In-laws

My in-laws came to visit this weekend. They drove in from KY on Friday and left this morning. It was a great visit and I want to share the guest-friendly menu we enjoyed. Fortunately I had most of the day Friday to prepare and spent the majority of my time in the kitchen. I loved it! Saturday we had a quick visit to Sun Studios (Derrick's mom is a huge Elvis fan) and visited Derrick at work. The afternoon was spent catching up on "work" things. Actually, the in-laws did work they brought with them while I did my toenails and watched football.

The menus:
Friday night I used a slow-cooker recipe I got from my friend Leslie (see also "Leslie" blog): Zesty Slow-Cooker Chicken. It was so easy to toss in a few ingredients with frozen chicken on Friday a.m. and a few hours later we had a great pulled chicken BBQ dish. It was very good, and the first BBQ-ish dish I've attempted - quite a feat in the land of BBQ, Memphis, TN! I made up a salad to go with it and added a light-mayo/vinegar/sugar dressing so it resembled coleslaw (necessary with BBQ chicken). Also, Shoestring Sweet Potato Fries on the side and then Halloween cupcakes for dessert. And, yes, I broke out every fall flavor and Halloween decoration possible before October 1.

Saturday breakfast I made up another batch of pumpkin pancakes. Lunch was a Tomato Tart recipe from my friend Courtney paired with a simple salad. I'll add that recipe in the next post. It was so pretty to look at, a great way to use tomatoes, and tasted like a fancy, lighter lunch pizza. I also served chopped fruit with an easy fruit dip, which I'll also post.

Finally, Sunday breakfast was an egg frittata and Pumpkin Cream Cheese Muffins The muffins were a huge hit - so moist and pumpkin-y. I only had enough cream cheese for a half batch of the cream cheese topping, but it worked out well. The streusel makes enough that you could even omit the cream cheese topping altogether.