Naptime Entertaining: Delicious Make-Ahead Recipes & Ideas for Family Entertaining

I’ll share the menu I am naptime cooking for tonight at a later date. I am experimenting with a few new techniques and I don’t want to write about anything until I know they work (!) In the mean time, since you are reading this on actual Valentine’s Day I thought I would post a few last-minute tips for wooing your sweetie tonight. Most parents I know, like us, will be spending the night in and celebrating with something more formal over the weekend must like Brooke and James told us about last week. If you are scrambling to pull together a romantic meal tonight here are a few naptime cooking tips for you:

My friend Caroline is a native New Orleanian and, although she now lives in Connecticut, she always pulls out all the stops when it comes to celebrating Mardi Gras. At her party last weekend she served the most amazing spread of food including crawfish pies, salad with crab salad, gumbo, king cake (I got the baby!!!), and these bourbon slushies. I would’ve written about them earlier this week, but I just now recovered from my hangover. I am not a big bourbon drinker but holy cow were these good. And potent. And totally beyond any kind of cocktail party drink I’ve ever had.

When good friends come over we love to entertain with soup. With familiar faces at the table we have no problem slurping away while making conversation. In the winter we prefer hot, substantial soups. These can easily be served with a side of roasted vegetables and sandwich to make a complete meal. The other day I decided to make this soup in order to use up the excessive amount of cheese and beer we seemed to have in our fridge. I still can’t figure out why we had it all, it must have accumulated over the course of a couple of weeks.

I have to finish off the slow-cooker challenge with something that the adults will love: slow cooker cocktails. I mean, who doesn’t love a good cocktail in the middle of winter? I know I do. I love to keep hot punches warm in the slow cooker when we entertain, mulled cider and mulled wine work particularly well. Knowing this I decided to winterize one of our favorite summer drinks and have it waiting for dinner guests on evening.

Today’s webisode showcases how easy and fun it can be to make a batch of Caprese no-knead bread, or any kind of no-knead bread for that matter. I swear, once you get this technique down you are golden. Anyone can do it, even the busiest parent on the planet! As you’ll see, I make mine with a lot of love…and neglect. I pull the dough together after my daughter is asleep for the night, let it rise overnight and bake it in the morning. There are nearly infinite variations of no-knead bread and this recipe is a tried and true favorite. It contains sun-dried tomatoes, sweet basil and is topped with melted mozzarella. We can’t get enough of it and I’ve even taking to make it for friends when they come over for soup and sandwiches.

When I entertain there are usually at least two kinds of cheese dishes on our table. I typically make up one basic cheese plate, hot cheese dip, or baked brie for a savory pre-dinner nibble, and feature cheese somewhere in the dinner course. This may seem like overkill, but it actually works out well. There are so many varieties of cheese it is fairly easy to use it several times in one evening without overdoing it. Also, tasty cheese does not have to be expensive, so drawing up a cheese-focused menu can be quite budget friendly. With a few dinner parties on the horizon I recently decided to focus on a few new entertaining recipes featuring cheese, starting with this terrifically strong, fresh Roquefort.

Meyer lemons have dominated my kitchen this month. They are finally in season (I wait all year!) and my friends at Duda Farm Fresh foods kindly sent me a big boxful to work with. For Christmas dinner this year I decided to make a Meyer lemon cheesecake instead of my usual eggnog version. My family, especially my father, adores cheesecake and anything lemony so I knew he would be especially enthusiastic about this addition to the menu.