My blog today touches on the topic of brainstorming: I’ve been asked by so many people, “How ever do you come up with the ideas for your Dinner Club meals?” The truth is that at first, it did seem more difficult to come up with things. We were a fledgling group who had never done anything like this before and so it was, and still is, a group effort to brainstorm ideas for each of our six meals together a year.
The main reason it’s easier now is that we’ve been up and running for several years and have a running list of ideas we’ve mentioned or discussed previously, and for whatever reason, didn’t use at the time. It doesn’t mean that they are bad ideas, just things we may be saving for later or weren’t quite ready to tackle at the time they were first suggested. Organization for a group like this is key! Keeping a list of ideas is part of that for us. We try not to do more than one big “themed costume” type party a year.
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| Small touches to a theme can make a big difference! At our 1920's Speakeasy, there were framed pictures of famous gangster's along with information about their lives of crime! |
Now, nearly every meal we do has a theme, but they aren’t all “dress up” events. Nobody wants to come up with a costume every month! But, we do choose themes around all different types of focus. This last dinner, our “Cheese Inspired Menu” was focused on a particular ingredient theme carried throughout the meal. Other themes are more obvious, such as a particular cuisine or nationality, say Brazilian or Italian. These were the first type of theme dinners we clung to. It’s easy to center a meal on the cuisine of a particular country (not to mention delicious and fun!). We still do a few of these dinners each year, however we are trying to become more tightly focused as the years go on.
For example, Italian is great, but now that we’re all comfortable in our group and more comfortable in our cooking skills we’ve taken a closer look at particular regions of Italy and look forward to focusing a future meal on specifically Sicilian foods or what about the Piedmont, Tuscany or Calabria regions? Wouldn’t it be interesting to research and prepare foods of those areas? Mexico
This year, our Dinner Club is also branching out to other theme types you may like to consider, such as television show themes (we’re doing Mad Men in April) or other quirkier food fetishes like our “Aphrodisiac Foods Night in March. There are some really interesting concepts on our list and I would never give them all up at once, but I would love to get you started and your creative juices flowing!
If you’re starting a group of your own, or simply looking for new ideas, try branching into some of those I’ve mentioned above and begin your own list. We have over fifty ideas currently on our “unused yet” list! That’s years more fun just waiting to be had! I’ve provided a quick list below of all of the meals we have done in previous years. We may even revisit some of these in the future and change our focus or simply make different dishes. Who knows? Only time will tell! Google your heart out, talk about it, brainstorm and TAKE NOTES!
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| If you do choose a theme, don't be afraid to "over do" it! At our 80's Prom Night, we had a table for displaying our own high school yearbooks and a Prom King and Queen were crowned for the night by drawing names! We also had an "after prom party" following dinner where we played cards and drew prizes to take home! |
Here’s some of the themes we’ve taken on in previous years:
- Oktoberfest
- Cuban
- Fondue
St. Patrick’s Day- Tailgate Foods
- North African
- French
- Tapas
- Italian
- Greek
- 1920’s Speakeasy
New Orleans - Thai
Deep South Dinner- Last Meal on the Titanic
Napa - Russian
- Mexican
- Back to Your 1980’s Prom
- Pub Foods
- Japanese
- Big
Texas
