Citrus Season Gourmand Party

We've joined another Gourmand Dinner group and it was our turn to host last weekend. Since it is citrus season I decided to make it a citrus theme and every dish contained citrus of some sort.

To decorate the table I made a yellow tablecloth using 108" wide fabric from the quilting section of the fabric store. Folks us it for quilt backs and it is just a thin cotton, but with a nice hem and a plain white undercloth, it looked pretty good. There was enough fabric left over to make napkins too so I made eight of them. Then I found these nice red, white, and yellow striped place mats to pull it all together.

Instead of flowers I decorated the center of the table with citrus fruits. Most of the guests brought citrus from their trees to help. I had to buy the ruby grapefruit and the blood oranges, but I found plenty of lemons and leaves, and even a few flowers. I was quite pleased with the table when we were all done.

Blood oranges are not very pretty in the stores, but they are so beautiful inside. And they make a gorgeous addition to a winter salad.

Here's the ruby grapefruit. I like them in salads too and sometimes in the winter we make a grapefruit and avocado salad with a lemony dressing that is just delightful.

Here is the main course that we made; pork tenderloins with orange sauce, mashed red potatoes, and green beans. That's candied orange zest on top and it was pure heaven. We paired it with a tempranillo wine from Spain. I'd never had tempranillo before and it was quite nice! In fact, each couple did a great job of pairing a wine with their course. Speaking of wine.....

this was the scene on my counter the next morning. It's almost embarrassing, but there were eight of us!