A "Gourmet" Dinner to Honor the Moms in My Life

I don't consider myself to be anything near a gourmet cook. Robert's taste is limited and revolves mostly around the theme of "Down Home Southern Cookin," so that's what I know. But once in awhile I get the urge to branch out and try something new, but I have no one to try it out on. So I decided to invite my mom and my mother-in-law over for lunch and cook them a meal with all new recipes that I had never tried before. I knew I wanted to make a certain chicken recipe that I found that had a strawberry sauce, and I thought it would be fun to make all the dishes include some kind of fresh fruit and call it "Summer's Fruitful Bounty."

I made them each a card and sent it to them a few days beforehand to remind them of it.

They came early and spent time with Halie before she napped, then after she went to bed I got started on the luncheon. I set the table with my nicer dishes and bought fresh, bright flowers. I even found napkins on clearance at Wal-mart that had a fancy fruit design on them!

I made up a pretty menu to include at each place setting to make it feel even more "fancy." : )

I made slushy Watermelon-berry lemonade and Cucumber Lemonade to drink.

I put fresh slices of watermelon and cucumber in the pitchers.

The appetizer was a Blueberry-melon salad with Thyme Syrup. So good!!

For the Entree we had a Spring Mix Salad with grapes and walnuts, served in a Parmesean-walnut bowl with Raspberry Vinegarette. I made the bowls and the vinegarette and it was all so very good!

We also had Parmesean-basil stuffed chicken breast with strawberry sauce. Once again, VERY good!!

My wonderful mother-in-law Gina who I love and appreciate very much!

My beautiful and amazing mom.

Here I am with our dessert, Lemon-berry Napolean.

YUM!!

I love you both so much!