Planning Your First Dinner Party?

When you think of a dinner party, you probably imagine a white-clad Marta Stewart type with a pressed lace-trimmed apron. Everything perfectly cooked and perfectly coiffed and all of the guests have perfect posture and sit ramrod straight in their chairs.

Not very inviting, is it?

If you're hosting your first dinner party, you don't need to be intimidated by that insane Martha Stewart-style dinner party. Nobody has any fun at those things, anyway. And since a stiff-and-boring dinner party isn't what you want, you don't have to worry about making everything perfect. You just need to relax, sit back, and have fun. After all, having friends over for dinner and wine or having family over for your first Thanksgiving isn't about impressing everybody with how well the tablecloth has been pressed. At least, it shouldn't be. It's about having a good time with people you care about. (Sorry to sound cheesy. I'll quit now.)

Of course, just because you want to have fun doesn't mean you don't want the food to taste great and the house to look nice. And there's nothing wrong with that-- not to sound like your seventh grade sex ed teacher, but... wanting to impress people is totally natural.

Choose your dinner party recipes wisely

Want to host a great first dinner party but still have a good time? Start off by aiming low. Yep, when it comes to dinner parties, you want to ignore the very good advice that your mother gave you about how not to choose a boyfriend - it's okay to aim low with your menu. A delicious, well-cooked, but simple meal will impress a lot more people that a blackened and burnt disaster with a fancy French name.

Another way to make preparing for your first dinner party easy to to prepare lots of make-ahead dishes. When it comes to doing prep the day before, try to think outside the box a little. Sure the dinner party recipe you chose doesn't state anywhere that you can make it ahead of time. But look at it more deeply. Does it contain a sauce that can be easily reheated? If there are lots of veggies in a particular dish, can you chop them the day before and pop them in the fridge?

So choose your dishes wisely. Instead of making a dish with lots of delicately fried fillets of chicken, choose a rustic chicken stew that's all made in one pot. Some examples of easy to make ahead and reheat (or just easy to pop in the oven) dinner party and buffet recipes are:

• Stews
• Soups
• Pasta sauces
• Roasts & whole chickens
• Casseroles (side dish casseroles count, too)
• Salads
• Indian foods (except the rice!)
• Gravies & other sauces
• More stuff that I can't think of right now

The more dishes (or elements of dishes) that you can make ahead of time (and have sitting on the stove ready to re-warm when your guests arrive), to more time you get to spend with your guests. And that's the whole point of hosting a dinner party, isn't it?