question for the dinner clubs

[Wendy w]

My dinner club will be meeting at my house this Friday night and we will be having a Middle Eastern menu. In our group, the hostess chooses the menu and I was inspired by the Lebanese recipes in the October issue.

This will be our second meeting and we had a great time last month with a menu from the September issue.

From looking at other threads, I notice that there are some interesting themes and am curious as to what you have made, how you have chosen the themes and menu, what is working for you, what isn't and any pointers that you have.

Thanks!

Wendy

[BeckyM]

Our Cincinnati Supper Club is just starting up, so we're having our first dinner at someone's house next week. Consequently, I don't have any tips to share, but I'll be coming back to this thread to take advantage of any tips/ideas/advice that is shared.

Our group sounds like yours, in that the hostess is responsible for choosing the entree & theme. It will be interesting to see what themes others think have worked best, so I can be sure to pick a good one when it's my turn!

[JillC]

Our "dinner" club has met 3 times so far and we are planning our fourth. Our first meeting was a brunch. I hosted and picked several recipes of the same type (e.g. salad, bread, dessert) so people could pick a category and then have a choice of a few recipes in that category. We did it pot-luck style with everyone making their recipe at home and bringing it.
Between our first and second meeting, our group grew in size from 6 members to about 12. We decided that we still wanted to meet as a big group but would keep it casual and pot-luck style.
Our second meeting was an evening of appetizers. Our host picked a bunch of appetizer recipes (and a few desserts) and we each chose one. Our third meeting was this past weekend and had an italian theme. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to attend so I can't say how it turned out. For our Nov. get-together, we'll be making Thanksgiving side dishes and desserts (see thread--Favorite CL Thanksgiving-type recipes? http://www.cookinglight.com/bbs/Forum1/HTML/001885.html ).
Our get-togethers have been very fun. We have a great group of people and its really nice to be able to try a bunch of recipes and decide which ones you think are keepers.
Good luck to everyone else starting groups!
Jill

[Grace]

Hi

We are a group of five and are on our 5th meeting! We have been having so much fun. We don't usually do a "theme". Usually, we all bring our latest magazines with us, and the host gets to choose the main dish. Everyone else is assigned a type of dish (appetizer, side dish, dessert), and we each choose what we want from the last magazine. Oftentimes the dishes don't "go" together, but somehow it hasn't mattered, we've all enjoyed everything anyway. I especially like the fact that it seems in our group we all have different tastes, and what appeals to one person, doesn't always appeal to everyone else, but we try it anyway. I can't tell you how many recipes I've LOVED that I would never have made from just looking at the recipe. I have really been forced out of my own track, so to speak, and now look forward most of all to the weird or more unusual dishes I'll get to try. We did do a theme for our last meeting - we did a "dessert" dinner! All desserts. We were wired (sugar and coffee!), but we had a ball. Everyone made something completely different. There was the peach streusel pie, the cardamom ice cream bombe (outstanding!!! and again, one of those that I would never have made), and I made french silk souffles (from a 1991 issue of CL). We've always done potluck since we meet during the week, and we all work, and we didn't want to end up eating at 8 p.m, but for our next meeting we are actually going to cook together! I can't wait! Also looking forward to hearing about others' supper clubs too...

Grace

[BethR]

My dinner club has met twice, and I really enjoyed both dinners. We have the host pick the entree and theme, and we each cook at home and bring our dish. Our themes so far have been summer-type fare and a fall bounty theme. The host does all the organizing via email -- members volunteer for a type of dish (appetizer, dessert, side dish) and choose their own recipe. A member or two (or three!) bring wine too, so we can try a couple of wines at each gathering. One big bonus we realized at our last dinner was that we each get to taste dishes that we might not make otherwise. For example, the entree and dessert at the last one were both great but both time-consuming to make, so it was a real treat for all of us to eat them.

One of our members came up with a great idea last dinner. We're going to keep a scrapbook of our dinners, so we can keep track of what people thought of various dishes and recipes, what wines were served, how well they paired with various dishes, etc. We're also going to start taking some pictures at each dinner and including them.

Beth

[Leanne]

For our group, it depends on the time of year - grilled chicken salad in the summer, soups & chili in the winter. Maybe holiday related - halloween appetizers, an all green meal at St. Patricks day, turkey, etc. at Thanksgiving, cocktails & appetizers only at Christmas, etc.
Sometimes mexican themes - actually a favorite, Italian themes. Whatever people come up with is usually really good & fun.

[jd]

We have just had our second dinner and are having much fun! We do like Grace's group - email things we'd like to try, narrow it down and each choose a dish. They don't always match but I haven't really noticed. We do try to cook as much as we can together at the host's house, so the dinners have taken 3-4 hours. Anything with a lot of prep or lead time is made in advance. Right now we are cooking from the current issue and meet later in the month, so we get to see all the comments! The other thing that we mentioned at the start is no practicing ahead of time - we'll all see what it tastes like at the same time.
We also talked about keeping a journal of the comments after each dinner, but laughed at keeping a paper journal for a group that met and communicates over the net!

[Don]

You might want to try focusing on an ingredient. I have a friend who hosts an annual "Chocolate and Garlic" pot-luck dinner. All of the recipes brought to the dinner must contain either chocolate or garlic or both (e.g., Cincinnati chili). It's amazing how inventive people can be when given an assignment to cook something with a particular ingredient.

[Cindy Rafferty]

Hello from Southeastern Mass. Our group has met four times from the beginning of August. Our first meeting was dinner at a local restaurant, which was great so that we could get to know each other and plan our next meeting without cooking that night.

In late August, we had a casual late summer dinner meeting which featured food from the summer issues: Ceasar Salad, Tomato Basil Soup, a chicken dish, and the great Lemon Cheesecake on the May '00 cover.

For September, we selected an Indian theme, inspired by the article in the Sept. '00 issue. This was our most challeging theme, and involved reseach on the net to come up with enough recipes. The tomato chutney was excellent, and was paired by an indian bread recipe. We also had safforn rice, chicken currey, and a weight watchers desert, since there weren't many "light" Indian deserts that we could find.

For October, we built the menu around the idea of making a pizza together. The artichoke and spinach dip was a great starter. I brought the sauage soup with spinach and wild rice, it was a big hit. The pizza, traditional with homemade red sauce and cheese, came out fine, although we didn't all make it together.

For December, the hostess is planning an open menu of appetizers, soup, and desserts. In our group, we get to e-mail the hostess on what we plan on bringing. If something is missing, it's up to her to let us know. This system has worked well for us. There are currently eight members in our group, and this seems to be a good number. We are planning one dinner early next year which will include spouses.

Good luck with your group, we're certainly having fun learning from each other and having some great food (and talk) along the way!