Easy weeknight entertaining

As part of my efforts to stay up-to-date with professional development type matters, I'm part of a group of six who meet every two months, ostensibly to discuss work-related issues. We do discuss work-related issues, but it's also a way of keeping in touch with friends from university who may otherwise be seen infrequently.

Foolishly, I offered to host our meeting last week, a few days after we returned from Tasmania. As someone who likes to clean the house, arrange food to look attractive, and make 'impressive' looking dishes when people come over, this was not entirely wise.

So what did I do?

I cut corners :P

Fruit and nut bread, olive bread, carrot and celery, hummus, and crackers to start.

Four vegetarian pizza options and roasted capsicum for main.

Strawberries, date and almond balls, chocolate almond balls, and Hannah's chocolate coconut hazlenut fudge for dessert.

Super simple!

The pizzas included two with fetta (which could be easily removed from my pieces) and two with mozzarella:

Sweet chilli, spinach and pumpkin pizza with fetta

1 pizza base of choice

Sweet chilli sauce, spread over base with a pastry brush

Baby spinach leaves, layered over the sauce

Steamed pumpkin, diced

Fetta, diced

~2 tbsp fresh coriander, torn and sprinkled over the top

Mediterranean pizza with fetta or mozzarella (I made one of each)

1 pizza base of choice

Tomato paste

1/2 zucchini, sliced thinly

1 capsicum, sliced thinly

4 mushrooms, peeled and sliced

Sun dried tomatoes, to taste

Dried or fresh basil / oregano / herbs of choice, sprinkled over the top

Fetta or mozzarella

Tomato and herb pizza with mozzarella

1 pizza base of choice

Tomato paste

Up to one punnet of cherry tomatoes, quartered (use a sharp knife, so they don't smush!)

Dried or fresh basil / oregano / herbs of choice

Mozzarella

The nice thing about pizza is that you can't really go wrong, and there are so many flavour variations - even without moving into meat options. The pumpkin option was my favourite this time.

The chocolate almond balls were an impromptu variation on the other balls / nut fudge products I'd made before. Happily, they worked a lot better than the chocolate date variety I made back at Easter and my non-vegan, non-raw food friends happily ate quite a few.

Chocolate almond balls

100g raw almonds

60g oats

60g dark chocolate chips (or dark chocolate, chopped)

1 tsp vanilla essence

1 tsp almond essence

1 tbsp pure maple syrup

Pinch salt

1. Process almonds in a food processor until fine; add oats and process until combined and fine.
2. Add chocolate chops, vanilla essence, almond essence, maple syrup and salt and process until just combined and starting to form a sticky ball
3. Roll into teaspoon-ish size balls and set in the fridge or freezer (they keep slightly soft in the freezer but are firm enough in the fridge)

Do you have stand by recipes or systems for entertaining?

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