I have my family from out of town visiting this week and i am bummed!! i am having such a hard time deciding the menu. these folks are going to be here for 2-3 days. 
no kids phew ..can someone please help me
there are sooo many dishes to choose from.
Re: help with the menu???
Do you want to do a desi menu? If so, then you can do 1 rice dish...it can be biryani or pulaao. You can do 2 salans and make one of them a veggie like palak/chanay etc. If you want...you can add a dry meat dish like kababs. And then round everything out with tossed salad, raita and rotiyan/naans.
In terms of salans, we usually do one or a combo of the following: haleem/chicken karahi/palak or saag/chanay/qeema/qorma...occasionally karelay or bhindi.
Is your family going to be staying with u? If so, then you can make it easier on yourself by buying some premade frozen items like samosay/kababs etc...to do for appetizers. You can have cookies/cake and other items on hand too. Things like a chana chaat and aloo ki tikkiyan are fairly easy to whip up for appetizers.
Re: help with the menu???
thank you. RV <3
I was thinking the same - one rice and maybe two salan.
say for instance if i am doing biryani..then mabe karhai or qorma? wouldn't that be a whole lot?
sabzi i am okay with, but these biryani type dishes throw me off. i was considering nihari, but what should i make alog with it ..nihari itself is pretty overwhelming ..like i woulnd't wanna have anything else with it..no other salan or rice. :/ maybe i can something small on the side? like a sabzi and a chicken dish but then what about rice? plain zeera chawal?
Re: help with the menu???
thank you. RV <3
I was thinking the same - one rice and maybe two salan.
say for instance if i am doing biryani..then mabe karhai or qorma? wouldn't that be a whole lot?
sabzi i am okay with, but these biryani type dishes throw me off. i was considering nihari, but what should i make alog with it ..nihari itself is pretty overwhelming ..like i woulnd't wanna have anything else with it..no other salan or rice. :/ maybe i can something small on the side? like a sabzi and a chicken dish but then what about rice? plain zeera chawal?
It's okay if you don't want to do biryani. You can do pulaao...or mattar walay chawal...or zeera chawal; that's fine.
If you want to do 2 salans...you can make one them a chicken karahi...which is fairly easy to make. And the other could be a korma...using meat other than chicken. Or you can do karahi and a veggie dish. Add a plate of shami kababs...which tend to pair beautifully with chawal. Throw in salad/raita/naan and you're good to go. So u have your rice component...veggie component...meat component...and you're good to go.
You don't have to do something overwhelming. How does the following sound?
Zeera chawal
Shami kababs
Chicken Karahi
Palak or some other veggie dish
Salad
Raita
Rotiyan
If the above seems fine...then you can add other dishes that you want...like korma etc.