A Spring Dinner Party at Home

Long story short: I emailed Sara and entirely fan girled her blog and next thing you know we’re throwing a dinner party together.

Welllll, by “together” I mean that we collaborated on a genuinely solid Spring Dinner Party menu and then each hosted our own dinner party in our own respective homes (Sara actually lives quite a few states away from me). What we genuinely wanted was to create a flavor-packed and simple dinner party menu that we could share with our friends and with you. SO, that’s what I have for you today.

We focused on using fresh, spring ingredients which is why you see lots of leafy greens, asparagus, and berries. Here’s what we ended up with:

Cocktail: Elderflower, basil, and cucumber cocktail (recipe HERE)

Appetizer: Mushrooms stuffed with goat cheese and spinach (recipe below)

Main: Spring Sausage Tart topped with Asparagus (recipe HERE)

Salad: Shaved Asparagus, Watercess, Arugula, and Spring Pea Salad (recipe below)

Dessert: Pavlova with Chocolate Whipped Cream and Berries (recipe HERE)

We discussed ahead of time all the things that we could do in advance to make the dinner party itself easier. Sara did a great job on her blog outlining all the things that can be prepped ahead. And yet, despite all of that, I still had nothing ready when my guests arrived. Oh well. Live and learn.

For my dinner party, I invited a few of my fellow Nashville Food Bloggers over: Mary from Minutes Per Mile, Phillip from Southern Fatty, and Ashley from The Nashvillian. My good friend Caitlin was also there (behind the camera) to help document the occasion and to help eat some of the food.

One of my go-to things about dining with them is that I never have to feel ashamed of taking 1,000,000 pictures of my entire meal. Even better: taking pictures of your friends taking pictures. I got lots of those:)

As every good dinner party does, let’s start with the cocktail.

This is my new go-to drink and I might have had it multiple times since the party. Sara came up with this one and Worth keeping her for it! You can find the recipe HERE.

On the night of the party, I was frantically trying to finish the food so I put Mary in charge of mixing the drinks.

While Mary mixed the drinks, I got the mushrooms in the oven.

And then prepped the tarts:

AND the salad (which is officially my new regular salad!)

I do realize that this salad has no color to it (besides GREEN) but it’s about Spring veggies and texture.

You can see how good the salad is based on how excited Mary was to eat it;)

And how rapidly I stuffed it in my face

For dessert we had Pavlova with chocolate whipped cream and berries. I made the whipped cream AND the pavlovas the night before which was truly helpful!

Overall the dinner party went great and I’m particularly thankful that I decided to keep it small. I thought that planning a party for simply a few people would be unfussy but I still spent quite a bit of time planning and prepping.

For the cocktail and tart recipe, visit Sara’s blog HERE. Below are the recipes for the stuffed mushrooms and the salad. Pavlova recipe HERE.

And now, a ton more pictures from the dinner party:

(Photos by Caitlin Richard)