The Plant-Based Party

We were invited to join a friend for her birthday on an island to celebrate a milestone. The invitation said “experience a plant-based dinner under the stars”. As a largely plant-based eater, I was very intrigued.

We took a ferry and arrived on the island to a cottage and marquee. We were given a delightful punch and the table was full of colourful plant based foods. There was a variety of sourdough and rye breads, hummus, about 5 different salads, brown rice with dahl, roasted and fresh vegetables, lentils and seasonal fruits and berries. It was wonderful to see everyone embrace the plant-based lifestyle without negativity to give it a go.

After everyone ate, the comments were all very positive from “wow, I did not expect this type of food to be so delicious to “that really filled me up and it tasted great”. These were things I’ve known, but it was great to see an event and people transformed by the simplicity of all that went into the menu. The end result was that the bright coloured Earth foods went down a treat.

When I recently had a milestone birthday, I wanted to do something different for myself and friends to celebrate and used this island plant-based party as inspiration.

Instead of getting the same catering company to cook the food, we put the challenge out to our friends to bring plant-based items and to get out of their comfort zones. By default this brought the costs of the party way down, but better than that, everyone had so much fun getting creative. 

We put big green leaves from the garden down on the table so people could place their dishes around this and keep the plant theme. The variety of food was amazing and all our friends, who we must say were mostly carnivores, went to a lot of detail to mostly prepare or purchase a plant based/vegetarian dish to bring along with them. They said how much it opened their eyes to the options available and we really forced people to educate themselves even a little bit.

There are so many plant based options available at the supermarket now along with super simple recipes so there’s no excuse not to be able to adapt if you want to. The best comment of them all was people told us they didn’t get that pain of eating too much after their plant-based meal, even though they were drinking too and they felt so much better. I don’t think anyone had a hangover too and food can make all the difference!

You might not want to totally overhaul your diet, but whether you’re a diabetic or not, having the odd meat/dairy-free days will not only make you feel better, but do wonders for the planet. Start small and listen to your body.