My parents just celebrated their 21st anniversary this month. Whew! 21 years of God’s incredible faithfulness in their life together is indeed something to celebrate! My brothers and I thought it would be fun to serve them a special anniversary dinner, so that’s what we did. And let me tell you…we had a blast doing it! :)

So I’ve decided to post pictures and recipe sources here not for the purpose of praising ourselves, but to give YOU ideas if you decide to do something like this for your parents. You’re more than welcome to copy the things we did or ask questions. In fact, please do! :) A romantic dinner is a wonderful gift you could give your parents on their anniversary.

Now I could not have done this without my brothers. It was truly a team effort. Wesley was in charge of the setting: the decorations, tablecloth, chairs, candles, lighting, music, menu design, etc. He has such talent for things like that!

The guys curtained off our dining room so that Mom and Daddy wouldn’t be distracted by all the goings on in the kitchen. :)

The menu, in a beautiful script. Handiwork of WC!

The dining room, all decorated and ready. Isn’t it lovely!?! Wesley did a great job!

Austin and Jonathan were our helpers. They washed countless numbers of dishes and helped Wesley hang sheets up. They were also excellent waiters. Seriously, these guys were the best! They did an incredible job serving.

I took care of planning the menu and cooking the food. So here I’ll share some pictures and links to where I got the recipes.

All of these recipes are fairly simple and straightforward. They’re pretty fancy, yet don’t call for all of those strange ingredients I can’t pronounce. :) In fact you might already have many of the ingredients on hand, or you can easily buy them from any grocery store. As for drinks, we served them ice water with lemon, and a yummy juice-seltzer water mixture.

The first course were the Hors d’ourves: pickles, olives, cheese and fancy crackers, and stuffed mushrooms. The mushrooms tuned out amazingly – they were simple to make and SO tasty. I got the recipe from here. I followed the recipe exactly except that I left out the dry white wine.

The second course was spinach salad with a vinaigrette dressing (you can find the recipe here), sugared almonds, Craisins, and a sprinkle of cheese. I tweaked the recipe a bit, using red wine vinegar (because that’s what we had) and I added in some poppy seeds. It made a delicious salad.

The third course was a French onion soup. I used a new recipe, and it turned out to be soooo good that I’ll be posting it soon. This soup is delightfully creamy without any dairy products, and it has a delicious flavor. So stay tuned for the recipe! We served this with French bread.

The fourth course was an easy recipe for Chicken Cordon Bleu (found here). It tuned out quite well. I have never made it before, but I was pleased with the results. Don’t hesitate to make this for a main course!

And for dessert, we served a lemon torte. Now let me explain what exactly a lemon torte is, because I didn’t know until now. It’s a very fancy dessert – rather similar to a pie. It has a meringue crust, which is slightly chewy and deliciously sweet. Then there’s a lemon filling, made by cooking egg yolks, sugar, and lemon zest together until it has a pudding-like consistency. Then you top the whole thing with UN-sweetened whipped cream. Usually I don’t like making whipped cream without adding in a tad bit of sweetener, but you really don’t need it in this recipe. The whipped cream helps to balance out the sweet crust and filling.

To make it a bit more fancy and visually attractive, I drizzled the torte with a simple blueberry sauce. Now this dessert literally melts in your mouth. It is so yummy, and light enough to enjoy after a large meal. I got this recipe out of a cookbook, but if you’d like to make this, please feel free to request the recipe, and I’d be glad to post it for you. :)