Today I want to talk about how to make an everyday dinner a little bit special, and how to add little touches that make a meal memorable. Turning a regular dinner time into something special doesn’t have to be complicated or fancy, so here are some easy ways that you can elevate your everyday meals. I think it’s the small, thoughtful touches that can make it feel memorable, even if the food is simple. Let’s talk about some ideas that can add charm, warmth, and a little magic to your dinner.
Ambiance. I always say to my kids that the way a restaurant looks and feels, the view and the mood, is more important to me than the food. My sons find that quite crazy, but it’s definitely true for a lot of women. I think we like the beauty, the elegance, the peacefulness, we like the way the table is set, and all of that, just as much as the food. Setting the mood is so important.
Lighting is an obvious thing – having a soft lamp, not bright lights, maybe lighting candles and arranging them in a way that you like. As I’ve mentioned before, I like to use electronic candles with batteries because then there’s less toxic fumes. I love beeswax candles, but they’re expensive, and they get used up so fast. I really enjoy the candles that have colored lights, string lights, fairy lights, and all of those kinds. We’ve got some jars with fairy lights inside, and they have sayings printed on the outside. So, whatever lighting you enjoy, a variety of lighting on the table is great.
Little draped strings of fairy lights are really helpful, because you can drape them along the middle of the table, and then put flowers and leaves around them, or you can put them around something. You can put them inside a jar. You can even put them over an arrangement of flowers, and they really look amazing.
Flowers are wonderful, whether you arrange them or put a vase of them, or even if you have some roses or a couple of flowers just placed on the table. Putting a rose or a blossom under a glass and a candle on top always looks beautiful.
So, have something in the center of the table, and then cloth napkins that you fold in a classy way instantly bring some flare to the table. We love to do a rose or a fan, and even just rolling them up and putting them in your glasses, giving them that height and the color, really looks amazing. You can look on our YouTube channel, Family Food for Moms, and we’ve got some little shorts on how to fold napkins.
Soft music is amazing at fancy restaurants. They sometimes have a violinist or a pianist playing soft background music. I like to have a small speaker that I connect to my iPhone, and then I just search for something like “dinner music”, or “piano background music” or “jazz”, if you like that. Then it just plays in the background nice and softly.
For your table, the setting makes a huge difference. Using under plates – colorful ones, golden ones, patterned ones – if you have anything like that, that’s lovely. If you don’t, then don’t worry, just try different plates, or different arrangements of plates. You can put some on top of each other or next to each other. If you have any small bowls, they always add interest. You can use a little bowl for a sauce or a dip, or put some olive oil and balsamic in a
tiny bowl next to your bread plate. Those are fun. Then use your best cutlery, if you have any. Just make the table look special and a little different to normal.
Layering and textures are always helpful. Contrast makes the table look so good; doing something like using a pop of color with a plain silver or white cloth. You can also use your food in a colorful way. If you’re putting plates in the middle of the table, put some colorful vegetables on, and some sprigs of green herbs. Sprinkle some sesame seeds on, or drizzle some balsamic glaze over your food.
Speaking of which, plating your food can also just take a little bit of thought, and make it feel more special. You can use a little silver ring or even a cookie cutter to make a shape from your starch. You can put your sweet potato mash, mashed potato, or your rice into that, and press it down a little bit if it’s rice, and it will make a nice ring of that particular food. You can make smears of sauce or mash on the plate, and then place your protein on nicely. Think of how you want your vegetables plated, or use smaller plates for each part. You can have your meat with a sauce drizzle on one plate, vegetables on another plate, and salad in a little bowl nearby. It also just makes it feel like you’ve taken a little bit more trouble in preparing the meal.
So, something else you can do that you may not normally do is just simply add an appetizer or a dessert. Here, I have to tell you about our new Elegant, Easy Appetizers cookbook that we just brought out. It’s available on Amazon and on our website, familyfoodformoms.com, so just pop over there. You can buy the print version, or the PDF to download – it only ships in the United States. It’s got appetizers that are made from only five ingredients. They’re very easy to make, and they’re very elegant looking. The book shows you how to plate them as well, so you can enjoy something simple and delicious at the start of your meal.
A small appetizer helps hugely. You can make it very simple, like just a few olives, or as I said before, some bread with a dip. You could do a few veggies on the side, or you can go into a little bit more detail and do a charcuterie board, a particular kind of salad, or any of the appetizers suggested in our book.
Then a dessert is always a hit. Chocolate dipped strawberries are quite easy to prepare beforehand, or ice cream – homemade ice cream. You can use some lemon olive oil over vanilla ice cream. Believe it or not, that tastes amazing! It tastes a little bit like a lemon cheesecake. You can even have a few small cookies, or do a cheese plate at the end with crackers, cheese, and jam. Any little extra thing is good. A course like these really helps to make the meal feel more meaningful, and to stretch it out so you’ve got time to talk and enjoy each other’s company.
Another way to make a meal special is to upgrade one element of your meal. Choose a course that you’re going to make special. For example, perhaps you’re going to add a sauce to your steak that you wouldn’t usually use, like a balsamic reduction, a red wine sauce, or a mushroom cream sauce. You could put fresh herbs on your plate. You could make the plating fancier than usual, as I mentioned before, or you can swap out something like your rice for a bit of risotto, or make rosemary roasted potatoes instead of mashed potatoes. Just elevate something in a way that you wouldn’t normally do.
You could try cooking something a bit different that you haven’t done before. Although you don’t want to add to the stress of a mealtime, because it’s a time where you as the cook also need to be able to relax and enjoy the meal with your family, if there’s something that you really would like to try and that you can do a bit in advance, then that would be amazing.
You could try serving a fancy drink. Punch is amazing. If you have a punch bowl or just a glass salad bowl, you can put some grape juice in there, or whatever juice you like, then you add sparkling water like Sanpellegrino, along with some chopped fruit like strawberries and grapes, and then you have a lovely drink that can be spooned into or scooped into glasses.
You could make a special homemade lemonade, or just have sparkling water with lemon or cucumber slices. Or, if you’re into fancy mocktails, you can do something that’s specifically your family’s signature drink, sparkling water with certain fruit in it, with a little bit of cordial – anything that you think would fit your family. We’ve tried a Turkish delight cordial in the past, and it was a little strange tasting, but elderberry, lime, or passion fruit cordial goes amazingly with sparkling water. Think of your favorite drinks at a restaurant, and think about how you can copy them at home.
Personal touches are very special – anything that makes your table personal. You could do a handwritten menu card with a nice decoration on the front, either asking one of your kids to decorate it for you, or printing it on the computer. You could put little love notes, or quotes, or Bible verses at each place setting, or write a little message to each person. Even just having place names makes it personal and special.
A homemade element also adds interest and specialness to your dinner, like if you bake your own bread, bake your own sourdough, make your own vinaigrette or salad dressing, or make any homemade desserts or appetizers. That makes it really special.
Using lots of small things makes the meal interesting. I love using small bowls, as I mentioned. You could also use a mini cheese board and put it in the middle of the table. Think of what a restaurant serves while you are waiting for your food – maybe a few bread rolls, with some butter, in a basket with a cloth napkin inside, or some sliced baguette in the middle of the table on a wooden board. Anything that’s unusual is always a hit.
Playing a game is always fun, especially if it gets you talking. We have some conversation starters that you can download on our website at familyfoodformoms.com/conversation. You could play any kind of game where you have to write or draw. I’ve mentioned this some in previous episodes, but there’s a fun one where you each tell a story. You each have a piece of paper and you each write the introduction to the story, and then you fold the paper over a little bit, pass it to your left, and then write a part where you introduce the characters. Then you fold it over and pass to the left again. The next part may be the adventure that happens, or something exciting that happens. And so you just do that with each element of the story, passing the paper on in between so that your stories are all mixed up, and then you read them out loud at the end to much laughter.
Then lastly, something you can do to elevate your dinner is to add a little theme. It doesn’t have to be complicated. For example, you could have an Italian bistro theme, with soft jazz music in the background, candles on the table, and you can serve pasta with garlic bread, and have some red grape juice in fancy glasses.
On that topic, fancy glasses always elevate the table so much. We have some gold ones, some gold rimmed ones, and some curvy glasses. You can even put two different kinds of glasses on the table, if you don’t mind the washing up, one for water and one for juice.
If you have a French cafe theme, you could serve roast chicken with herby potatoes, a green salad, some red grape juice, and some lovely piano music in the background.
A tapas night is great fun. It’s made up of small bites. You’d have lots of small servings, or plates that people can take from and share, or small portions of things, so that there’s lots of small courses. You could have olives, different sizes, shapes, and kinds of cheese, chorizo, and some grilled vegetables. You can have low lighting and a fruity mixed drink like the punch. You can have tiny bowls of shredded meat or little pieces of meat. Anything that you would get from the appetizer menu at a restaurant can be used for small bites, like tiny little chicken kebabs. For dessert, you can do chocolate kisses or a small little bowl of ice cream.
A chocolate fondue is also an amazing way to elevate a family meal. You simply melt your chocolate with some cream, and everybody can have a little bowl of chocolates on a big plate. Then they have their fruit on the plate, things like slices of banana, strawberries, and maybe even marshmallows. Those things are all delicious dipped into the chocolate.
So, hopefully once you start to think about this, your creative juices will get going, and then you know what’ll work well for your family. You can try just a few things at a time to elevate your meal, to make it special, to help your family to connect, and to let them know that mom was thinking about them.
I hope this inspires you. Let me know what you try – my email address is karyn@familyfoodformoms.com. And remember our recipe book, Elegant Easy Appetizers, is available on familyfoodformoms.com, and you can get the print version or the PDF.
