We had a lovely dinner party this past weekend with just a few friends and a ton of delicious food. Dinner parties are always a fun opportunity to try out something new and hope that it turns out well, but always have plenty of drinks on hand in the case that it doesn't! The dinner was planned around turkey breasts which we ended up roasting thanks to a Rachel Ray recipe. Sides included a cucumber seseame salad, couscous salad, and an amazing cranberry salsa.
Before dinner we snacked on some "fancy crackers" which we decided in the end were worth their expense. These whole wheat flats were not only nice to look at they were light and crispy, perfect for our local Cowgirl Creamery cheese.
The turkey breasts were very easy to prepare and are perfect if you have an herb garden, they also looked very pretty with the onions and herbs tucked under the skin. You can check out the recipe at the Food Network website, we opted to not make the pan gravy since we had the cranberry salsa.
The couscous with apples, cranberries, and herbs is my new favorite recipe!! This dish turned out amazing, I am so glad that there was a ton of leftovers because I have been snacking on it for days. The couscous is chewy, the apples add tartness, and the almonds give it a perfect crunch. The detailed recipe can be found here.
And just when I thought this dinner party couldnt get any more tasty, then came the cranberry salsa!!! This stuff is so good you could eat it on it's own or on a fancy cracker like I did. We made a couple tweaks to the original Health magazine recipe, the main one being using only 2 tablespoons of sugar instead of the whopping 3/4 cup that they used! Since fresh cranberries were not available we used thawed frozen berries and omitted the onion due to food sensitivities.
The entire dinner was a success, all tied together with great wine and coconut macaroons. And of course our very special guest of the evening, Cole!
Isn't he just the sweetest!
Before dinner we snacked on some "fancy crackers" which we decided in the end were worth their expense. These whole wheat flats were not only nice to look at they were light and crispy, perfect for our local Cowgirl Creamery cheese.
The turkey breasts were very easy to prepare and are perfect if you have an herb garden, they also looked very pretty with the onions and herbs tucked under the skin. You can check out the recipe at the Food Network website, we opted to not make the pan gravy since we had the cranberry salsa.
The couscous with apples, cranberries, and herbs is my new favorite recipe!! This dish turned out amazing, I am so glad that there was a ton of leftovers because I have been snacking on it for days. The couscous is chewy, the apples add tartness, and the almonds give it a perfect crunch. The detailed recipe can be found here.
And just when I thought this dinner party couldnt get any more tasty, then came the cranberry salsa!!! This stuff is so good you could eat it on it's own or on a fancy cracker like I did. We made a couple tweaks to the original Health magazine recipe, the main one being using only 2 tablespoons of sugar instead of the whopping 3/4 cup that they used! Since fresh cranberries were not available we used thawed frozen berries and omitted the onion due to food sensitivities.
The entire dinner was a success, all tied together with great wine and coconut macaroons. And of course our very special guest of the evening, Cole!
Isn't he just the sweetest!
This was an interesting menu, because aside from ground turkey (which can be used in so many ways at any time!), you usually think about roast turkey being more of a fall/winter food. Yet I love the flavor and it's a great departure from the ever-prevalent chicken. So the goal here was to create a Spring turkey menu. Obviously the cranberries were not in season, but unlike cranberry sauce, the cranberry salsa brought a vibrancy and freshness to the turkey. I was also really pleased with how we used our back porch herb stash - rosemary, thyme and sage were all available and added great flavor and freshness. Many of these recipes are ones that I had cut out and stashed over the years in a very sad and overwhelmed folder, until the Joya and Wren team put them all in labeled binders for me! So it was fun to flip through and rediscover them. Very yummy dinner and I have to say that it was a really easy one - we miraculously had almost everything done before our guests arrived!
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