I LOVE CHEX MIX! Therefore, I'm not going to make any. I will eat every crumb of it.

I'll check the local bakeries for some good bread and put more fruit on the grocery list!

Any ideas how to make the fruit more interesting? Melons one morning? Berries another morning? Hot fruit compote another? I don't want to do a huge bowl of mixed fruit and serve that all 3 days. I love mixed citrus but all of these guys are on statin drugs which means no grapefruit.

Nice job.

If you want to mix up the fruit thing, I think you have to have bananas for sure for cold cereal. I'd also think about dried fruits...I love dried cranberries and walnuts or almonds in my breakfast cereal. They go great in yogurt too.

A berry compote would be nice as a mix in for yogurt.

For snacks, I think cheese and crackers always work...

I always serve some kind of veggies with every meal, so I think a small side salad of greens would be great with the gumbo. (Are you sure everyone likes seafood? It's probably my most frequently requested "please, no" with my guests.)

I agree that some kind of bread would be great with the breakfast...even if it's some toast with jam....the jam may be the way to get fruit in without it all being the same thing.

Sounds like a lot of fun...

It all sounds good to me with a little tweaking because people are Vacationing and all that healthy eating, hmmm, that's for at home.

Saturday: Add tortilla chips and salsa to the snack menu and salad with dinner. be sure everyone eats/like all seafood. Gumbo is for seafood lovers. make sure no one hates okra. I would also have a starch for gumbo, rice or something, if that is not planned.

Sunday: make sure again everyone likes sweet potatoes and sausage and eggs. I hate sweet potatoes so that's why I am saying this.

Add toast, fruit and yogurt. Sliced tomatoes would be nice too. Or, to be really yummy, cinnamon rolls.

My personal favorite for fruit is mixed berries: blackberries, strawberries, raspberries and blueberries.

I serve cole slaw with gumbo (no okra in mine).

BBeez, rice is always served with gumbo, at least in my part of the world.

These are old friends I've fed before. We just haven't seen them in a while. They've always eaten seafood, so I know they'll eat what I'm preparing. The okra cooks to bits in the gumbo. You would have to search microscopically to find any. :-) And the gumbo will have rice with it. My sister has a friend who serves his gumbo over potato salad. Not as gross as it sounds, but certainly not traditional either. I'm sticking with rice - I know it works!

Now that y'all have me thinking about salad, I think I'll buy one of the baby green mixes and serve it with craisins, goat cheese, and pecans with a simple oil and vinegar dressing.

Bumble, you caused me to stop and think. I do not know anyone who doesn't eat sweet potatoes! Isn't that odd? Also, I'll have to confess that I've made the Sweet Potato Hash recipe a jillion times and have never used chorizo. I always use bacon.

DH is still getting a few tomatoes off his vine. If we have any by Sunday, I'll slice them up for breakfast.

Annie, I forgot to mention that I'll have some dried fruits and some bananas to go with the cereal.

Interesting that you've all mentioned bread. I'm not much of a bread eater so it doesn't come to mind for me. I'll have to start paying closer attention!

Thanks for the help!

Some restaurants here serve a scoop of potato salad on top of gumbo. That's the German influence.

Louisiana's Food Traditions

Since it's apple season, I would add a dish of sliced apples baked with dried cranberries or cherries to the Sunday breakfast. Your guests are sure to be pleased with both the menus and the company.

and the

ooh..love the flavor combination of apples, sweet potatoes, onions and BACON! And it would be different from the cold fruit I'll have on the other days.

CM, I'm not surprised that my friend got the idea (potato salad and gumbo) from Louisiana. A number of his dishes have a Southern/Cajun bent.

Pantry is stocked with an assortment of cereals. Sweet Potato Hash completed up to the point of adding the eggs! Now I have to work on the gumbo base.

I love cereal!!...Hate to admit it...but a bowl of wheat Chex with bananas is right up my alley....and cornflakes! And 7 grain cereal, with golden raisins...a bit of cream and a touch of honey...oh my!
What's sweet potato hash? I thought it was like fried potatoes....chopped sweet potatoes, maybe a bit of onion and some apples fried up together....eggs??

I, for one, want only healthy food while travelling so as not to add to the stress. I think your menu sounds good, and Linda said what I was thinking in her first post.

I like your idea of varying the fruit, and the green salad sounds like a winner.

Since you know your friends' habits you might not need these, but I was thinking that since snacks are casual, that you might also have some options like crackers and a bit of cheese, or whole fruit, or even ice cream. Not planned program. Just things that you might have in a well stocked house that can be mixed in on an ad hoc basis, or than can be used as a pick up meal if plans get shot to h-ll and you need to improvise.

Linda, DD used to love when her flights through DFW put her in Terminal C. They had a cereal bar, Cereality, that served mix and match cereals with various toppings.

The Sweet Potato Hash I make is caramelized onions, mixed with cooked sausage (or bacon, if I'm making it), seasoned with garlic and rosemary. It is cooked until the sweet potato chunks are tender. Then you make wells in the hash, crack in an egg, and put it in the oven until the eggs are done to your liking. Check out the recipe I linked above. It is soooo good.

plllog, good point. Plans can become fluid, whether you want them to or not. Which reminds me. I need something in reserve for Saturday lunch. The Saturday buffet is an outdoor tailgating party. If it rains, we won't be tailgating. I have a pork tenderloin in the fridge that can be ready in less than an hour. This recipe for Pork Sliders with PIckled Onions and Cranberry Sauce is really good. I need to pickle some onions to be ready. I have everything else at hand.

Time is getting short! First guests arrive in 2 days and I'm in the middle of finishing up a decorating project that I put on hold for way too long! And I have to get the container to the florist for flowers; and, it would be nice to get the handyman in to wash the front lights, and, and, and,.......

Have fun! I like hot cereal a lot, and cold cereal is OK by me too, but the sweet potato hash sounds delicious. I'd also add toast or muffins, I think, and the addition of some cheese to the crackers isn't a bad idea either, just in case.

Menu sounds good, and I'm sure you'll have a lovely time visiting.

Annie

Dang I shouldn't have opened this thread, now I want sweet potato hash! Your guests are soooooo lucky!

I've just figured out the bread I need with the sweet potato hash - biscuits! (I'm lazy. I buy frozen biscuits - but never canned biscuits. ICK!)

lpink, Thanks. Sometimes I make a small amount for DH and me on the weekends. When I do that, I just wing it on the amounts, and I cook it all in a skillet on top of the stove to the point of adding the eggs. Then it goes in the oven for the eggs to bake. Give it a go!

I'm actually off to the store to buy sweet potatoes! But I have two packages of frozen strata to use up before I can do any more fancy breakfast things. The sweet potatoes are going in a new kind of pot roast made with cider . . . I eat a lot of sweet potatoes though. I used to get sweet potato hash at the local vegetarian restaurant in Grand Rapids when I lived there. It was delish!! I will have to make some of that hash one of these ol' days!

Tell me more about your strata, lpink. I have house guests again in 2 weeks. I'm always looking for something different to make for brunch!

The decorating project I mentioned Tuesday at 5:37 p.m. got finished just in the nick of time. Typical of me, it was something I had been meaning to do since we moved into the house 18 months ago. It took having company to get me into gear. Here it is - the skirted console table

Congrats on getting that done! So? How did feeding the company go?

Feeding the company was a mixed bag, as all of us have experienced. Thursday evening and Friday couldn't have been easier. We ate every meal out, except oatmeal for breakfast. Even though the weather was dreary, we made it to the tailgating party on Saturday. Because the weather was so damp and cold, at the tailgating party, I invited three friends who had planned to go to the game to come instead to our house to watch it on TV. Fortunately, I had plenty (more than plenty) of snacks for everyone to nibble on. The gumbo that night was a hit!

If there were a glitch, it was that our houseguests decided to leave very very early on Sunday morning to get home for church and other commitments. That left me with Sweet Potato Hash and no one to feed it to. So, I invited neighbors for brunch!

The exterior lights didn't get washed; I wasn't thrilled with the arrangement the florist made for me; but none of it mattered. We had a grand time with our friends. It has probably been 7 or 8 years since all 6 of us have been together at one time. We realized we need to do this more often.