com/farro-salad-roasted-radishes/
Strawberry Bruschetta Recipe: https://oursaltykitchen.com/strawberry-bruschetta/
For the main course, I decided to serve greek marinated chicken and vegetables… fancified! This was super intentional because the recipe was really just a sheet pan dinner. I knew this would make my life easy and allowed me to enjoy the flowing wine and good company while the meal cooked.
Mediterranean Chicken Recipe: https://downshiftology.com/recipes/greek-sheet-pan-chicken/
After eating and cleaning up dinner, I just served my dessert that I had made the morning of the event. For this particular dinner party, I made a chocolate fudge cake with chocolate ganache and some gluten free lemon poppyseed cookies to accomodate some of my guests needs (and my own).
Paleo & Nut-free Lemon Poppyseed Cookie Recipe: https://therealfooddietitians.com/paleo-lemon-poppy-seed-cookies/
To end the evening, I put on my bartender hat and mixed up some espresso martinis with a nice citrusy twist!
Quick aside: I had similar ones at a restaurant in Hoboken on a date and loooooved it - that date did in fact catch the dinner party invite but was out of town and showed up the night before with the orange vodka in hand as a surprise for his dinner party contribution! We love!!
So what do you think? Would you host a dinner party?
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