Dinner Party Menu Planning

I started working on a menu for dinner with friends next Saturday.  First thing I usually start with is brainstorming a list of all kinds of things I might want to make, taking into account what is in season and what type of cooking is most seasonal.  Right now, I'd prefer to use the oven as little as possible and focus on something grilled, and watermelon is in season as well as corn, peppers, eggplant, squash, etc.  Once I have my brainstormed list, it's time to start fleshing out what goes with what and what I could do with each vegetable, fruit or meat.  So, on the watermelon front it might be frozen watermelon margaritas or watermelon sorbet. If we go the margarita route, might have to throw some fajitas on the grill or make puerco pibil - the latter very amenable to a slow cooker, which I can put out on the porch to avoid heating up the house.  We had such amazing pibil at Border Grill in Santa Monica, CA several years ago that we walked away with their cookbook (http://bordergrill.com).  I rarely pick up a restaurant cookbook, but this time I couldn't resist and wasn't disappointed.  Their recipe for puerco pibil turns out great.  If we go with watermelon sorbet lots of other options come to mind.  I found a great sounding watermelon sorbet recipe to try from A Sweet Pea Chef, a fellow blogger's website: http://www.asweetpeachef.com/ice-cream/watermelon-sorbet/.  This is one of my favorite parts of the dinner planning process - so many ways one could go and time to think about building on flavors, textures and design. It's a pleasurable creative process for me.  Based on what we get in today's CSA share I might get other ideas for next week.  More thoughts later...