important, but next time you’re mingling while eating, please think of us. Finally, it’s the ideal serving size. Have one or have 12, however many pieces of bruschetta your heart desires, your heart can have.

A little while ago, something tragic happened. I got sick of bruschetta. Yes, I know that I just said it can be served in so many different ways, but I was craving a change ­ something new, something fresh. That’s how I stumbled upon endive cups. Since I believe in full disclosure, I will be honest and let you know that endives are somewhat of a unique taste to acquire. Some people may be put off by their bitterness, but the secret to creating a successful endive cup is to pair it with something sweet. Endive cups earn additional bonus points for being a healthier alternative to bruschetta, serving as a better vessel to fill with toppings and it’s the perfect size to fill up Nature’s Party’s 5 inch. wooden boat (ok we may be biased regarding the last point, but they do make a good match). 

Lucky for all of us, the endive has its own website. There you can learn more about endives, where they come from, how they’re grown. You can read the endive’s personal musings on its blogs, and most importantly, you can get some recipe inspiration. Before coming up with the Asian chicken salad endive boat that we created, I browsed through the recipes listed and below are some of my favorites:

● Endive Stuffed with Goat Cheese, Blood Orange and Walnuts

● Endives Spears with Pears and Prosciutto

● Endive Nachos with Black Beans and Feta

Endive Boats with Asian Chicken Salad

● 4 cups shredded cooked chicken

● 1 cup carrots, cut into match sticks

● 1⁄4 cup red onion, minced

● 1⁄4 cup cilantro, chopped

● 1⁄4 cup scallions, thinly sliced

● 1⁄4 cup sliced almonds, lightly toasted

● 4 endives, bottoms removed and leaves separated

For the sauce:

● 2 tbsp. sugar

● 1 tsp. salt

● 1⁄2 tsp. pepper

● 3 tbsp. neutral oil (canola or grapeseed)

● 1 tbsp. sesame oil

● 3 tbsp. rice vinegar

1. Combine together all of the dressing ingredients and set aside.

2. Mix together all of the salad ingredients, except for the sliced almonds and endives.

3. Dress the salad thoroughly with dressing. Spoon onto endive leaves and top with

sliced almonds. Cover and refrigerate until ready to serve.

Hosting a party can come with a slew of challenges. In most cases, the warmth and laughter exuded by your guests combined with the slight buzz you have developed from one too many drinks quickly erases the difficulty it took to get to that moment. We here at Nature’s Party have taken it upon ourselves to help you ease into your role as host/hostess with the mostest. While our speciality is food, we thought we would be nice and throw in some more tips to fight off typical obstacles that may stand in your way.

Keep Stress to a Minimum

If there is one piece of advice we think you should take away from this post, its to start early. Start to brainstorm at least a week before the party, building a menu, picking a playlist and thinking of entertainment. After you’ve mapped out the tasks, feel free to delegate. Be it a significant other, a roommate or just a friend who offers a helping hand, having a team will not only take the pressure off of you, it will also make the preparation process more enjoyable. During the day of the party, try your best to finish your tasks before the guests arrive. The last place you want to be is stuck in the kitchen and stressed!

Provide Entertainment

In a perfect party world, the conversation would flow as freely as the wine and all of your guests would just entertain one another. But let’s be honest, pulling people away from their smartphones these days is no easy feat. Start by building a music playlist that fits the ambience, then choose the appropriate activities for the setting. Whether you keep it simple with some ice breakers, offer up some creative DIY activities or offer up some Taboo ­ find the attractions that will keep your guests happy and active.

Focus on the Food

I recently learned that you can cover almost anything with bacon. Why is this relevant? Because I will never turn down a dish with bacon. When building a menu for your party, center it around ingredients and dishes that are overall crowd pleasers and difficult to refuse, like a cheese plate or small bites. Nature’s party has some great eco­friendly supplies that are perfect for party food. We offer up different kinds of small plates for individual servings, such as our drop shaped sugarcane mini dish, sugarcane egg shaped dish and sugarcane mini wave dish. We also have a solution for helping your guests keep their hands clean by offering up a wide variety of fancy skewers. If you’re feeling in a festive mood ­ we recommend the bamboo skewer with decorative red shape and the bamboo skewer with the pearl bead. Our final suggestion summarizes all of the suggestions we’ve provided up until. We recommend that you make this irresistible dish ­ dates stuffed with blue cheese and covered with bacon. It’s a dish that seems complex but is actually very easy to make. The only problem you may encounter is consuming it all before it makes it to your guests!

Bacon Wrapped Dates Stuffed with Blue Cheese

Makes 15 pieces

● 15 dates

● 15 slices of bacon

● 3.5 oz. soft blue cheese

● 1⁄4 cup sliced almonds, lightly toasted and crushed

● 1⁄4 cup of chives, thinly sliced

1. Preheat oven to 375 F.

2. Carefully slice the dates in half, trying your best to keep them intact. Using a teaspoon, fill up each date with the blue cheese and seal them. Wrap a piece of bacon around the date and secure it with a toothpick.

3. Bake in the oven for about 20 minutes, turning the dates over after 10. Remove from the oven when the bacon becomes crisp and top each date off with a sprinkle of almond and chives.

Enjoy!

Here at Nature’s Party, we are beginning our 2016 with a new attitude towards desserts. Desserts generally get a bad reputation for being unhealthy, but we think it’s time for us to readjust the way we treat them. Below we cover some easy and tasty ways to create unique and satiating desserts.

Load up on Fruit

If mother nature could choose a food type to designate as desserts, she would undoubtedly choose fruit. Fruits are not only sweet and delicious, they are also packed with vitamins and antioxidants. They vary in color, texture and flavor. Fruits offer a wide plethora of options to create any dessert that you please, without having to add an overload of sugar. Some of our favorites include (but are not limited to): strawberries, peaches, cherries and mangoes.

Pack up on Protein

True, protein and dessert are not two terms you’d expect to find next to each other. But I have a confession to make, I am nuts about nuts. Oftentimes, they are a great accompaniment to fruit and can be integrated into a dessert in a variety of ways: roasted, toasted, creamed or crushed and crumbled. The presence of more protein in desserts guarantees that you will fill up faster and resist the temptation to reach for seconds. Bonus point: combining fruit with a protein can help with weight loss.

Dark Chocolate

If mother nature could choose ANOTHER food item to designate as dessert, we’re guess it would be dark chocolate. Chocolate is a quintessential dessert ingredient and the ultimate comfort food. Most chocolates are filled with too much sugar and preservatives, but dark chocolate, the kind that is made with at least 70% cocoa, is filled with all kinds of health promoting goodness. Dark chocolate is proven to lower blood sugar and cholesterol, packed with minerals and antioxidants, and is good for your brain and your heart.

When we put all of our recommendations together, we came up with strawberries two ways. One strawberry is stuffed with a lemony cream cheese filling and dipped in crushed hazelnuts. The other is covered in melted chocolate. Both are served on our white square sugarcane plate, which is available in three different sizes, making this dessert perfect for an intimate dinner party, larger cocktail gathering or a special family style meal.

If your new resolution is to be nicer to the planet, you’re in luck! Our sugarcane collection is recyclable, biodegradable and compostable.

Cheesecake Stuffed Strawberries

• 1 pint strawberries
• 8 oz. cream cheese, at room temperature

  

• ¼ cup powdered sugar
• 1 Tbsp. lemon juice
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 1 small handful of hazelnuts, lightly toasted and pulsed to small crumbs

1. Cut the top off of the strawberries and cut out the center, making sure it is hollow inside.
2. Beat the cream cheese until smooth. Add in the powdered sugar, lemon juice and vanilla and continue to mix until fully combined. Transfer the mixture into a piping bag or a ziplock bag. Fill up each strawberry.
3. Dip the strawberry into the hazelnut crumbs or any other topping you’d like

Dark Chocolate Covered Strawberries

• 1 pint strawberries
• 2 cups dark chocolate (at least 70% cocao)

1. Place the dark chocolate in a saucepan on medium-low heat. Let the chocolate melt, stirring occasionally, until fully melted. Remove the pan from the heat.
2. Dip the strawberries into the chocolate and place on parchment paper. Refrigerate until ready to serve.