Philosophically, I struggle with big big meals between two trends: 1) reuse ingredients in as many dishes in as much as possible and reincorporate flavors, and 2) have a good amount of novelty in each dish. For example, I might pick arugula in my salad and also use arugula later as the main green in a sauce. Curious what people's thoughts are here.

Cooking and my boy are my great loves in life, and I'm going to do this during my spring break so very labor intensive dishes are okay!

He's vegetarian and don't care much for tomato. I don't eat dairy as a structural ingredient for the most part, but we feel fine eating bivalve mullosks.

I'm looking for an overarching theme but the overall pacing looks like this:

6:30 High-concept appertizer + Apertivo
6:50 Little soup or someth
7:00 Moderate course
7:30 Fruit

7:30 Entertainment intermission

8:00 High-concept appertizer (Like a one biter)
8:30 Cocktail
8:45 Heavy Course
9:00 Salad

9:10 Smoke Break

9:20 Dessert
9:30 Coffee

I really really like citrus, and in general my recent cooking interest has been using fruits in a savory way. It being Winter wrinkles that plan somewhat. Tentatively, I wanna end on scallops over some sort of risotto. I see the whole budget being about $60 + $20 of various drinks.

Kinda thinking about making spiced limoncello and using that six different ways. Just gotta pick a central theme.