Planning a Festive Fall Dinner Party Menu

A few weekends ago we were in Scottsdale, Arizona (yay warm weather) to celebrate Katie’s Bachelorette! For our first night in AZ, the plan was to do dinner at the Airbnb and just relax since people were getting in throughout the day. I was asked to put together a dinner menu for the evening and I was excited and honored since I love to cook and especially since we were here to celebrate Katie’s upcoming nuptials :)

When I was looking for menu inspiration, I was surprised that there wasn’t a lot of good content on hosting a classy dinner party. Since Katie and a few of our friends are pescatarians, I was looking for veggie friendly sides and appetizers with a fish entree. I found a ton of fall menus that had meat in multiple dishes which was not going to work for our group.

I decided to take the menu creation into my own hands (why not?!) by getting inspiration from cookbooks, Pinterest and thinking through delicious dishes I’ve had before to pull this dinner together. To note, I did not adjust all of the servings for these recipes to accommodate 12 people since there was going to be a lot of food. I decided to keep the serving sizes as is since there was 1 appetizer and 4 main dishes. This ended up being the perfect amount - there were even some leftovers.

See below for the recipe links. I shared any adjustments I made.

Dinner Menu: Fall Feast Served Family Style

Mushroom and Goat Cheese Crostini recipe from Coley Cooks Blog
Arugula Candied Walnut Salad recipe from The Forest Feast Gatherings book
- Instead of hazelnuts, I used candied walnuts
- For the dressing I recommend using Briannas creamy balsamic dressing
Za’atar Roasted Carrots recipe from The Forest Feast Gatherings book
- I added cumin and lemon to my ingredient list
- For the greek yogurt topping, I add salt and lemon to give it flavor
- Used italian parsley instead of cilantro for the topping
Israeli Couscous recipe from Epicurious
- Removed raisins
- Instead of couscous, I made with Farro
- Used red onion, recipe did not distinguish
- Added in mushrooms that were extra from the crostini recipe
Honey Mustard Salmon recipe from Gimme Some Oven Blog
- Made chicken for a couple non-fish eaters and used the same marinade