What to do for breakfast, lunch and dinner?

[JeannieJo]

We’ve reached the period where I end up on constant host mode. I wake up and have to get breakfast organised for guests, as soon as that’s over and cleared up, I’m thinking ‘what’s for lunch’, I start shopping / organising that and as soon as that’s wrapped up, I’m on to the same for dinner. I spend half the day thinking of and planning food. One of my guests is pescatarian so I also need to come up with veggie / fish options for every meal.

Helpful suggestions appreciated!

Honestly? I’d be expecting them to sort themselves out for breakfast. Provide a couple of cereals, bread for toast, some pastries, maybe eggs, yoghurt and fruit and leave them to it.

For lunch, bread, bread rolls and/or crackers, cheese, tuna, cucumber, tomatoes, crisps, fruit. Maybe some tins of soup.

Make the entire meal plan veggie/pescatarian, if possible, and if the meat-eaters complain they could snack on cocktail sausages and sausage rolls.

Easy breakfasts:
Toaster waffles and mixed berries
Croissant and jam
Baked beans and veggie sausages

Easy lunches:
Shop-bought quiche, coleslaw, potato salad and a packet of green salad, maybe augmented with some chopped cherry tomatoes
Jacket potato with tuna and sweetcorn mayo
Shop-bought falafel and humous wraps
Tinned soup and crusty bread
Smoked salmon and scrambled eggs on sourdough toast
Shop-bought cheese scones and chutneys

Keep it simple for breakfast and lunch so that you can focus on one meal per day. Let them help themselves to cereal or toast for breakfast.

Lunch can be bread rolls, with cheese, pate, salmon spread - let people make their own. Maybe heat up a quiche. Plus sausage rolls and mince pies.

For supper you can make a chicken or beef stew - something that is quick to assemble, then you stick it in the oven and leave for a couple of hours. Can the pescatarian give you a few ideas of what works for them?

Get everyone else to clear up while you sit down and relax!

When we have guests, breakfast is sort yourself out: toast, croissants, spreads of various sorts, I may offer to make a round of boiled eggs. Coffee, I make a pot first thing. Otherwise, teas and coffees are there self-serve.

Lunch is: soup and baguettes (sometimes it’s homemade soup from the freezer, sometimes store bought), part baked baguettes, or quiches (store bought) and bagged salad, maybe with some beetroot, gherkins, pickled onions. Or I say right, everyone out for a walk and then let them know to stop and buy their own meal deal on the way to the walk start if they wish to eat along the way. All the above are generally vegetarian as standard unless I get a quiche lorraine.

The only proper meal I cook is dinner. As Christmas is a big heavy meal, it’s easy to go lighter now. Tonight we are having tofu or boiled eggs with noodles in miso broth with pak choi and broccoli. Tomorrow and Tuesday are dal and rice with pappadom and salad. Christmas Eve is Chinese, a mix of a few dishes from the takeaway plus party food bits like spring rolls, salt and pepper prawns, prawn toast, steamed veg. All the above vegetarian or easily pescatarian. I wouldn’t be making any separate veg/fish meals. Veg or fish for everyone until Christmas.

Breakfast I tend to do one warm dish then it’s a help yourself affair. So I might do a pan of scrambled eggs one day, bacon another, smoked salmon and cream cheese bagels another. With cereal, fruit, toast, yoghurt.

Lunch, I’d make a few big pans of soup.
Buy some puff pastry and make sausage rolls and cheese straws
Then just provide nice bread/baguettes and fillings

For dinner traybake, curries, casseroles, lasagne