My friend, Jennifer, and I had so much fun planning our Pinterest Party that we decided we should plan something similar, except this time with a theme. Given the season, it wasn’t too hard to decide upon throwing a Fall Dinner Party! Feeling bad that guys were excluded from the Pinterest Party, we invited our significant others as well as our friend, Kyle, to join in on the food this time.
For starters, I made butternut squash pizzettes as an appetizer by using my Butternut Squash Pizza recipe and using Cuban bread as the crust. Everyone was a huge fan of them, although I definitely prefer a regular pizza crust over the Cuban bread. I think if I were to serve this again as an appetizer, I might use regular pizza dough and shape it into small, individual pizzas.
I also made an Autumn Chopped Salad from Espresso and Cream found via Pinterest. This salad combines the sweetness of pears and cranberries with a nice tanginess from the combination of a vinaigrette and poppy seed dressing. The only changes I made were to omit the bacon and sub goat cheese for blue cheese.
For the main course, Jennifer made Apple and Sage Porkchops (found via Pinterest). I’m not a huge pork-eater, but boy, were these good!
For sides, Jennifer made a Apple and Cranberry Stuffing (found via Pinterest)…
while I made a Pumpkin Mac’n’Cheese from Healthy Food for Living (yup, you guessed it… found via Pinterest). I changed things slightly by turning this into a baked mac’n’cheese and also added breadcrumbs to the top.
Here’s my plate with a little bit of everything on it:
Our dinner reminded me of a Thanksgiving Day Dinner with a twist. My absolute favorite item was definitely the apple and cranberry stuffing. I’m a sucker for anything sweet though, so I might be biased.
For dessert, Jennifer made Apple Cupcakes with a Caramel Buttercream Frosting. We all agreed that the cupcake had more of a muffin consistency rather than that of a muffin. However, Mister E declared these his all-time favorite, so you know that they were still delicious!
And there you have, our Fall Dinner Party! I really liked how all the flavors came from things that are in season and how they complimented each other so well. I find that planning dinners can sometimes be stressful since I usually find a recipe for just the entree or just the side dish, and I struggle finding complimenting items. Perhaps I should think more seasonally when trying to pair my food from now on.
Oh, and P.S. I already made my own personal version of the Autumn Chopped Salad for lunch over the weekend – this time subbing salad greens for the romaine lettuce.
It was delicious!
