I’m an old fashioned girl and I love to have “company coming” so naturally I used to go overboard in over cleaning and over cooking. I end up tired, rushing, and snapping at my family because things aren’t coming out just perfect! Now that getting together has been a bit modified, I’ve enjoyed the smaller, more intimate groups. I’m more relaxed and trying to calm my perfectionist tendencies by making crowd pleasers as opposed to full blown 4-course meal productions.

I’ve come up with three items that seem to be crowd favorites anytime we have people over. Not only do they make your life much easier, anyone can master putting them together!

The Signature Drink

My absolute favorite is the Signature Drink. Let’s be honest , the only reason I love this so much is because you can come up with cool unique names and make them pretty with garnish. No, you don’t have to be some experienced bartender to pull this off. Experiment! It can be as elaborate as some recipe you find on pinterest or as simple as pouring a pre-mixed drink into a nice dispenser and call it something cute! This takes the guess work out of trying to accommodate several different requests and it saves you a ton of money when buying alcohol!

The Charcuterie Tray

The next Gracious Hostess hack is the Charcuterie tray. What?? Say it with me …. Shar-koo-tuh-ree. This is your basic meat, cheese, and cracker tray but fancy. I live for a good faux fancy moment. The formula I use for this is to get a basic and bougie for each item. Say you have meat, cheese, fruit and crackers. An example would be to use pepperoni slices as my basic and a bougie example would be something like prosciutto. A basic could be plain cheddar,bougie could be brie. A basic fruit could be dried apricots and bougie could be dried figs. And last, our basic club cracker could go up against a bougie pita chip. This way you have something for the most primitive to the most sophisticated of palates.

A Hearty Salad

Last we have the magical menu stretcher! The hearty salad! I love a good salad. It makes me feel like I’m eating healthy (as I chuckle). They have the ability to stretch your menu because depending on how robust you make it, its totally filling. This particular one seems to disappear everytime we have guests. I went to Zoe’s Kitchen and fell in love with their Greek salad. Now we all know that Zoe’s Kitchen is real proud of their food judging by the price, so naturally my pockets couldn’t sustain my addiction. I decided to make it myself. I did have to modify the ingredients according to tastes of my household members but we love it. The ingredients are simple:

• Romaine Lettuce - Do not buy pre-chopped lettuce. Get the whole lettuce heads and chop them yourself. They usually come three to a pack. You will regret it if you don’t.

• Cucumbers - I take a regular cucumber and slice it, then slice again into quarters for more bite sized pieces.

• Cherry Tomatoes - Do not cut the tomatoes. Use them whole. It will shock you how long the salad stays fresh compared to when you cut up the tomatoes. The inside of the tomatoes will breakdown the salad quickly. I tend to look for the smallest cherry or grape tomatoes I can find.

• Kalamata Olives - For punch and flavor. Be sure you get the pitted olives. There is nothing worse than dealing with seeds mid-bite!

• Crumbled Feta Cheese - To finish it off add the crumbled feta. I have also used the feta block and cut it but it seems that the chunks were too big and gave you a mouthful of cheese and nothing else. Find the crumbled and make your life easier.

I always pair this salad with the Olive Garden dressing. You’ll thank me later.

Alright, now that I’ve shared these get-together hacks with you, go on and be your best Faux Fancy Self!

Until next time,

-K