In the wake of Mother’s Day, and my mother visiting, I have been a little bit behind in posting any thing new. Why you ask? I have been cooking up a storm all Mother’s Day weekend! So, what has been on the menu?

Dinner on Friday:

* Lime Marinated Sea Bass

*Mango Salsa
Roasted Carrots

*We will cover the sea bass and mango salsa in some future posts.

Saturday:

Breakfast: Hash with over-easy and sunny-side-up eggs

Lunch: (We fended for ourselves so as to reduce the need for cooking)

Dinner: We kept it super easy and did take-out in order to enjoy some quality time together. Take-out is great for when you want to take a break and relax, but I certainly prefer to cook at home if I can.

Sunday: Mother’s Day

Breakfast: French toast with some fresh pineapple chunks, watermelon, strawberries, and blueberries.

Lunch: (We again fended for ourselves as we prepared to provide a delicious homemade dinner later that day).

As far as dinner was concerned, I had been telling my mom about the pasta bolognese I sometimes make for quite some time, so that was what she decided she wanted to have for Mother’s Day dinner.

The best thing about this menu is we have covered most of the recipes in the blog up to this point. Yes, we haven’t previously discussed sea bass, but I want to make sure you always have something new as your next show stopping dish.

The beauty of this weekend menu is that it can be managed pretty easily while still leaving ample time to enjoy the company of your guests. What things could you do to to make this easier to manage? I would say chop and prep what you can ahead of when you to plan to cook. Although this seems obvious, it can leave more time to laugh and top off your beverage of choice.

Also, try to have everything you need at hand so you don’t have to spend time hunting around for this ingredient or that. Once I have done all the chopping and prep, I place all my onions, potatoes, peppers, etc. into little dishes so I can I just dump the ingredient into my pan or cooking vessel and move on.

Until now, I have been talking about a lot of individual recipes on my blog, with a few plates containing some sides to go along with a main course. But I wanted to share how you might think about bringing some of these recipes together to create a weekend of culinary adventures. The big takeaways here are be creative, have fun, learn, and try to make sure the menu befits your guests or  whomever you might be sharing your table fare with.

So, enjoy!