As Covid roars on, Arshia and I have found ourselves making every Saturday our at home date night. We crack open a bottle of wine and catch up on our favorite shows… currently making our way through the Harry Potter movies. Anyone else been doing more of these regular at home date nights with your significant other during these crazy times? Even though the girls interrupt us every few minutes and tell us it’s not fair we get to stay up and watch movies, it is still going to be a fun tradition that I remember for some time to come.

Every so often we will put together a charcuterie board and each time we do we wonder why we don’t do it more often! This past weekend I made a quick stop into Trader Joe’s to pick up some cheese and I noticed they had all their fun fall flavors out and with my arms overflowing, I picked up lots of yummy goodies for our charcuterie board that night. It came together so nicely that I knew I wanted to share it with everyone because seriously, everyone needs to give this combo a try!

Here’s what I used:

Chianti Red Wine Artisan Salami - Always my go to salami, you just can’t beat the flavor!

Spanish Cheese Tapas Sampler - Absolutely in love with this new find at TJ, three different varieties and already pre sliced!!

Toscano Cheese With Black Pepper - This was a new one for me, but paired well with everything and had a nice spicy contrast to the sweet fruits!

Triple Creme Brie Cheese - Always a staple for me, so yummy!

Pumpkin Cranberry Crisps - I looove these and stock up on them every fall! My pumpkin hummus is a great combo with these and would look awesome on any charcuterie board!

Dark Chocolate Crisps - Definitely my new favorite chocolate snack!

Sweet & Spicy Pecans

Asian Pear

Green Grapes

My top 3 rules for creating a great charcuterie board:

1) When in doubt, add more! The more full the board, the better!

2) Use lots of different textures- hard cheese, soft cheese, crumbly cheese, dense crackers, light crackers, etc. This keeps things interesting but is also visually appealing.

3) And speaking of visually appealing, add color! This board is actually lacking in color for me, usually I try to add more fruit to increase the amount of color, but this time I was lacking in fruits at home.

Pro Tip: Save whatever leftovers you have from the board and toss them the next day with spinach for a yummy salad! Of course, you may want to leave the chocolate type treats out of the salad… but then again who has leftovers of those?