Christmas time is here. Cooking is in the air.

My Christmas starts next weekend when my dad and his wife come to visit. There are few things I look forward to more than my dad and his wife coming to visit, and there are few people who I enjoying cooking for more (I tried the "for whom" thing...it didn't work). Usually I start thinking of what to make for my dad and his wife about a month in advance, but I'm way behind my game this time. He's coming in 5 days, and I have only a few ideas.

When I serve meals for guests, I usually have three goals:
1) I want to serve impressive and flavorful meals that don't make my guests feel terrible and overstuffed when they leave. This goal becomes more difficult when my guests will be eating with me for multiple meals. I have to come up with a way to serve them three impressive meals that are light enough that they are hungry when its time for the next impressive meal. My dad is going to be here for 3 1/2 days....that's about 9 or 10 meals. I can't "fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants" on this one. I'll need to plan the days carefully.
2) I like to introduce new foods or new versions of traditional foods. In my humble option, the key to making people think that you are a really good cook is determining what kinds of foods your specific guests like and then carefully choosing something along the same lines that they haven't tried before. The reaction I want to get is, "Wow! I've never had this before, but I LOVE it!." (My unspoken response: "Well, of course, you do. it has all of your favorite things in it.")
3) I like to think of the day's meals as courses in the same meal. I don't want to flavors and styles to flow seamlessly, but I don't want to flavors or ingredients to be too redundant. For instance, if I were to serve two pastas in a row (even for two dinners in a row), the meals would start to feel redundant (and probably too filling) even if the flavors are totally different. And I wouldn't want to serve Mexican for lunch and Thai for dinner. The flavors would be too jarring.

My dad and his wife love to try new foods , so the sky is the limit. They aren't bound my traditions like having meat in every meal. I really think that they like challenging those traditions. I'll have to remember that both my dad and his wife have become more health conscious recently, so my rule about overfilling will be even more important.

So that's my assignment. Stay tuned for my menu ideas and feel free to give me ideas.

Oh! And my aunt gave me two other assignments: 1) post a good Christmas cookie recipe. Christmas cookies are a necessity on my dad's side of the family. 2) post a sample menu for Christmas that centers around beef (my dad's family's traditional main course). So I'll be working on that as well.