One of my many goals is to be a gracious, delightful dinner party hostess. I’ve hosted small parties before, but its usually very stressful to do so. I have friends with idiotic (yes, idiotic) allergies, food preferences, and so on. So its a pain in the ass to cook something that everyone will like. But I want to host more parties partly to save money, and partly to become a gracious, delightful host. So I am hosting a slightly larger one than I am used to. But I have dilemmas. For one, I am getting sick and tired of eating locally. I am just not that excited about eating root vegetables and I badly want cilantro and lemonade and orange juice. Not necessarily in the same meal, but that is my current craving.

I know appearances matter alot especially at dinner parties, so I bought some cloth napkins from etsy which are very, very pretty. I also have silverware and a tablecloth. But I still am not sure how to serve the meals. We don’t own many serving dishes or things like that since our way of eating meals is the stone age method, or straight from the cooking pan over the stove. I also am not sure what to serve. It will probably be primarily vegetarian, but I am open to ideas. I personally dislike pig products and most types of sea food. I am also not too crazy about chicken as of late. Local steak is expensive and would cancel out my idea of eating at home to save on our restaurant bill. Next time I will host a potluck, but not this time.

I’ve been reading Sunday Undies and got the idea to serve cheese straws. I was also thinking of an artichoke/spinach dip. We made some beer recently so that will be available, and I might make some other alcoholic drink…but not sure what. For the main course, I am not sure what to serve. Pasta? Steak? Some sort of rice dish? I am sick of pizzas, so that is out. What else can be served as a main dish. I don’t want something that is very cheesy (like lasagna), but if you have ideas, feel free to comment!