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With vegetarianism catching on fast as a trend, almost all of us now know friends and relatives who eat only vegetarian food. However, cooking vegetarian food at a party, especially when you yourself are a non-vegetarian, can be quite a confusing and intimidating task. This is because most non-vegetarians are generally unaware about what a good vegetarian dinner consists of. If you find yourself facing a similar situation, then stop worrying and read on for tips on throwing the perfect vegetarian dinner party.

· The first thing to do when you plan to make vegetarian food for a dinner party is what you would do in case of any kind of party—plan the menu. Just like a good non-vegetarian dinner would feature a soup, salad, appetizer, main dish, a side dish and dessert, so would a vegetarian dinner.

· You can find a lot of help on planning vegetarian dinners online. There are a number of websites that will provide you with complete menus for vegetarian as well as non-vegetarian dinners. Most good websites will also provide you with all the required recipes too.

· You can give your vegetarian menu a twist by sticking to a particular kind of regional cuisine. You can either go for Chinese, Mexican or Italian food, since these cuisines not only feature many good vegetarian recipes; they are generally favored by a majority of people.

· One more thing that you should keep in mind when planning your vegetarian menu is to keep it simple, especially if you are planning to cook yourself. Go for recipes that have a difficulty level of “easy” or “moderate” and a cooking time of less than 45 minutes (and remember, we are not talking soups here).  Also select recipes whose ingredients are easily available, otherwise you might find that you need to change the menu at the last moment because you could not find some crucial ingredients for a recipe.
 
· If you are planning to call people who eat non-vegetarian food also, then try to go for a main dish that goes well with both vegetables and meat. For example, if you are cooking Chinese, then you can keep noodles as your main dish with vegetable hot and sour and chicken or mutton Manchurian.

· In order to keep your vegetarian guests happy, try to abstain from using animal fats for cooking. Use vegetable oils as much as possible. Serve vegetarian dishes with their own separate spoons and take care that your guests do not mix up vegetarian and non vegetarian spoons. If your veg and non-veg dishes resemble each other in looks, or if it is tough to determine which is which just by looking, then try putting in small folded cards with the names of the dishes in front of each dish.

· Plan in advance. The main thing that you need to do in order to make any dinner party a success is to plan in advance. If you are not planning to take your day off work to cook, then spend an extra hour on the weekend chopping all the necessary vegetables and storing them in the fridge or the freezer. You can also go for cut and frozen vegetables to save time.