dinner parties

Ty's schedule has been great the past two months and we have had a couple of groups of people over for dinner. (He will start his second year of residency in July and the schedule for the rest of the year is not pretty. It will definitely take some adjusting, especially with the new addition of baby Jack.) I digress...
We have been in our new house since November and love having people come over to see it. We had two new, young couples over from church. It was nice getting to know them better. We also had the new surgery interns and their spouses over for dinner. 
These dinners were scheduled in advance, and I didn't know that I was going to be feeling quite so bad at this point in my pregnancy. Luckily, both evenings turned out perfectly and I felt mostly normal. It was kind of depressing to cook all that food and not be able to eat much of it, because there was literally no space in my stomach due to all the smashing from Jack. :)

Cooking during the summer can be tricky as we didn't want to heat up the house with the oven, so I thought I would share our menus. I'm always looking for easy, summer meals.

• Grilled Pork Chops; we love this recipe and it is soooo easy.
• Sweet Strawberry Salad
• Strawberry Basil Lemonade

• Corn on the Cob with chili lime butter; Chili Lime Butter: melt butter, add in lime juice and chili powder. brush on corn. I just guesstimate how much of each every time.
• Balsamic Vegetable Skewers
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  Source: whenharrymetsalad.com via Lindsey on Pinterest
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• S'mores bars (made the day before to avoid heating up the house when people arrive.)

Ty grilled hamburgers and hot dogs for the interns. I love grilled food during the summer. I'm sure part of that revolves around the fact that I'm not the one standing out there in the heat. :) 
I was feeling worse this week, so I kept things simple with Buffalo Chicken Dip, chocolate chip cookies, and brownie batter dip served with mini graham crackers. 

Source: crumbsandchaos.blogspot.com via Lindsey on Pinterest

I posted this last year about some of our favorite summer meals, and I'm making Chicken and Summer Vegetables Tostadas, another summer favorite, courtesy of Kate from Elefantitas Alegres for tonight's dinner.