Some eat to live. I live to eat.: Mother's Day Dinner

Mother's Day Weekend started off as a whirlwind trip to LA for a friend's wedding - yay B&E!!! And while I had told my mom that my Mother's Day gift to her would be my homecoming that Sunday, apparently that wasn't enough, so I was roped into cooking dinner (not that I'm really complaining), for the family and then some. These were the messages I got from my family that morning too:

Sister: A student's mom wished me a Happy Mother's Day...so, I'll take this opportunity to be waited on all day, as soon as Anita returns from CA. (Happy Mother's Day!!!)

Mom: Have a safe flight - I took the liberty of inviting [lists names of mothers who's kids are out of town] to dinner as well. See you soon!

THANKS FAMILY.

So I'm at the airport early Sunday morning (LA time), frantically looking up recipes that we have most of the ingredients for at home and making up a list of what else I would need to buy while texting my sister to start getting certain things prepared and double checking what we actually had at home.

I land in NY around 3:30, take the train to the nearest station by our house, get picked up, go straight to the grocery store, and am home around 5:30. When I get home, my mom's friend and son are cooking up a storm of ribs and marinated pork, so I wait a few minutes for them to clear some space in the kitchen (need to make sure I can maximize kitchen space and time to get dinner out in a somewhat timely manner).

Round 1 chefs

Thankfully Angela had been able to thaw and shell a pound of shrimp for me beforehand, which i was using for 2 dishes, so those were all ready to go. She also made her onion bread with bread to hold people over in case they got too hungry (we ended up being the most hungry and were eating while cooking as soon as her dip was done).

The onion dip pro at work

Onion Dip

once the kitchen was cleared, I figured I would start with the raspberry tiramisu because it needed a lot of chilling time. From that point on, I kind of lost track of any order I had in mind - luckily I had Angela and Mark to kind of boss around the kitchen (my favorite thing to do), and help out with prepping things and dish washing (I'm officially giving Angela the titles of "dish washer" and "puree queen").

Somehow, by some miracle, between the multiple chopping boards, the oven and all the stove tops on, everything ultimately came together. "Everything" includes a Chilled Zucchini Soup with Lemon Cumin Shrimp and Cilantro Sour Cream, an Onion Frittata and Lemony Shrimp Scampi Pasta.

Some things I learned from the experience to fix if I ever make these dishes again (I recently realized I tend not to repeat dishes because there are always so many recipes that I want to try!):

- The poor Onion Frittata actually ended up being the most neglected dish, from the time an egg hid behind the bowl, so I only ended up using 7 eggs instead of 8. Then come dinner time, I totally forgot I had it sitting in the oven (the oven was off, I just didn't have any more counter space), so that was added to the table after everyone was pretty much full. Oops!

- I forgot that the soup was a "chilled" soup, so did not allot any "chilling" time. Instead, we made a mad scramble to stir in crushed ice cubes with the soup to try to cool it down.

- Tiramisu is one of those awesome desserts where things don't necessarily have to be measured out perfectly. While I'm OCD about many things in life, I much prefer the somewhat organized chaos in the kitchen of adding a "pinch" here and a "pinch" there instead of super-exact measurements.

- Make a more solid plan/timeline for things so as not to be so chaotic! (yea right...)

And as always, I made sure to take lots of pictures during the process - hope everyone had a fantastic Mother's Day! Thanks to all you mommas out there!