Iron Chef Variation

Looking for a last minute date night? I love this date, and the best part is there is really no preparation to it. You can do it this weekend with another couple or even just you and your spouse.

I know there are a lot of variations to "Iron Chef" dates, but I think this is a fun way to do it.

Have someone on each "team" roll a die. Whoever gets the larger number gets to choose if they want the appetizer or dinner. (You can pick whatever combo you want or even have a dessert night and each couple does a dessert).

Nic and I got appetizer and our friends Nicole and Josh got dinner.

Take a few minutes with your team mate and come up with an ingredient the other team must use. We chose string cheese for Josh and Nicole and they chose pineapple for us.

Each team will role both dice. Whatever number you get on the dice is the amount of money you can spend at the grocery store for ingredients. You can spend less than that amount but not more. We allowed each team to use whatever ingredients are in a normal kitchen (cornstarch, milk, butter, etc.)

Nicole and Josh only got $5 and Nic and I got $8.

We decided before we went to the store that Josh and Nicole were going to use the oven. (It can be nice to coordinate this before you buy ingredients so both teams are both not trying to use the oven).

Nicole and Josh were able to buy spaghetti sauce, manicotti noodles, and string cheese (their chosen ingredient).

We were able to get a couple of bell peppers, onions, and pineapple. Fortunately, the sauce we chose to make uses a lot of ingredients found in most kitchens so we didn't have to buy anything else.

Nic and I made a sweet and sour sauce to go with our vegetables skewers. We barbecued them. They turned out pretty good.

Josh and Nicole treated us to string cheese stuffed manicotti. It was delicious! (Unfortunately, we didn't get a pretty picture of it).

Hope you get a chance to try this date. Please let us know some of the creations you come up with. 

Baked Parmesan Chicken

One of our favorite recipes is Parmesan Chicken. Maybe it takes us both back to our Italian roots or maybe it's because this is the first dish Nic made for me when we were dating. Whatever it is we love this dish, although I haven't really met anyone who doesn't love Parmesan Chicken. Even my toddler loved it and ate EVERY SINGLE bite on her plate. We like it both baked and fried, but today I am going to share how to bake it.

If your chicken is on the larger side, butterfly them in half to make them thinner.

Poke holes in the chicken, this helps the chicken absorb more flavor.

Mix the breadcrumbs, Parmesan cheese, and garlic salt in a dish that is big enough to hold a piece of chicken.

Set up an assembly line. Start with the chicken, then the melted butter, and then the breadcrumb mixture.

Dip the chicken in the butter and then in cheese/breadcrumb mixture and place in a 9 x 13 greased pan.  (I have a pan that is slightly smaller than a 9 x 13 so I used that.)

Spray one side of parchment paper and cover the chicken, tucking the sides into the pan so no chicken is visible.

Cook at 375 for 30-40 minutes, or until the chicken is cooked and golden on top.

Scoop a spoonful of your favorite red sauce on each piece of chicken. I love sauce, so I tend to go a little heavy but do what looks good to you. Sprinkle the chicken with the shredded cheese.

Cook for another 5 minutes, or until the cheese is melted.

Now enjoy!









 Parmesan Chicken
Recipe by Prescriptions for a Happy Home

Ingredients:
2 large chicken breasts or 4 smaller ones
4 TBS Melted Salted Butter (if you use unsalted just be sure to add salt to the seasoning)
1/2 C Italian Breadcrumbs
3/4 C Grated Parmesan Cheese
2 tsp Garlic Salt (we are garlic lovers at our house so if your is family not decrease to 1 1/2 tsp)

Favorite Marinara Sauce (about 1/2 cup) I used Traditional
Shredded Mozzarella Cheese (about a cup)
Shredded Parmesan (about 1/2 cup)

Instructions:
Turn oven to 375. If your chicken is on the larger side, like mine than butterfly them in half to make them thinner. Poke holes in the chicken. Mix the breadcrumbs, Parmesan cheese, and garlic salt in a dish that is big enough to hold one of your chicken breasts. Put the melted butter in a dish or bowl that is also big enough for a piece of chicken. Dip the chicken in the butter and then in cheese/breadcrumb mixture and place in a 9 x 13 greased pan.

Spray one side of parchment paper and cover the chicken, tucking the sides into the pan so no chicken is visible.

Cook at 375 for 30-40 minutes, or until the chicken is cooked and golden on top.

Scoop a spoonful of your favorite red sauce on each piece of chicken. I love sauce, so I tend to go a little heavy but do what looks good to you. Sprinkle the chicken with the shredded cheese.

Cook for another 5 minutes, or until the cheese is melted.

Makes about 4 servings.

We love to eat this chicken with mashed potatoes and a vegetable, but it also tastes great with some noodles and red sauce.

Questions Date Night

Now that we have a kid, we are always looking for some date nights we can do at home. I planned Valentines this year and I made some cheese fondue and printed off some fun questions for us to answer. (You can use the same bank of questions that we did here). We love asking each other fun questions, usually beyond the what's your favorite food. We thought this was a fun variation since we had to guess about the other person.

We had so much fun that the next night, Nic found the NewlyWed game and asked that we play it. We only did page 3, but I am sure we will play again and use some of the other pages. We played it while eating some delicious cheesecake. I may be biased but I think the best way to play these games is while eating, gives you some time to think. ;)

Even though we have been married for 5 years, we still had a lot of fun playing this and surprisingly we still learned a few things about each other.

Once a month plan a fun dinner or dessert pull out a set of questions from either The Love Map: 20 Questions Game or the NewlyWed Game and you have yourself an at home cheap date. Plus every month you will learn a little bit more about your spouse.

Pot o' Gold with Rainbow Dunkers

Holiday meals are one of my favorite things to plan!  Sometimes for St. Patrick's day I'll make an all green dinner and other times I've made the traditional corned beef and cabbage.  Both are fun, but I decided that it was time for something new.

So I came up with the idea for a Pot o' Gold (cheddar cheese fondue) with Rainbow Dunkers (meat &veggies).

 


This idea was so much fun!  We don't have fondue very often and when we do it's normally for a dinner date after the kids go to bed.  I knew the kids would love trying fondue.  What kid wouldn't love dipping their entire meal in gooey cheese?   It took them a few tries to figure it out, (honestly I think they were a little confused that mom and dad were telling them to dip their vegetables in cheese) but they eventually got it and had fun.  If you have toddlers, I definitely recommend giving them their own personal bowl to dip in.  You can thank me later. 

To play with the rainbow theme some more I used the kids rainbow plates from Ikea and they fit the meal perfectly.  I love that this meal is fun and tasty for kids and adults. 

  

Pot of Gold with Rainbow Dippers

Recipe by: Prescriptions for a Happy Home

Ingredients:

Your favorite cheddar cheese fondue ( if your fondue is made with white cheese you can add a couple of drops of yellow food coloring to make it look more like gold)

One Smoked sausage, fully cooked, cut into bite size pieces

4 Medium carrots, peeled and cut into bite size pieces

1 Yellow pepper, cut into bite size pieces

1 Head of broccoli, cut into bite size pieces

1/2 lb. Purple potatoes, peeled and cut into bite size pieces

Directions:

Fill a large pot with water.  Bring to a boil over high heat and add potatoes and carrots and 1 tsp. salt.  Reduce heat to medium high and boil for 6-8 minutes or until vegetables are barely tender when pierced with a fork. (If they get overcooked they will fall apart when you try to dip them in the fondue.) Do not drain the water, but remove the potatoes and carrots from the pot with a slotted spoon to a bowl.  Add the broccoli to the boiling water and cook for 2-4 minutes or until barely tender.  Remove broccoli from pot and discard water.  Heat the sausage in a skillet over low heat until the sausage is heated through.  Make your fondue and get the fondue pot ready.*  Arrange the sausage, carrots, pepper, broccoli and potatoes on indicidual serving plates in the shape of a rainbow.  Dip individual pieces into fondue with dipping forks. 

*Note: You can still make this recipe if you don't have a fondue pot! When the fondue is ready just pour the fondue in a serving dish and use bamboo skewers or forks to dip.  If it gets cold just heat the sauce in the microwave in 1 minute intervals or until warm again.  

Makes 4-6 servings

Taco Pizza

My family loves pizza.  Friday night is often pizza night at our house.  Jeff and I love to come up with new pizza ideas and we've come up with some pretty tasty ones.  I will be sharing more of them in future posts.  This taco pizza is a definitely a favorite!

We like to make this pizza in a baking pan and cut it in squares, but you can make it in a round pizza pan, on a pizza stone, just however you like to make pizza!  The fresh lettuce and sour cream on top make it taste just like a taco.  


Taco Pizza
Recipe by Prescriptions for a Happy Home

Ingredients:
Pizza dough, enough for one pizza (we love this recipe)
1 1/2 cups picante sauce (we use Pace brand)
1 8oz. can tomato sauce
1 lb. cooked ground beef (you can add taco seasoning if you like)
2 cups cheddar or taco blend cheese
1 1/2 cups shredded lettuce
1 cup sour cream

Directions:

Prepare your pizza according to your recipe directions up until the time you add the toppings.  Combine the picante sauce and tomato sauce. Spread over the crust.  Then add your ground beef and cheese.  Bake according to your pizza dough directions.  When done baking add some shredded lettuce.  Put the sour cream in a zip-lock bag and cut off a small hole on one end.  Squeeze the bag and spread the sour cream around the pizza.

Makes: 1 pizza 

St. Patrick's Day Printable

I don't know about you, but I love holiday printables. I try to have a printable for every holiday. Since St Patrick's Day is coming up, I though it might be time to get a St Patrick's Day printable.

I have a couple of different color options for you, and hopefully you can find one you like.

Enjoy!

(Logo does not appear in actual printable).

 
 Printable in White (JPG)
Printable in White (PDF)

Printable in Gold (JPG)
Printable in Gold (PDF)

Star Wars Birthday

For my little Jedi's 3rd birthday we threw a Star Wars party.   This kid knows every little detail about Star Wars.  One of the first songs he could hum was The Imperial March.   No joke.   We have Star Wars coming out of our ears at my house.  Thanks to him, I think I could hold my own in a Star Wars trivia contest.   

I knew we needed to plan an epic Star Wars party for him and it did not disappoint.  We were in Idaho visiting our grandparents and many of our cousins at the time which made this party extra special.   I started with some Star Wars invitations and used this great Star Wars font.  My husband was a huge help in getting the Star Wars wording just right. 

 Birthday banners are one of my favorite things to make for birthdays!  I’m getting quite the collection already.  It's a good thing that they don’t take up too much space.  For this birthday banner I used some green, blue and red cardstock.  I just traced a pennant shape on the paper and cut it out.  I used the Star Wars font to print out the letters and then cut them out and glued them on the card stock pennant.  This isn’t the best picture of it, but you get the idea.  Plus you get to see a cute, little Jedi. 

We started the party with a galactic dinner.  There are so many creative food ideas out there for any theme you want.  It’s so much fun to come up with your own menu!   I think our spread turned out quite nicely. 

-Han-wiches (ham sandwiches)

-Jar- Jar Links in a Blanket (little sausages in crescent dough- I forgot to uncover them for the picture, hopefully you get the idea. )

-Bow-ba Fett Pasta (pasta salad)

-Vader Veggies ( veggie tray)

-Princess Lays (Lays potato chips)

-Obi-wan Kabobies (fruit kabobs)

-Lightsabers (pretzels sticks in candy chocolate)

 -Qui Gon Gin-ger Ale (ginger ale), Yoda Soda (any green bottle soda), Vaderade  (red gator ade)

I used the Star Wars font again with some cardstock to make the name tags for the food items.  We got the Star Wars stickers at Wal-mart.  

Next it was time to come up with the activities.  No Star Wars party would be complete without lightsabers!  We cut a bunch red, green and blue pool noodles in half and used duct take to make a handles.  

We bought a bunch of white balloons and I had my husband draw some stormtrooper helmets on them. We tied them to sticks so they wouldn’t float away.  Due to the windy weather those storm troopers were flying all over the place.  That was all part of the plan, right?  It made them a little harder to defeat. They didn’t last very long, but the kids had fun with them while they lasted.   The kids just had a lot of fun playing with the lightsabers.  Even the grown ups got in on the fun. 

I really wanted to make a death star piñata.  How hard could it be, right?  Well, I went to every store in town and they didn’t have any piñata in a round shape at all.    Here is where you can learn from my mistake.   I could have just driven the 30 minutes to the nearest party store and got a round piñata right then and there.  But I didn’t.  I figured a round piñata wouldn’t be that hard to make from scratch.  I had done paper mache in school, so this would be a piece of cake.  I hadn't even got the first layer done when the balloon randomly popped, covering me and my mom's entire kitchen in nasty flour paste!  What a disaster.  Needless to say, we ended up getting a round soccer ball piñata and made a dent on one side to look like the Death Star and then painted it the correct color.  Trust me, save yourself the stress and just buy one.   The only downside to painting the piñata is that we put so many layers of paint on it that it was hard to break open.  We ended up needing a baseball bat to get it open.  So, just lightly paint your Death Star and everything should go smoothly.    

(pictures)


Cake time!  I love decorating cakes for my family. This time I made an R2 D2 cake.  I made a large cake in a 12x18 inch sheet cake pan and then one cake in a 9x13 pan.  I  cut the pieces for the legs out of the 9x13 cake.  Then I shaped one side of the sheet cake to be the bottom of the droid and rounded the other side for the top.  I used icing colors to get the right shade of colors and then I used a #16 star tip to do the entire cake.  It took a while, but was a lot of fun and definitely worth it.    

There you have it!  It was so much fun and the best part was watching my little Jedi enjoy it all!  I’ve got a feeling this won’t be the only Star Wars party I plan for this cute Jedi of mine.  

(picture)  

Chicken and Roasted Red Pepper Calzones

Every Valentine's day I make heart-shaped Calzones for dinner.  This year I decided to make up a new recipe and it did not disappoint.   I included the directions for making them regular and heart- shaped so you can make them however you like.  Sometimes the little details are what make the holidays extra special so I take a little extra time to make them heart-shaped on Valentine's day.   They are equally delicious either way and you can't go wrong with these delicious calzones!  

Chicken and Roasted Red Pepper Calzones
Recipe by Prescriptions for a Happy Home 

Ingredients:

Dough: (or you can substitute your favorite pizza dough)
2 1/4 tsp. yeast
1 cup water (110-115 degrees)
1 T. olive oil or butter, melted
1 T.  sugar
1 tsp. kosher salt
2 1/2 -3 cups all purpose flour  

Filling:
1 15 oz. container of ricotta cheese ( I used light, but you can use regular)
2/3 cup Parmesan cheese ( the fresh kind is best)

1 1/2 cups mozzarella cheese, shredded, divided

1 cup roasted red peppers, diced

2-3 cloves of garlic, minced  

1-2 T. Fresh parsley, chopped

1 1/2 cups fresh spinach, roughly chopped

1 cup cooked chicken, diced

1 egg, well beaten

Marinara or pizza sauce for dipping, optional

Instructions

Preheat oven to 400.

To make the dough combine 2 cups of flour, sugar, yeast and salt in a medium mixing bowl.  Add the water and olive oil or melted butter.  Mix well.  Add additional flour until it form a soft dough.  Set aside. 

In another mixing bowl combine the ricotta, Parmesan, 1/2 cup of the mozzarella cheese, peppers, garlic and parsley.  Mix well. Add chicken and spinach and stir to combine. Set aside. 

Divide the dough into 8-12 balls (more or less depending on how big you want your calzones to be). Take each ball and roll out into a circle, about 1/4 inch thick.   Spread 1/2 cup of the filling (this may be more or less depending on the size of your circle)  along one half of the dough, leaving 1/4 inch of dough along edges. Sprinkle a little mozzarella cheese on top of the filling. Fold the empty side of the dough circle over the filling side, creating a half circle.  Press the edges of the dough with a fork to seal.  Repeat with remaining dough.*  

Place the calzones a couple of inches apart a greased baking sheet.  Brush with egg.  Bake for 18-20 minutes, or until golden brown on top.  Serve with dipping sauce, if desired.

This recipes makes 8-12 calzones depending on the size/shape you make them



*If you want to make them heart-shaped (or any fun shape)  roll out the dough into a large rectangle 1/4 inch thick and cut out with a heart cookie cutter.   On half of the hearts place 1/4 cup of the filling covering the heart, leaving 1/4 inch along the edges around the edges of the dough. Sprinkle a little mozzarella cheese on top of the filling.  Place the other hearts on top of the filled ones.  Press the edges of the dough with a fork to seal. Roll out any leftover dough and repeat until you've used all the dough.