Ayos: Living ReArrangements

Its almost been a year since a group of our friends started ‘Thursday night Dinner’. I call it ‘progressive’ because venue and hosts change from week to week. It’s very simple, really. Every week, one of us hosts the dinner at their house and cooks the main dish, the rest of us bring a drink, a side dish and a dessert. Let me tell you, this has been a great opportunity not only to be intentional with catching up with our friends, but also to showcase (and challenge) our culinary ability!I encourage you to recreate this gathering, it’s an amazing opportunity to be intentional with your relationships, expand your cooking skills and try different recipes your friends come up with.

Here’s what to do:

• Start small. Start with 2 or 3 people to have dinner with once a week or once every other week or even once a month. You want to make sure that people will be able to be consistent with getting together so starting small and once every other week is a good start.
• Share hosting with your friends. Rotate hosting duties and of cooking the main dish.
• Try different cuisines. As the host, you will be determining the ‘theme’ of the dinner. Don’t be afraid to try different cuisines– Italian, Asian, Greek… have fun, your in good company to begin with! A few websites to help you out:
  • Chow- This is a great website not just for recipes but for learning how to butterfly a chicken or poach an egg. See my post on Chow here.
  • Foodsubs - Don’t have marjoram? no problem, substitute with tarragon, find food substitutions here.
  • Allrecipes - Extensive recipes. When unsure of a recipe, reading reviews is helpful.
  • CDKitchen - Big recipe database.
• Spice it up. Once you’re in the groove of your get-togethers, try watching a movie or playing a board game once in awhile.
  

Here’s some pictures from our Thursday night:

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