Party appetizers for 20

Shrimp cocktail with basil-mango sauce
Sun dried tomato and goat cheese tarts
Mushroom empanadas
Summer fruits salad with arugula and almonds
Cherry tomatoes and mozzarella balls, marinated eggplant, garlic lemon mushrooms on skewers
Aioli

Practice cooking dates menus

The two practice dates that I've done so far were both 3/2 (3 meals, 2 servings each) and they took about 7 hours each, including shopping and chatting with the "clients". I've done lots of extras for these two, just because I love them. The menus:

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One:

- Heirloom tomato salad with mozzarella fresco and balsamic vinaigrette

- Pan fried sturgeon in white wine sauce
Sautéed fingerling potatoes and summer squashes

- Tender braised pork shoulder
Quinoa, garlic green beans

- Free range chicken saltimbocca
Mushrooms and green peas risotto

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Two:

- Salad of baby greens with goat cheeses and orange

- Wild salmon fillets en papillottes with wild mushrooms and fava beans

- Braised lamb shanks
Garlic mashed potatos

- Rosemary roasted Cornish hens
Roasted seasonal vegetables, quinoa

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Everything was refrigerated, and neither of the guys had to freeze anything, they just ate it fresh.

Cooking date this Sunday

I have a cooking date (practice with friends again, they only pay for the groceries) for my food start-up this Sunday.

The menu:

- Cream of carrot soup

- Summer vegetable salad, sherry vinaigrette dressing

- Halibut en papillottes with wild mushrooms and spring onions - 2 fresh servings

- Goulash, garlic mashed potatoes - 2 servings refrigerated, 2 frozen

- Pork chops with ginger orange sauce, red quinoa - 2 refrigerated, 2 frozen.

It doesn't make sense to freeze the quinoa, I'll just put it in the fridge.

I am also going to make them a large stockpot of chicken stock, and freeze it in 1 quart freezer bags. The guy likes to cook himself, but he's super busy, and he's been complaining that he never has time to make stocks. I think he just doesn't have a right technique. When done right, the stock doesn't take any time, it just cooks itself.

See if I can do it all (including shopping at the farmers market and two grocery stores, one regular, one Asian) in 7 hours.

My friend who disappeared after my last test cooking date is fine, and says he enjoyed the food a lot, and lost a couple of pounds in the process. It was just a phone glitch. However, he still hasn't returned the containers. So I got another set of beautiful Pyrex containers for the coming one.