Help me out with ideas for summer Sunday lunches

[bowbluebell]

What to do?

I love cooking a Sunday roast, game pie or something involving suet with a robust bottle of red, washed down with custard. But it's not really summer fare is it?

Can anyone help me with some ideas for lovely summer lunches (even, dare I say it, salads) complete with something fruity and zingy for pudding?

We often have 'staple' homemade meals such as moussaka, lasagne, risotto during the week so something a little 'special' is met with a gratifyingly joyful response when it emerges from the oven on a Sunday (especially if DH is on his third glass of red and dd has been promised the crispy scrapings!)

Thanks

Personally I love a salad with lots of protein in:

-roast lamb with leaves, sun-blush tomatoes, feta, olives, fried courgettes, baby roast potatoes
-roast chicken salad in lots of ways: classic is with caesar dressing
-thai beef salad

• salade nicoise with potatoes, eggs, green beans, etc
• bacon, spinach and avocado salad

etc etc

A nice piece of salmon, with new potatoes?
Lamb cooked in a moroccan style, with couscous?

Default pudding would have to be summer pudding, mmmm...

Or a Tart au Citron. Or Eton Mess.

Baked ham in cider (you boil it in cider and some veggies, then glaze and bake it, serve warm rather than hot) with Nigella's sweetcorn pudding (it's a side, not a sweet pudding) and something green and crunchy (steamed asparagus? Green beans? Leaves?).

Ice lollies for pud.

Or, if you must have proper pud, try chucking mango, pear and banana in a buttered pyrex dish and top with a mixture of rolled oats, dessicated coconut, crushed walnuts, brown sugar and butter. Bake for a bit. Voila - Tropical Crumble. (Sweeten the fruit prior to cooking if it needs it, but hopefully it won't).

Roast beef or chicken served with a fabbo salad with everything in it - round lettuce, spring onions, pepeprs, cress, radish, peppers, cucumber, tomato & a blasamic dressing and then some baked potato chips with rock salt.

Go for a day out with a picnic.

Do you really spend all your summer sundays indoors preparing and then eating lunch?

Blu - that was a bit rude.

Picnics can be fab and all that, however, nothing beats a lovely, leisurely, loooong and slightly 'boozy' lunch in the garden with family and friends. Hour or so that it takes to prepare (after all, OP didn't ask for a 8 course dinner menu suggestions)is well worth the hours of enjoyment while sitting amongst the 'smellilicious' (coined by DT1) roses sipping chilled rose and eating something truly tasty...

The salads mentioned by thereistheball are all great.
We do often rare roast beef open sandwiches with horseradish/creme fraiche sauce on grilled rye bloomer with rocket and very ripe tomatoes and Maldon sea salt;
Really easy summer pudding is a tarte of some sort.

Sorry

Blu I have to admit that my first thought was picnic too. That tends to be our Sunday lunch in the summer, providing the weather is good enough. Either a picnic or a BBQ.

Thanks for the ideas everyone, some great recipes that I will keep referring back to this summer.

We often go for picnics to the beach or the woods but it's lovely just to have a day at home dominated by a long lunch and a snooze. TBH preparation while listening to the Archers omnibus while DH takes our baby for a long walk across the fields is a pleasure.

Last Sunday I made Eton mess for pudding-I made the cream pale pink with grenadine, which went down well. I swear Eton mess gets tastier every year.

We are trying the baked ham in cider this weekend- that sounds delicious and I can't wait!

Thanks again