Easy peasy dinner party menu ideas

[birdsarecute45]

After some years of being quite anti social due to having young children and some complicated health issues we are hosting our first dinner party this week!

8 people. 2 vegetarians and 2 gluten free.

Can I ask for some suggestions for simple easy to preapre starters, mains and puddings? (Although the pudd is probably going to come from Mr Waitrose).

I am a good cook, but get crazy anxious about this sort of thing so i want to make it as stress free as possible for me.

Many thanks!

So... (thinking aloud).

I am thinking a Greek inspired chicken, olives, chickpea, lemon and herbs stew with rice and greens for the main course. This can be easily vegetarianised by adding in more chickpeas / butter beans.

Or to make it more a winter dish it could be hungarian chicken parpika with mashed potato. Mushrooms and butter beans for the vegetarians.

Starters- I could either have like a buffet selection that people can choose from while seated in front of the fire before heading for the main meal.

I would probably make the whole meal veggie but I don’t eat a lot of meat anyway

I did consider that Hopping but some of the guests would be horrified at the thought!

I am used to making both at the same time as DH is one of the vegetarians and I usually do something that is largely vegetarian with meat added in.

I am getting quite excited at the thought of hosting now! It took a fair bit for DH to persaude me to go ahead with it. He says quite rightly we need to be mroe social. He is a very useful sous chef and helper, but the cooking is my area of things (and something I enjoy).

I am definitely leaning towards Hungarian chicken paprika because I can do it in my sleep.

Maybe then a lighter starter of some sort.