Meal ideas for 8

Cinny91

This seems like the right place to post, you all seem to have great meal ideas and I could do with your help!

Me and my boyfriend are having a 'cook off' with my brother and his girlfriend, my sister and her boyfriend over the next 3 weekends (sunday dinner) to see who can cook the best dinner. Me and my boyfriend are going first so we want to set the bar pretty high. The only problem is, we're only really good at baking, cooking. not so much.
I reckon our desert could win them round, but my sisters boyfriend is an ex-chef (my brothers girlfriend is a newbie to our clan and i haven't sized her up yet ) so we're up for a challenge here, and we're all super competitive when it comes to things like this too.

So does anyone have any fool proof yummy recipes? I'd like to do something homely with veggies.


We have a pretty low budget being the most strapped for cash couple so cheapness is a bonus!


(our deserts are either homemade vanilla cupcakes or homemade icecream with HM apple pie, we need help deciding these too! :rotfl: )

misskool

what type of food do you like to eat? Are there any vegetarians?

I'd make a starter platter of prawn crackers, thai fishcakes, sweet corn fritters, crayfish tails
Main would be a beef or chicken noodle soup laksa
and desert would be home made lemon grass ice cream

nesssie1702

When you say "homely with veggies" what did you have in mind?

You could always oven roast the veggies and make them into a lasagne? If you want to stick with the Italian theme, then a small portion of risotto to start with.

Let us know how it goes

Cinny91

Thanks misskool, we're all meat eaters here!

Your meal idea sounds yummy! I'll have to look up recipes ect, We have some chicken stock from our last roast dinner, and with alot of us having colds chicken soup seems like a good plan. Although I think we'd just do sweet corn fritters with a salsa dip for starters, my dads' the only big fish lover in our house.

Planning on making acouple meal cards with shopping lists and recipes then let my boyfriend pick what we cook, so i could do with a couple more ideas. I really want to do something ice creamy for desert, I want to get some good use out of my ice cream maker!

Cinny91

nesssie1702 wrote: »

When you say "homely with veggies" what did you have in mind?

We're a family that have been bought up to have a meat and two veg kind of dinner, so I'd either want to stick with this (like cottage pie with veggies) or do something completely the opposite.

I think my sister and her boyfriend are doing italian (its the only thing they seem to eat) so I think i'll stay out of that area. But lasagne made with the oven roasted veggies sounds lovely! (i'll have to pass that idea onto my mum!)

I'm determined to atleast beat my sister on this one! :rotfl:

abaxas

Don't bother with a specific theme. Instead do a mezze style free for all.

This way u can cope with every fussy eater and people can eat as much or as little as they like. Also the relaxed atmosphere is much better than it would be if you cooked a dinner party style of meal.

sweetnskint

how about a sausage casserole? easy to cook-you could use packet colmans or shwarts then just throw in onion,sausage, carrots! put all in oven cooks itself leaving you to do potato and any veg!

Cinny91

Bish bash bosh! (sorry I couldn't help myself with the colmans)

That sounds like a really good idea! I'll raid the cupboards when I get home and see if we already have any packets. Plus with something easy like that it gives us time to focus on our better skills, baking!

taketwo

Part boiled and part pot roast bacon joint.

Boil the bacon for 45mins ish (1.5Kg should be plenty) with a clove studded onion, a small potato, bay leaf and few peppercorns. Use some dry cider if you have some (though last night it was out of date pale beeras all I had!) and top up with water.

Chop and fry to give a bit of colour a couple of carrots, a small swede, an onion, and three celery sticks.

Put these in bottom of casserole, with joint on top, pour enough of the cooking liquid on to just cover the veggies then cook at 180 ish for another 45/50mins.

Serve with mashed potato and some of the cooking juice as gravy, I always do parsley sauce too (not sure why) which although very nice isn't really necessary.

Great dinner party dish as needs no last minute attention!

Pink.

Cinny91 wrote: »

Bish bash bosh! (sorry I couldn't help myself with the colmans)

That sounds like a really good idea! I'll raid the cupboards when I get home and see if we already have any packets. Plus with something easy like that it gives us time to focus on our better skills, baking!

No!!! Don't use a packet! It will taste so much better if you make it yourself and it's one of the easiest things to cook.

These threads should help:

Sausage casserole recipe (merged)

Does anyone have a recipe for a simple sausage casserole I can make in the SC?

Pink

Cinny91

Thanks for those links Pink-winged, I'll wait until the office is abit less hetic then sneakily print them off. I think a casserole might be the best way forward for this sunday, it's always been a firm favourite growing up.

I still fancy the chicken noodle soup now :rotfl: so I'll find a good recipe and make a pot for dinner on saturday, and save abit to warm up for when my boyfriend finishes work.