Make Any Night A Fiesta: Serve Tacos and Fun At Your Next Party!

Make Any Night A Fiesta: Serve Tacos and Fun At Your Next Party!

By Christopher T Kennedy

In recent years, tacos have grown to be a standard meal to offer for supper. It's turned out to be almost as common in America as french fries and hamburgers! It can also be quite fun to make tacos with a couple of close friends. In this informative article I am going to show you how you can turn any night into a fiesta night while cooking tacos as a group.

The very first thing you need to do is to ask a small group of friends to join you. While you are speaking to them regarding your fiesta night, be sure you tell them you are making tacos. Find out any eating constraints they have, simply because this is going to be useful to make sure everybody can eat the dinner you make. Figuring out the number of people are planning to attend your taco night will also allow you to get the correct amount of food.

After the date is set for your fiesta night, its time to get the food. Make a summary of the ingredients you need. An easy way to minimize expenses is to offer to buy all of the ingredients for cooking tacos yourself, then request your friends to each bring an appetizer. Be sure to tell them what you would like them to bring so that you do not have way too much of something and not an adequate amount of another. When you pick up items to make the tacos you ought to begin with the main filling. Typically, it is some sort of meat like ground beef or chicken. You may also use pinto and black beans or something like that in the event that some of your friends are vegans. Besides the main filling, you will also need spices, some sort of shell, hard or soft, and a variety of toppings. A reliable guideline for the amount to get is approximately 1 lb. of main filling for every 3 visitors. You'll likely have a bit of leftovers, however that's far better than not having enough for everyone! When it comes to toppings, make sure to purchase the right amount to match the quantity of filling you got.

Now that you have your meal taken care of, another thing you can plan is how to make the fiesta fun. You'll want to pick the right music such as salsa or mariachi to create the mood. If your guests happen to be musical, have a hand drum plus a pair of maracas on the table for folks to pick up if they wish. In addition, have a handful of sombreros about for the guests to wear. You might make up games and have the champion get to wear a sombrero for a certain amount of time. When you're done dinner, you can make or buy a pinata and fill it up with prizes and candies. Have your guests attempt to open it using a stick or some other similar object. As soon as the pinata at last cracks all your visitors will certainly have big smiles as you all scramble on the floor picking up the goodies!

Cooking tacos and having a fiesta night is simple to do and can be very enjoyable. All you need to do is invite your friends to join you, decide on the correct amount of food, and create the atmosphere using some music and fun activities. Simply by adhering to all of these easy steps you will have a fiesta any night of the week!

Finally, if you want some taco recipes such as Chris' homemade beef taco recipes, check out Chef Christopher's work on his website.

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The Perfect Dinner Party - The Fab Five of Entertaining

The Perfect Dinner Party - The Fab Five of Entertaining

By R Ayite Okyne

I love to entertain and people always ask me what the secret is to throwing the perfect party. Today, I will focus on elements for a mid-sized dinner party for 6 to 12 people. Now, for any gathering to be successful, you will need what I call 'the Fab Five': Atmosphere, Drink, Food, Company and You.

Atmosphere

Creating an atmosphere for a successful event will include elements such as lighting, music, decor and any other elements that will enhance the atmosphere of any gathering. Focus on what the guests with see, smell, feel (tactile and emotional). Candles are usually a good idea, creating soft, forgiving lighting and hiding a multitude of sins! Music should not be too noticeable if you want to encourage guests talking, but just enough to create an ambience. Flowers can be a nice touch, but, really almost anything can be used to make great centerpieces.

Drink

Give your guests something to drink within 5 minutes of their arrival - wine, a martini, beer, champagne - just something! And always remember to have something for people who do not drink alcoholic beverages. Water and soda will not cut it! Get creative: seltzer with fruit garnishes is a very simple mocktail idea. (A 'mocktail' is a virgin, or non-alcoholic cocktail). You can find other mocktail ideas on many websites online. Don't have people drinking for more than one hour before dinner is served - your guests will either drink too much, or get too hungry. It's called cocktail hour for a reason! Have about one bottle of wine per guest and probably a little more red than white. According to Esquire's The Big Black Book - and in my experience - red wine drinkers will generally not switch to white wine, but white wine drinkers might not mind as much.

Food

Once your guests have drinks, have some hors d'oeuvres ready for them. Crudit�s with an assortment of dips are always a good idea, so is a fruit and cheese platter. But of course, you can make stuff as well. You are only limited by your creativity and how much time and effort you have available at your disposal. But don't give your guests too much to eat, otherwise, your painstakingly made dinner will go to waste!

If you are cooking dinner yourself, never, ever, try to make a dish you have never prepared before. Anything could go wrong. If you want to try something new, do a practice run first to make sure you can get it done the way it's supposed to be before you try making it for your guests. Also make sure you ask your guests if they have any dietary restrictions so you can plan your menu with that in mind.

Company

If many of your guests will be strangers to one another, invite people you think have something in common. That way, you are free to interact with all your guests without thinking you need to babysit anyone. And, for the love of all that's good, don't invite people who don't like each other or are not talking to each other! It's safe to seat people in boy-girl-boy-girl fashion, but I prefer to separate couples and place people next to someone they may not have met before, but will have something in common. And, next to them, I'll seat someone they already know, just in case they need an out, if my hopes for connecting new people didn't work!

You

Finally, you should plan your prep time so you can spend as much time as possible with your guests and not trying to get things done. You need to enjoy your party as well. Your guests came because of you. Don't drink too much, so you can be alert. Just be your charming self, enjoy your company and everything else will fall into place and be just fine.

Happy entertaining!

R. Ayite Okyne is The Lifestyle Maven - a style guru, epicure, lifestyle expert and cultural ambassador with a quest for the inspired life. He authors a blog http://ayiteokyne.blogspot.com and hosts a series of web episodes http://youtube.com/TheLifestyleMaven. Send your questions to ayite@thelifestylemaven.com and he'll be happy to answer them!

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