Thanksgiving Themed Date

I thought it would be fun to celebrate Thanksgiving a few days early, alone, with my husband. We'll get together with my side of the family on the actual holiday.

It seems like every year, around this time, my husband will suggest that we make a turkey cranberry wreath. It's a Pampered Chef recipe. Anyway, I decided to stuff the filling inside this roll recipe and make them look festive...like turkeys. 

I'm pretty proud of myself for coming up with this cute turkey idea, well...except for the feather idea, that came from the ever popular turkey melon appetizer. My husband thought they looked very pinteresty.

To decorate the turkeys face, I used chocolate chips, a carrot and red bell pepper. The actual head is a small roll I baked. Most of the parts were secured with tooth picks or shish kabob sticks.

Here is a picture of the filling that was stuffed inside the rolls. The flavor combination is really good. Oh, I should tell you that I use 3 Tbsp of cranberry sauce instead of dried cranberries. I add an extra Tbsp of honey mustard and I think that is all of the adjustments I make.

For dessert, I made cookies that look like corn. I used this cookie recipe. The corn cookie idea came from pinterest. For the leaves, I used green gum drop like candy instead of fruit roll ups though.

 

We had an appetizer too. I dyed hummus orange with food coloring and made it look like a pumpkin. I served it with chips that look like thanksgiving fruit baskets.

 Here is a picture of what the table looked like. Well, minus one turkey roll.

Here is a picture of the two I made for our date.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Norwegian Dinner Date

I love  traditions, especially holiday traditions. Lately, I've been thinking about how it would be fun to learn more about the holiday traditions of other countries. Then I came across some pins on pinterest for a Norwegian Christmas meal. There was mashed rutabaga, sweet and sour cabbage, and a delicious looking pastry called skolleboller.

The pastry is really what sold me on having a Norwegian themed dinner date, because they looked fantastic and cardamom is in the recipe, which is one of our favorite spices.

The pastries can be served in smaller cookie sized portions or in larger doughnut sized portions.  They are baked with a custard filling, then they are covered in a sugar icing and coconut topping.

The smell of cardamom sugar filled the air while they were baking. It was a heavenly aroma. I thought they turned out great, but I think a cream cheesy danish filling might be better. My husband liked them too.

For dinner we had mashed rutabaga, sweet and sour cabbage, and sausage (we used tofu.)

The dinner was interesting. The mashed rutabaga was very similar to mashed potatoes and the sweet cabbage was very similar to purple cabbage.

Recipes
Mashed Rutabaga Recipe
Sweet & Sour Cabbage Recipe (I omitted the bacon/flour/water. I used red wine vinegar instead of regular vinegar and added a 3 Tbsp of canola oil.)
Skolleboller Recipe

Ratatouille Themed Date

Ratatouille is one of our favorite animated movies. It has a lighthearted fun storyline that makes me laugh every time I watch it. I like the music and how it's set in Paris too.

For our date, I surprised my husband with this french movie inspired dinner. I had french music (Alizze) playing in the background. We waited until the baby went down before we watched the movie.

Dinner:

I wanted to serve ratatouille like they do in the movie, but I thought it would make a better side dish. So, I bought cordon blue at Roth's grocery for the main dish.

This is how the ratatouille looked before I covered it in cheese. I've included the recipe for it below.

Here's a close up of what it looked like with cheese.

For dessert, I made macarons using this recipe. The cookies are hard to get right, and mine weren't perfect, but I liked the flavor and texture.

 Just this week, before our date, my husband quoted the movie saying, "if I don't love it, I don't swallow." I thought it was so funny/ironic and it made me think to print out the quote and put it on the table for our date.

The date was suppose to be a surprise, but my husband guessed the theme of it when he saw sliced veggies on the counter. I'm not surprised, because I've made ratatouille before, when I was trying to eat more veggies.

The flavor combination between the ratatouille and cordon blue was fantastic. I will definitely make this dinner again. Here is the recipe for the ratatouille I made.

Ratatouille
3 large red potatoes, sliced
1 yellow squash, sliced
1 zucchini, sliced
2 Tbsp oil
2 Tbsp mustard (I used spicy)
1/2 tsp salt

Mix everything together. Put veggies in a single row in the oven. I baked them at 400 degrees and turned them every 10 minutes until they started to brown. When they finished baking, I put them in a glass oven safe bowl, covered them with a cheddar cheese blend and baked the dish until the cheese had melted.

Note - You can cook the veggies at a higher temp (450 to 475.) Just check them often so they don't burn. I cooked them at 400 degrees, because I was cooking them with the cordon blue in the oven.

Inception Themed Date

Inception is one of our favorite movies. It's a little complicated, but the unique and creative story line really sets it apart from other movies, in my opinion. It had been awhile since we had seen the movie and I felt like it was time to watch it again. I knew my husband would enjoy an "Inception" themed date, so I surprised him with one.

Here is a picture of the movie inspired food I made. I had the soundtrack playing in the background.

The movie is all about dreams. People can share dreams and the person who creates the dream world (maze) is known as the architect.

I thought it would be fun to create a food maze. I used bite size pieces of pizza for the project. I thought about using larger slices, but it would have made the maze too big. My idea for this particular maze came from here (Wikipedia.)

In the movie, dreamers can go into different layers of dreams, which is referred to as a "dream within a dream." Time is faster in the dream world and speeds up with each layer. The characters in the movie go down 4 dream layers to do inception.

For our date, I made a dessert to represent the "dream within a dream" idea. It was a circular peanut butter rice crispy treat. I tented batches of it with food coloring to create layers. See recipe below...

 

A totem is a small object used by the characters in the movie, to tell whether they are in a dream or not. I used chocolate kisses to make my totems (one on top, one on bottom, glued together with chocolate.)

The quote hanging above the food table is pictured below. Here is a video link to that part of the movie. This video clip may seem odd if you haven't watched the movie. So, I'll explain...dreamers have to die or get a "kick" in order to wake up from their dreams.

One of the props in the movie, is a pinwheel and we happen to have a pinwheel at home. The baby plays with it. I thought it would be fun to put it on the table, but I forgot. I ended up bringing it out during the movie though.

My husband guessed the theme of our date after reading the quote above our table out loud. It was fun to see his reaction. Then we enjoyed the dinner and watched the movie later on that night.

Rice Crispy Recipe
Each layer was made by heating up 2 cups of marshmallows in the microwave for 45 seconds, then adding 2 Tbsp of peanut butter, a few drops of food coloring, and 2 cups of rice crispys.

Fall Themed Date

I surprised my husband with a fall themed dinner yesterday.

Beverage:

I served apple cider in apple cups with cinnamon sticks, an idea I've seen circulating on pinterest lately.

Appetizer:

My husband loves hummus, so I made some and shaped it on a plate to look like an acorn. I added chopped almonds to create the top.

We like to eat hummus with pita or flat bread, so I chose to serve the dip with baked bread leaves. I got the idea for the leaves from this site.

 I liked how the paprika, cheese and herbs gave the bread a splash of color to look like fall leaves.

 Main Course:

For the main course, I made chicken and dumpling soup with pumpkin shaped rolls. Here is a link to the soup recipe I used. I got the idea for the pumpkin rolls from this site, but used a different recipe (I used half whole wheat flour when making the bread.)

 Here is a close up of the rolls.

 Dessert:

My husband likes the flavor of apples, but not the texture. So, I made caramel pears instead of caramel apples. I added these toppings - milk/white chocolate, marshmallows and chopped almonds.

Here's another picture of how the table was set up.

My husband thought the dinner was artistic and that the pears were especially fancy. We both enjoyed the dinner and then went on a drive and enjoyed the fall colors. We ended our date by shopping at the world market. I love that store. We'll have to do this date again in the future with our kids.

The Chronicles of Narnia - Themed Date

Recently, I came across a box of Turkish delights in T.J. Max. Seeing the treats, made me think of the Narnia movies. Well, the first one in particular. You know the part, where the white witch gives Edmund Turkish delights and hot chocolate?

Well, I'm glad I saw them, because the candy sparked my idea to have a "Narnia" themed date.

I figured the date would go over well with my husband, since he read and enjoyed the book series when he was younger.

So, last night, I handed him the box of Turkish delights and asked, "Can you guess what our date is going to be tonight?" He guessed the "Narnia" story right away.

We ate the Turkish delight candy and drank hot chocolate while watching the first movie in the series (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.)

Here is a picture of what the Turkish delights looked like inside the box.

I tried to serve the hot chocolate in fancier cups, similar to what the white witch does in the movie.

It had been so long since I had seen the first "Narnia" movie that it was kind of like watching a new movie for me. We both enjoyed our date and I think it would be fun to do again when our kids get older.