A Winter Citrus Dinner Party
And an ode to one year of our Habitual Hostess newsletter, and some exciting news!
Our inagural newsletter was in February 2023, a Valentine’s Day Dinner at home. So, officially one year later we continue to drop a newsletter into your inbox on the first of every month that is a party planning “‘one sheet,” with a menu, recipe, tips and essentials that we hope will both delight and inspire you to host your own get together!
We will continue to give our subscribers just that! However, we have been thinking a lot about what our community asks for more of and appreciates from us. We are excited to announce that we will now have an additional subscriber option that will give you a little extra. There are lots people who offer recipes and hosting tips, but we aim to be different from the rest in the fact that we are always trying to make hosting both enjoyable, approachable and achievable! In addition to our monthly newsletter that will remain exactly the same, we will have a subscriber option that will give you a complete grocery list and prep timeline for each of the parties that our newsletter outlines, as well as a fabulous new recipe that fits in with menu on our newsletter. The focus of this recipe will be that it is ELEGANT enough for a dinner party, but EASY enough for a weeknight dinner. Lots of thought will go into make sure that this debut monthly recipe will give you just that, and be something that will become one of your go to recipes. So, if you want to add some support and easy to your hosting, or just support Habitual Hostess’ continued mission to make life a little more fun, please consider subscribing as a paid member of community, who will also greatly support our work and mission as creators.
Now, enough of that and onto our February newsletter! We started Habitual Hostess in January of 2021, and this Citrus Dinner Party was the first full menu party that we created for our community. Winter is the perfect time of year to have a dinner party, and there is no way to make a dinner party feel brighter or cheerier during the cold winter months than creating one around winter citrus! Each of these recipes is special on their own, but when paired together they create an absolutely fabulous menu that your guests are sure not to forget!
Citrus Dinner Party Menu
Aperol Paloma
Whipped Ricotta with Pomegranates
Beet & Blood Orange Salad
Chicken & Olives
Orange Salmon over Coconut Lime Rice (new recipe, only available to subscribers)
Goat Cheese Mashed Potatoes (sans shallots)
Lemon Curd with Ginger Shortbread
Citrus Dinner Party Hosting Tips:
Instead of a floral centerpiece, fill your table with bowls of mandarins, oranges and lemons. Buy the mandarin oranges that have the green stems attached if you can find them.
Use lemons as placecard holders. Place the lemon on the table to see how it naturally sits, then use a knife to slice a slit across the top. Insert a placecard into the slit.
Set the table with a blue and white block print tablecloth- it’s
Hire a calligrapher to do placecards and menus for a special elevated touch.
Serve lemon curd in a footed coupe glass for extra glamour. Don’t have time to or desire to make the ginger shortbread? Buy a box of Walker Shortbreads instead.
A digital thermometer is the secret weapon to dinner party sucsess! It will prevent you from having to overly check your protein and stress over if it is over or under cooked. We have included ours in our essentials.
Citrus Dinner Party Essentials:
For Subscribers Only:
NEW ‘Elegant yet Easy’ Recipe- Orange Butter Salmon over Coconut Lime Rice
Citrus Dinner Party Shopping List & Prep Timeline
This is our debut recipe for our new Elegant yet Easy monthly recipe and it is both of those things! This salmon is so flavorful and presents beautifully - it’s perfect for company, but easy enough to make for a weeknight dinner.
This is actually the only way that my kids will eat salmon - the orange soy butter sauce has them gobbling it up! We carefully tested this recipe again and again to make sure it will turn out perfectly every time - we know it will become a recipe box favorite! See recipe below (as well as the shopping list and prep timeline for the citrus dinner party).