Now that the girls are getting older, I am much more comfortable sending them over to my parents and in-laws for a sleepover. What this means for us, in addition to a sleep in, is that we can finally start hosting dinner parties again.
Pre-motherhood, I used to love hosting dinner parties. I love the whole ritual of planning the menu and then getting flowers and other specials touches to accent the evening. What I love most about dinner parties is the adult conversation, good food and wine.
We recently hosted a dinner party for some friends, one of which I went to high-school with who I re-connected with after Ainsley was born. This particular couple had no allergies or food-dislikes so I was able to go outside of my regular cooking comfort zone and planned an Israeli themed dinner.
Bonnie Stern has put together a fabulous book called Friday Night Dinners where she maps out the perfect menu for a many number of dinners such as Israeli, Greek, Passover, etc. This book is great because it saves you the guess work if you want to try a different type of cuisine. Her menus includes everything starting with drinks, appetizers, salad, main course and ends with dessert.
For our Israeli themed dinner, we started the night with Pomtinis (Pomegranate martinis), then had lamb/beef kebobs on cinnamon sticks. We had left-overs of these and the girls loved eating their "mini-burgers" on sticks.
Our main meal consisted of a Chicken Tagine, couscous, salad and the most AMAZING grilled eggplant with Tahine. I was blown away by the recipes (especially the eggplant recipe, which I have since made three more times). The food was outstanding and the whole meal was pretty easy to cook.
I cannot wait to plan our next dinner party! In the meantime, my family will be happy as I try out more new recipes from this cookbook. Yum!
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