Delicious and Waistline-Friendly Meals for Entertaining at Home

Cooking and sharing food in your home with family and friends is one of the great joys of life. However, it can be tricky to get the balance between pleasing guests and finding a healthy weight eating the foods you love in the amounts you’d like. When you’re busy entertaining at home, you can be distracted, lose focus and eat mindlessly.  But the beauty of entertaining at home is that you have all the control because you plan and prepare for the occasion. You can set it up to give your guests a lovely experience AND leave feeling light and comfortable. Here’s how!

Tip One – Let everyone choose for themselves

By using platters and serving dishes buffet style or in the centre of the table, everyone can choose the foods they love in the amounts they love.

It also means that you (and guests) can fill your plate with half a plate of salad or vegetables and just take a little of the other dishes that you enjoy the most. 

Serve dressings, crab king cajun boil and bar, sauces and accompaniments like cream or icecream, separately so guests can add just the amount that they would enjoy. 

If you do offer individual serves, keep the dishes very small and offer a knife or spoon if people would like to take less.

Tip Two – Use vegetables and fruit abundantly

Every course lends itself to vegetables or fruit in creative and delicious ways. This makes dishes much lighter and less kilojoule dense. It’s harder to overeat dishes that include plenty of vegetables and fruit.

Appetiser

Vegetables make great accompaniments to dips! Create your low fat hummus by blending chickpeas (I like to use canned) with a little tahini, some garlic and lemon to taste. Or grab a tzatziki dip or other yogurt based dip from the shop. Carrots, cucumber, capsicum and small zucchinis are good cut into sticks. They can even be prepared ahead of time and kept in water. Snow peas, asparagus, broccolini and crisp beans all need to be blanched with boiling water. I usually just pour the boiled water over them, leave for a few minutes and then drain. Small tomatoes in different colours are great too. The only thing I really don’t use is celery. I figure the vegetable crudités should taste good alone and I am not a fan of raw celery.

Entree

Entree is great opportunity to offer a small serve of a light vegetable soup. While it would be easy to miss this because entree is not an essential course, it is a delicious way to include more vegetables and spoil your guests. People will then take smaller serves of the main course and dessert so you don’t need to prepare as much of the heavier courses. It also means guests (and you) leave feeling lighter and more comfortable. My favourite Thai Curry & Coconut Vegetable Soup is always a winner. It’s works with almost any vegetable and is always hugely popular. I makes a great canapés at a cocktail party or drinks event too! Garnish with a dollop of yogurt and fresh herbs. It’s also an easy dish to prepare ahead and even pull out of the freezer. 

Main Course

Like I mentioned, my top tip for main course is to create a large, interesting salad so that everyone, including you, can fill their plate with salad and then take a little of what else they fancy. It’s is another dish that can be made ahead of time and is ready to go when you need it as it requires no reheating. Again, I find that a great salad is always a winner with guests.

Do head to my Ultimate Guide to a Great Salad for some excellent ideas and try my favourite 4 Ingredient Salad Dressing served separately. Without the dressing, any leftover  salad will keep until the next day.

Dessert

A lovely dessert is important to me, so a fruit platter or fruit salad just doesn’t cut it. Instead, I add extra fruit to something delicious like a meringue or sponge base with cheesecake cream or chocolate yogurt.

If I use whipped cream, I only add a little and let everyone add extra if they would like more.

I also find my Red Wine Poached Pears,crab king or other poached fruit like cherries are popular.

Using a glass to serve dessert with interesting garnishes works well too. Just keep serves small and offer guests half serves if they would prefer.

Tip Three – Under-order Take-Away and Add a Large Salad

This tip is really a combination of tips one and two. It’s the way to keep things super easy when entertaining at home. Take-away meals can be your friend if you keep four things in mind.

Under order and make a big gorgous salad to go with the meal.

This will often mean ordering one dish per two people and cooking rice at home to go with it. If there are six in your group you might order three meals of the same dish and combine it in one larger serving dish. This ensures there’s plenty for everyone. If your guests are great sharers who love trying lots of different tastes, you might order different types of dishes. being confident that everyone will just take a little of each. 

Serve everything in the middle or buffet style.

Depending on your table space, you might set up the food in the centre or nearby.

Order dishes that are easily shared and re-plate them. 

Some Entertaining at Home meals using takeaway dishes that I’ve seen work well are Thai, Indian and Turkish.

Would you like more?

If you’d like my personal support and encouragement on your delicious healthy weight journey, do consider joining my private coaching group.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this article and I look forward to sharing more with you.

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