If you are an omnivore foodie, gumbo. It impresses me, the depth and complexity of flavor in gumbo is delicious and very "me" if that makes sense, so it is something of myself I am giving to you.
If you are vegan foodie, a cream of mushroom soup made with cashew cream and fancy mushrooms, and some fresh sourdough bread (THE bread, as my kids put it) with a small salad of something fresh from the garden.
If you are my penultimate child and her girlfriend, apparently kimchi grilled cheese, I made them that once and they kept making it forever after, it is a ridiculously delightful sandwich.
Always something I personally like, for sure. I am a pretty experienced home cook at this point though. If you are not, I recommend the menu "Foods of Michochuan are Forever" on NPR, it has something for the meat eaters and the vegans, is outrageously good, uses ingredients that are available, and can be staged ahead of time and just reheated and make rice day of, so that you can enjoy yourself not be cooking all day. The soup I cheat with canned beans and canned tomatoes it's great.



One of my kids had a pretty big birthday party once, they were at a very nearby elementary and lots of kids and parents showed up, I had made a cake with lemon curd, and one of the dads looked at me suspiciously while eating it then said "you make this lemon curd? " I said "Yessir" and he nodded like I had passed some sort of test, it was funny. Turned out he really liked to bake, was a good cake-maker himself.