Mediterranean Bites

I wasn’t quite sure how to title this post. Mediterranean appetizers? Mediterranean happy hour? Mediterranean board? So I came up with Mediterranean Bites. But any of those descriptors work.

The goal was to create a tasty and unique way to host an afternoon gettogether.

This week I hosted a small group of gals for an afternoon catch-up session. How time goes by so quickly I cannot imagine. Like, are you all mad at me or you’ve just been busy? Turns out they’ve just been busy.

Entertaining has always been high on my list for fun activities but we really don’t do it much anymore.

So coming up with an easy menu, combining healthy ingredients, using up some of our garden herbs inspired me to go Mediterranean. But why is that word so dang hard to spell? In fact everything I made is hard to spell.

But I’m going to give it all a go (thank you, spell check!) and share what I did.

Trader Joe’s

I wouldn’t really want to put together appetizers without Trader’s. They have the best of everything. So easy, so reliable and reasonably priced.

You know what, one of these days I’ll track how much I spend on an event and put together a post, “Entertaining on a $xx Budget.” Okay, I won’t. That sounds boring as heck.

Two of my favorite homemade recipes are Tabbouleh and Tzatziki (I spelled one of those without autocorrect).

And from Trader Joe’s, I added fresh veggies for a board, frozen falafel and naan.

Assemble a Board

Are charcuterie boards still a thing? Just in case they go out of style soon, I’m using my boards as frequently as I can.

They really do make a pretty presentation. And offer everyone a variety of noshes.

I actually used two boards for this event. One for naan and crackers and one for everything else.

Homemade Dishes

Tzatziki and tabbouleh are better when their flavors can meld, so I made both dishes the day before the gettogether.

We had a bonanza crop of parsley in our herb garden, so it was fun using that for the tabbouleh. I garnished the boards with fresh rosemary and basil also from our garden.

The recipe I use for tabbouleh is old, old, old. It’s easy to modify and I usually add whatever vegetables I have on hand, such as cucumbers, peppers and radishes. This time, I kept old school and only added tomato since I was using veggies on the board.

I might have shared my tabbouleh recipe here before, but I’ll type it up and add it again soon.

The simple tzatziki recipe I used is from Love and Lemons. Since I’m still trying to keep to a low fodmap diet, I omitted the garlic.

Tzatziki is a great dip for veggies, falafel and naan. Of course it’s nice and lemony so I could eat it everyday.

Wrap Up

Thanks for stopping by and sharing my ideas with me. I hope this inspires you to host a gettogether and catch up with your loved ones!

Please let us know if you have ideas for themed parties. We always love to hear them.

As always, God bless you and yours and we’ll see you soon.