• Classic Italian dishes will be ideal choices for dinner clubs, along with new recipes.spaghetti image by Bartlomiej Nowak from Fotolia.com
  
  An Italian dinner party combines Italian dishes with the country's traditional music, dance and overall culture. The dinner club members can collaborate to bring authenticity to the dinner parties and help enhance everyone's knowledge of the Italian culture.
  
  

Invitations

• Use a few Italian words and phrases in the invitation. Use simple phrases if you and the club members are not all fluent. For example, open the invitation with "Ciao," a casual way of saying hello or goodbye in Italian. Close the invitation with "Buona sera," which means "good evening." Use Italian imagery on the invitation as well, such as a photo or drawing of Venice, or simply decorate the invitation in green, red and white, the colors of the Italian flag.
  
  

Recipe Swap

• Select a few club members for each dinner to bring an Italian dish for all to enjoy. Assign one or two people to appetizers, three or four to entrees and a few to desserts. A classically Italian appetizer could be bruschetta, a seasoned tomato and basil mixture served on crisp bread, or a simple tortellini soup. For the entree, classic pasta dishes such as spaghetti and meatballs or lasagna would be ideal. For dessert, try cannolis and tiramisu. Have everyone who brings a dish also bring copies of the recipe they used, one for every member. After a season of dinners, each member will have a substantial Italian cookbook.
  
  

After-Dinner Dancing

• The tarantella dance is a traditional Italian folk dance typically performed at weddings and other special events. Folklore says that the dance was named for its ability to cure spider bites, but it is more likely that it was named for Tarentum, Italy, where it originated. Each dancer has a partner but also interacts with every other dancer. This could be an exciting way to end the evening as well as pay homage to the traditions of this culture.