9 Great Mother's Day Recipes for Kitchen Rookies

A couple years ago, I wrote "12 Tips for Dads Cooking on Mother's Day", targeted for Dads that might be newer to the kitchen and planning to do the cooking on Mother's Day. My first tip is to keep it simple, and I'd intended to follow-up sooner with some of my favorite simple recipes. Better late than never! For this Mother's Day, I share some of my favorite easy recipes that can be prepared a by rookie cook while still offering some great taste and presentation. If none of these strike you, I've got over 80 recipes here with the "Quick/Easy" tag.

Fettuccine Primavera I'll start with this one because it was the first meal I cooked for Jodi on one of our first dates, at a time I was very much a kitchen rookie. The creamy sauce is very satisfying and easy to make, and broccoli and carrots give you veggies and some color.

Pasta with Baby Red Lentils and Ginger Sticking with pasta because its pretty easy to cook, this one has some nice lively flavors. Like the fettuccine, this is another meatless dish, if that appeals to mother(s) you are cooking for. The one trick on this is to keep an eye on the lentils to keep them from turning to total mush. It actually still tastes OK if that happens, but doesn't present as nicely!

Tuscan Inspired Arugula Salad A good salad served along with the entree is sure to please on Mother's Day. This recipe comes with a simple dressing and a "feeling fancy" version. The simple one is so easy, it's worth the effort to be able to offer this homemade dressing. That said, if you feel like you've got enough to worry about pulling the meal together, there's nothing wrong with using a good quality store bought dressing.

Simple Pan Seared Salmon with Soy Ginger Marinade If you're cooking for a seafood fan, this is definitely an easy recipe that doesn't sacrifice on flavor. This takes only about 15 minutes to make. It works well served with the pasta with lentils above, too. Or a simple side of couscous works well.

Grilled Swordfish with Pineapple Salsa Sticking with seafood, this gets a bit fancier than the salmon. But particularly if you have some comfort grilling, this is still not that hard. Grilled pineapple gives this salsa some great flavor, and making your own salsa definitely can impress!

Steak with Mushroom Sauce We love mushroom sauce on steak and other meat here. The sauce adds a nice touch and isn't too hard. I've linked to a recipe that calls for roast steaks. You can serve the sauce with grilled steak, too, just start the mushroom sauce in a new pan as opposed to using the roasting pan. 

Creamy Bowties with Chicken and Asparagus Here's a recipe that combines chicken and pasta and presents very nicely. I got this from "125 Best Chicken Recipes" and it is definitely an easy one, with just a few simple ingredients and steps.

Sweet Potatoes with Cumin Sage Butter I know, this might sound fancy for a cooking rookie. But just mixing a few things in with some softened butter delivers a lot of flavor, and isn't very difficult. This is one of my favorite side dishes, and goes well with the steak or the swordfish.

Strawberries with Melted Chocolate You may well feel like cooking an entree is enough, and want to buy some dessert. I've certainly done this even after getting quite into cooking. But if you want to try something easy, get some nice fresh strawberries and serve with a bit of melted chocolate!