Episode 56 - Our New Recipe Book! Elegant Easy Appetizers: 5-Ingredient Recipes

Hurray! Our new recipe book is here – the first one to come out: Elegant Easy Appetizers!. Each recipe has only five ingredients, they’re very easy to make, they look elegant, and they lift your meal to the next level.

Picture your dining room table beautifully set with charger plates, which are also called under plates, some elegant dinner plates, side plates, beautiful glasses, and your best cutlery or silverware, with your lovely cloth napkins folded into an elegant shape on the side or on the dinner plate. Maybe it’s a celebration meal, or just a fun, fancy dinner with your family. In the center of the table, you could have some candles or little twinkle lights, maybe beautiful colored electronic candles, some flowers, or any of your favorite centerpieces.

If you’re celebrating something, perhaps Good Friday and Easter, you can make your meal more meaningful by having an appetizer, and by having multiple courses. You could do an appetizer, a main course, and a dessert, or just an appetizer and main course. It gives you more time at the table, and it helps you to connect as a family and have some really good conversation. Because you’re having three courses, you have more time to talk to people, relax more fully, and start to really take part in the conversation. This is because you can focus on each other, rather than just having a quick meal and then leaping up to do the clearing and all going your separate ways.

The appetizer course starts the meal in the right way. It helps everyone to see that it’s not just going to be a rushed meal, so they have the right expectation coming to the table. They know there’s going to be a few courses that they’ll get to enjoy, so even if one is not their favorite, perhaps another will be. They know they can take their time, relax, and enjoy good food. The goal of this meal is not just to eat, but to connect as a family, and to have good fellowship at the table.

So, as I mentioned, next week I’m bringing out my first recipe book, called Elegant Easy Appetizers, and I hope this book will help you to be able to do what I’ve been describing to be able to make appetizers for your family in an effortless way. Meals and celebrations can be easy! Each of these recipes have only five ingredients, and not all of them require actual cooking; some of them just require assembling. They’re all delicious and interesting, and they’re not very common, so you may get some new ideas, and they’re elegant. They’ll look sophisticated, and help your table and your meals feel fancy without a huge amount of effort. You can get your kids involved in making them. Young children love to help, and older ones can make some of them on their own.

A meal is about the eating and the elegant look – both of these are equally important. You want it to taste good, but you also want it to look amazing.

You can add some music to your meal for ambiance, maybe some soft piano music, in the background. You can lower the lights. You can even ask everyone to put on some smart clothes, though the most important thing is that you want time to enjoy together as a family, so an ordinary meal where nobody dresses up can also have elegant appetizers, and still add to the quality of the meal and the meal time together.

To facilitate good conversation, you can download our conversation starters. You can find those on familyfoodformoms.com/conversation. With good conversation, you can help your kids to really enjoy the meal. We all need to learn that rushing food and eating fast is not good for our bodies. Eating slowly helps with digestion. Our bodies need to be in a relaxed, safe, rest-and-digest state to digest our food properly, and a slow dinner is the best way to eat in the evenings. It’s good for the family, and it’s good for our bodies.

You don’t even need to have a dessert – you can just have the appetizer and the main course, though dessert is also fun. Our next recipe book will be on desserts – decadent desserts – that are also easy, with only five ingredients. But today, I really wanted to encourage you with the idea of having an appetizer for your meal with your meal. The recipe book, Elegant Easy Appetizers, comes in both print and digital PDF form, so wherever you are, you can grab that.

There’s a lovely big, full page photo of each recipe so that you can see what you’re aiming for when you’re creating your food. As I said, it’s not just about the recipe and the taste, but this book will also show you how to make each plate look elegant for your table. You really want to plate it in a way that is appealing. Some of the appetizers you would plate in the middle of the table, and then everyone helps themselves, like a charcuterie board. Others you would plate in individual portions to put out at each place.

We have some videos on YouTube, on the Family Food for Moms channel, to show you some different methods of folding your napkins to make them look elegant. There’s a rose, there’s a heart, there’s a tuxedo shirt, a christmas tea tree, and et cetera, so have a look at those. We also have a couple of episodes on how to make your dining table look special. If you want to listen to those, they’re episodes 3 and 11.

Having an appetizer is always a great way to make your meal special. Here are some examples of appetizers that are in our recipe book – let me read to you from the table of contents. We have cucumber, cream cheese, and tomato bites; haloumi vegetable sticks; fruit kebabs; butternut and feta puff pastry tarts; halloumi wrapped in prosciutto; bruschetta; stuffed mini peppers; a cheese board; smoked salmon and cream cheese; individual charcuterie plates; stuffed mushrooms; greek salad kebabs; prawn cocktail, and et cetera.

I’ll read a couple of quotes from the pages. Some of them are about things I’ve already mentioned:

“When you break down the meal into courses, or have an appetizer first, you’ll have more time to relax and be together, be present, enjoy the meal, and time to connect as a family.”

“Having an appetizer slows down the meal. It’s not just about the food, it’s about making family memories together.”

“Why do we need appetizers in the first place? They’re not just for parties or entertaining – they help to make the meal a little more interesting and have more time for connecting.”

“Appetizers don’t have to be complicated. They can be as easy as five ingredients each, as simple as breaking up your meal into three courses. First the vegetables, then the meat and starch, and then a simple dessert.”

“Having an individual appetizer for each person is lots of fun. You can put them onto charger plates or on your dinner plates. It looks lovely to have layered plates on the table, and it’s nice for each person to have their own, or you could put a central platter of food on your table for people to serve themselves as they’d like.”

You can get this book here from our online shop. If you buy a physical copy, it will be shipped to you! Thank you so much for being part of our family here at Family Food for Moms!