Hive Tip: Throw a Simple Backyard Dinner

Hosting a backyard party is the perfect way to embrace seasonal eating and community! Here are backyard party ideas, based on a simple dinner party on Leelenau Pennisula, Michigan.

Curate the menu from one cookbook, and all pitch in

Have you heard of a cookbook club? It’s a gathering where people all bring dishes from the same cookbook. This way, the menu all has the same vibe and goes together using the same author’s touch. What we love about this approach is two-fold; having dinner party guests bring a dish helps everyone to feel like they’re a part of the gathering, and it lessens the burden on the dinner party host. Plus, you avoid the randomness of a potluck, where you end up with small piles of vastly different dishes on your plate instead of a cohesive meal.

Shop the farmer’s market

It’s a common question: How do I actually do seasonal eating? How do I shop my local farmer’s market to create a meal? As with most of cooking, it’s all about practice, practice, practice. Learning what’s in season and how to fit seasonal produce into recipes comes with time. Knowing the rhythm of food that comes with the seasons is specific to your region. Our best recommendation is: don’t use Google search to see what’s in season. Actually GO to your local farmer’s market and start to observe when you see different foods appear.

Go simple on decor

The decor for this backyard party was elegantly simple. Hanging a few strands of outdoor lights transforms a space from modest to magical. For this setup, there was some manual labor involved in setting up poles to hang the lights from. If you’re not up for that sort of work, you could use a tree to suspend the lights, or have the table near a deck, fence, or structure to use for hanging.

For the tablescape, like it super simple: a chambray tablecloth, white dishes, simple patterned napkins, a few beeswax candles, and some fresh flowers. Flora Bodega in the Paseo District usually has some on hand, and there’s always Trader Joe’s!

Cultivate space for community and connection.

Once you’ve gotten everything prepared for your backyard party, now’s when the fun begins! It takes some practice, but we have learned how to let go of any challenges that happened during the preparation and focus on our guests. During mingling with appetizers, we like to make sure everyone has met each other and knows a few things about each other. Our favorite type of dinner party is inviting old friends and a few new people into the fold, so we try to make sure connections are made during mingling time.

When the meal begins, we like to welcome everyone to the table and describe a bit about the meal we’ll be having. This way, the floor is open for all the dinner guests to experience and enjoy the meal together. To foster deeper connections, at some meals we’ve also chosen some questions to discuss: a way to even further get to know each other! This is what we love about gatherings: experiencing seasonal foods together and chatting until the sky is dark and the moon is bright.


Source: acouplecooks.com

Planning Your Ideal Week - With Free Printable!

Have you heard of planning an “Ideal Week”? This exercise can be both eye-opening and fulfilling if we use it to plan our days with intention! If you feel that your weeks are often chaotic and lacking direction because of unknown schedules and plans, this is for you!

Just like we budget our income and plan out our grocery lists, we should all be budgeting our hours throughout the week. Now, this doesn’t need to be planned to-the-minute. Of course that’s not realistic! However, thinking through a few key categories each week can be incredibly effective in restoring order and meaning to your days.

We like to go through the following list at the beginning of each week. The suggestions are just that – suggestions. Choose one of them or use them to spark ideas that fit your current pace of life.

Community:

What friend do I want to meet up with for lunch or coffee? What family can we invite over for dinner? It’s helpful to choose a specific day of the week and block it off for time with a friend!

Work:

What are my top three MUST-DO’s for this week, either at the office or inside the home? What do I want the focus of this work week to be (a current project, my team, future planning, etc.)?

Exercise:

How can I move my body three or more times this week? (Neighborhood walks, a lunch hour yoga class, early morning strength training, whatever fits your lifestyle best!)

Self-Growth/Mental Health:

What evening can I take for myself to recharge and inspire? (This could be reading, journaling, cooking a fun meal, taking a bike ride, whatever will fill your cup!)

Margin Time:

And finally, we make sure we have several hours of margin time blocked out throughout the week. We all know that unexpected issues can arise and stress will inevitably follow if we don’t have any time to resolve the problem or pivot our plans. If we have preemptively planned for these moments, we can approach them confidently and calmly.

Click here for a simple template you can use to begin planning your ideal week.

Here’s to balanced and thoughtful days!