Hey all! It’s just over one week until our very first Dinner Club for the year and I’m very excited to get “down to business”! The purpose of this blog is to share on what our group is up to, so here it goes….
This year’s (2010-11) dinner club season should prove to be both fun and delicious! We’ve got some really great ideas planned for our get-togethers; including meals that are thoughtful to ingredient themes, as well as dinner parties that obviously will include amazing food, but are planned more around our costumes! More on the specifics of those later!
We’re beginning this year with a dinner theme that is obviously not a new one, but let me assure you our group will most certainly do it justice in terms of flavor and flair! Our “Hawaiian Luau” starts off this season. Our group usually finds that fall is the most difficult part of our Dinner Club planning year, both in terms of scheduling and our time-crunch in being able to prepare. Everyone in our group has involved kids, football dedications, and so on.
I would encourage you, if you’re reading this blog for ideas on how to start a group of your own, to begin your own gatherings with a simple theme that will be easy enough for you to pull together. You want to have the décor matter, but you don’t want to start with something that will be overwhelming to pull together in terms of time and cost. As part of our group’s planning for this particular meal, we made sure to mention that everyone should feel free to “dress” for the event, but to keep it casual, simple and comfortable.
In other words, if you’ve got a grass skirt and coconut bra already in your closet, as I’m sure a few of our folks do, then by all means!.... However, if you want to pair your comfy jeans with a Hawaiian shirt or simply a lei around your neck, so be it.
I’ll follow up with more on our Luau, including pictures afterward, but for now here’s a recipe that I’m making for the night. (I’ve been assigned the “salad course”.) We found this one on www.tasteofhome.com. I’ve never made it before, but it sounds terrific! I’ll let you know how it turns out, as well as what I would change about it after making it once. There’s always something I’d do differently!
Papaya-Avocado Tossed Salad
From Taste of Home.com
Ingredients
- 4 cups torn red leaf lettuce
- 4 cups torn green leaf lettuce
- 1 medium papaya, peeled, seeded and sliced
- 1 large ripe avocado, peeled and sliced
- 1/2 cup sliced red onion
Dressing
- 1/4 cup olive oil
- 3 tablespoons lemon juice
- 1 tablespoon grated lemon peel
- 2 teaspoons white wine vinegar
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- 1/8 teaspoon salt
Directions
- In a large salad bowl, gently toss the lettuce, papaya, avocado and
- onion. In a jar with a tight-fitting lid, combine the dressing
- ingredients; shake well. Drizzle over salad; toss to coat. Yield: 8
- servings.
Nutrition Facts: 1 cup equals 145 calories, 12 g fat (2 g saturated fat), 0 cholesterol, 47 mg sodium, 10 g carbohydrate, 3 g fiber, 2 g protein.
