Can you believe it’s already the middle of May?! The time has just been flying by! With Mother’s Day at the beginning of the month, we decided it was a perfect day for May’s Sunday Family Dinner. In comparison to some of our other dinners, this month’s dinner was pretty simple. But hey, that’s how Momma likes it sometimes and it was all about wonderful her!
Mom basically loves any kind of pasta dish there is so pasta was an easy choice as our main dish. My sister found this pasta salad and made it before she came to my parents’ so that messes in Mom’s kitchen was kept to a minimum.
Even though she used the basis of this recipe, she changed a lot of it. That’s the beauty of recipes though, they give you somewhere to start and allow you to make modifications where you want! The first big change: asparagus instead of peas. I’ll be honest, this change was mainly for me. I hate peas just as much as I did when I was kid. I will avoid them at all costs and I will give my family grief for putting it in things (sometimes I’m childish, who isn’t?). But the asparagus was delicious! Another change: fresh cucumber instead of pickles. And she used the new Hidden Valley Greek Yogurt Cucumber Dill dressing.
The pasta was fantastic and just as good the next day when I took it for lunch. Here’s the problem with pasta as a main dish though: what do you serve with it? You don’t want to only serve one thing but then pasta is pretty heavy itself and can stand alone. I decided that flatbread would be a good add on and found this pizza recipe.
When I went grocery shopping for this dinner, I bought a 2-pack of already made flatbread in the bakery section. I followed the rest of the recipe which was enough to make both the flatbreads. If you only ever make one recipe I post on this blog, this is the one to try. It was such an amazing combination of ingredients and flavors! I’m not usually much of a blackberry fan but could eat it all day like this.
On to my utmost favorite part of any meal: dessert! Now while I can eat absolutely any dessert and do NOT believe in something being “too sweet”, Mom is not that way. I wanted to find something that just said “that’s a perfect dessert for Mom”. Mom likes icing but she can really do without too much of it so I was really looking for something that was either a “naked” cake or close to it. Success! This Strawberry Thyme Cake definitely satisfied that requirement.
The cake does require some extra time since you have to bake layers, make a syrup and then the icing but it is 100% worth it. I had to cut some of the layers to make a perfect circle after the syrup was poured on since I put too much batter in some of the pans (oops!) and I just had to taste those leftover remnants. I can’t believe I’m actually saying this but I could eat that cake with no icing and the syrup alone. It is THAT good! But of course the icing was amazing and I put more than I had to.
Well that wraps up this month’s Sunday Family Dinner! Even though it simpler than most of them, this dinner was just as fantastic. And Mom loved it which is all that matters! Next weekend is Lucketts Spring Market, which we went to last year, so I will be there taking pictures of all the unique goodies they have! Hopefully this year I will find some stuff for myself that I can use for fun projects for you guys!