Having new mum to lunch - what would you do that includes pate?

[pinotgrigio]

My best friend has just had her second baby and is coming for lunch on Friday. We don't often get to see each other and I want to do something special. She's requested alcohol and pate!!

Champagne can be done (any excuse quite frankly for wine at lunchtime), but what can I do to go with the pate? I can't just serve up some melba toast and a chunk of tescos finest.

Remembering back to DD I think finger foods or at least something that can be eaten one handed. Any ideas? What foods did you like to celebrate the end of the pregnancy restrictions?

do the pate, nice bread, salad, booze and a big chocolate pudding

After I was pregnant I craved pate!! How about some homemade vegetable soup with warm crusty bread and pate? Or you could have pate and melba toast as a starter and then something else forbidden during pregnancy for a main like prawns with pasta maybe. Yum yum, wish I was coming, specially like the idea of champagne at lunchtime

Prawn, brie and pate salad, with soft boiled eggs, peanuts or anything else you're not supposed to eat!

I think melba toasts and pate sound fine but you could also get a french stick or a nice loaf of bread and some butter as well. And some other fancy nibbly bits from the deli. When I came home from hospitaldh bought me smoked salmon, brie and pate as well as some lovely wine - yummy.

Message withdrawn

My favourite kind of lunch. Pate, good crusty bread, butter, a wodge of cheese, olives, salad and something fabulously gooey for pud! Can I come over too?

OK, she needs the pate for starters, a nice rare steak with a blue cheese sauce next, and either tiramisu or proper home-made chocolate mousse for pudding. That incorporates all the things she must have missed so desperately...
Dh was under instructions to cook our fave Elizabeth David pasta dish on my return from hospital...sauted chicken livers and bacon with lemon, garlic and barely cooked egg added at the end. Yum, yum, yum, especially after a fortnight of one weetabix for breakfast and what looked like pigswill for lunch and dinner

Home made melba toast and pate. You can't beat it.

I have no Idea how to do this but have had it in many restaurants I'm sure you are a much better cook than me but how about.

Fillet Steak topped with Pate and Stilton cheese with either Salas and french bread or go the whole hog and have chip!!!

I love this when we go out!

I love these ideas! I'm feeling hungry now... I really missed blue cheese when pg. How about a blue cheese salad (Stilton/Cashel Blue or whatever) roughly crumbled with some bitter green salad leaves and a ripe pear sliced lengthwise, with walnut oil dressing. On the side, some warm crusty bread, the pate, and don't forget the champagne!
What a nice friend you are.

Thanks all! Some really great ideas. I think my final menu (subject to last minute posts):

Champagne!!

Mussels in some sort of garlicky sauce
Mozzarella and tomato salad
Green leaf salad
Olives
Crusty french bread
Real french butter
Pate ;-), couple of varieties
Deli Meat platter
Assorted melba toast and things to spread pate on
Cheese board (with brie of course!)
Creme Caramel (her fav)

Yum Yum!

Mussels! of course. Sounds like a fab menu and you sound like a gem of a friend. Have a really nice time

oh wow, I am going to print that menu off and demand that dh prepares exactly that for me when I have had this baby in June!

Not to mad about Creme Caramel.......

But I will be around for any of the other leftovers

Actually, I think I'm going to add in stilltrue's pears on the side. I think she'd love that with her salad. She can crumble blue cheese on too. Thanks stilltrue!

wow that all sounds gorgeous...and she can eat it with one hand

have a lovely time

That sounds absolutely scrumptious. You had better do enough for the ravenous MNers who will be beating a path to your door

Message withdrawn

LL - too many. I'm going to spend my points on the champagne!! Actually, TBH I hate mussels, green salad, olives and creme caramel (eww, quite with you there LGJ!), so from a WW point of view its quite easy for me. I'll just look like I have enivable restraint .

The lunch was a huuuuge success. Thank you all so much for your ideas. My friend was really thrilled with the mussels, especially because she knows I hate them. As she's b/f she wolfed down masses of food while her sweet new DS slept all afternoon.

The "lunch" went on for several hours, involved 5 baguettes, 4 different pates, 2 cheese boards, a mozzarella and sundried tomato salad, 2 panna cottas and a relatively untouched green leaf side salad! I had a slightly sore head the next day, but not sure whether this was down to the wine or over-exposure to 2 year olds.