Gracious Goodness Around the Table: Dinner

Welcome to Gracious Goodness Around the Table: Dinner. This is the third in our series of cookbooks focused on serving others from your kitchen. Breakfast and Lunch round out this series with each book focusing on specific techniques and methods of taking care of people by serving them delicious food. We believe good food served by those with loving hearts nourishes not only the body, but the heart, mind, and soul as well.

Darlene and Kelly worked together at Butterfly Meadows Inn & Farm in Tennessee for several years. Dinners were served for one to one hundred guests at a time. Thousands of guests were served around the table there. Whether you are old friends or new, Darlene and Kelly are pleased to welcome you to the table within the pages of this book.

Are you a new cook or seasoned chef? We have written this book with you in mind. You will find here great and proven recipes that have been adapted from the kitchen at the inn for your home kitchen. This book expands our Timeline System, introduced in Gracious Goodness Around the Table: Breakfast, so that you can put together your meals following our tested method of meal preparation. Our goal at the inn was to ensure that every meal came out consistently delicious for every guest every time, on time. We know that is your goal as well!

This book is organized into six sections: Beef Entrées, Chicken Entrées, Fish Entrées, Pork Entrées, Vegetarian Entrées, and Sides. We have recommended sides for each entrée. We have also included a sample menu and timeline for each section. Carefully read through the samples, as they will give you an idea of how to put together meals that have different recipe and preparation requirements.

Dinner meals are a special offering to your family or guests, typically at the end of the day. Dinner sets the backdrop for a relaxing time of eating together and reflecting on the events of the day. This is usually a longer meal and provides the opportunity to discuss meaningful topics in a relaxed environment. This is a time for connections to be made, bonds to be strengthened, and souls to be fed as well as bodies. That's the focus of this book-preparing a dinner for the enjoyment of your family and guests and arriving at the table with a frame of mind for the real purpose of the meal.

All without setting your hair on fire!

In Gracious Goodness Around the Table: Dinner, we reintroduce the concept of our Timeline system that we provided for each menu in the Breakfast book. We call this our "paper brain." If you have a good method to follow, you don't have to use brain space to keep the process in your head. You can just concentrate on what you are doing and the people around you. As an extra bonus, if you have written out your plan you can easily assign tasks to others. When someone asks how they can help, you know exactly what they can do! Just give them a task from where you are currently working in the timeline.

This book brings us back to serving in our homes. Dinner meals can be a special time with people we care about. We want to give you the tools to prepare dinners with ease, confident your meal will come out on time with good results. You will be able to focus on your people instead of the process and enjoy your meal with those gathered around your table!

Darlene Bobo began her journey of sharing with others the gift of good food long before opening an inn in the hills of Middle Tennessee. The inn is where Darlene and her coauthor Kelly Cox met, sharing their mutual love of food and serving others with the thousands of guests who stayed there.Darlene's curiosity about food and its preparation began at home, cooking with her mother and grandmother. Reading recipes in the newspaper and imagining the results fueled a desire to learn more. She completed several culinary courses to inspire her creativity and give her a better understanding of how to prepare delicious food to share with others, and years later, with guests at the inn.

Kelly grew up enjoying meals cooked at home and watching her mom experiment with food preparation in the family kitchen. Kelly began making wedding cakes for friends and family while she was in high school. She worked as a pastry chef for several years, then decorated wedding cakes professionally. She operated her own bakery in upstate New York before moving to Tennessee. She is a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America.