A Dinner Party Must - tracking

If you enjoy hosting dinner parties, chances are you do it on a fairly regular basis. You may have a range of friends that you invite repeatedly but there could be a long gap between reunions with of each of these guests. The usual drill is that you'll invite them, eventually they may invite you back and then it's your turn again.. It could be several months before your guests return to your house.

If you're like me, you may have had several dinner parties in between. If your memory is like mine, then this can pose a problem if you want to make sure you prepare a different menu for the night.

I want to share with you a great tip on how to make sure you don't serve the same meal to the same guests when you next invite them to dinner. It's sometimes hard to remember - especially if you haven't had the guests over for some time. My suggestion is that you keep track - keep records. Buy a dinner party notebook or create a spreadsheet and keep a track of the date, the friends you invite, what you served as hors de vours, what you served for each course and even the wine that you served with the meal.

This has helped me enormously. Over a period of time, I have served some of my favorite recipes that have proved to be a huge hit with my guests. Once I know they're a smash, I tends to repeat the recipe with another guest. In the past, I have had to try hard to remember whether I have already served the particular meal to my friends.

We have a number of people we invite for dinner so I really have had to think hard to remember what I served the last time my guests came. It may be six months or a year since I had the guests to dinner so I really do want to cook something unique for them.

That is, until I started keeping records. Not only do I now know the last time I invited a particular guest to dinner but I now also have a record of everything that was served on the night. So, of course I make it completely different. You can keep all sorts of records - like the foods a particular friend can't eat or doesn't like. This will really help you in the preparation when you invite the same guests back later.

Imagine a friend invited you to dinner and without you even having to remind them, they remembered that you can't eat seafood - they bring it up - not you. You think, "wow.. wasn't that lovely of you to remember that". These small touches make your guests feel important.. special - that you cared enough to remember. Little do they realize that you are actually so organized that you have kept track.

When I host a dinner party, the aim is to make my guests feel special.. pampered even and spoiled. A small tip like this can make all the difference. I love good food and good wine and I love to socialize. Dinner parties give me the opportunity to indulge both my passions. I love dinner parties so much that I host a blog which provides ideas for your next dinner party. They provide such a great way to catch up with the important people in your life. People love to be invited to dinner parties because they can enjoy an excellent event of great food and company and all it costs usually is a bottle of wine - and maybe a taxi fare home. But it's not about the money - it's just great to be spoiled by your hosts.

Stay tuned for more dinner party ideas soon.

In the meantime, you might want to check out this record keeping book with numbered pages. List you guests at the index and then you can keep write page numbers next to their name on the table of contents page as you invite them to dinner.



Randa
The Hostess with the Mostess