What's For Dinner? Week 3

We had a really nice evening out for Casey's birthday back on the 13th that I forgot to mention in my last dinner post.  Drinks and appetizers at Bar Louie and dinner at Nagoya.  Good food.  Good times.  Craig met a new friend at dinner (the husband of one of Casey's friends) who happens to be a police officer and they had a nice long chat about guns.  You know.  Boy stuff.  I heard about nothing but guns all weekend.  ;-)

Saturday morning brought a pancake breakfast as usual.  Weelicious whole wheat oatmeal pancakes.  I like mine with peanut butter, maple syrup and bananas on the side.

I made pumpkin pie-sicles again after such a long hiatus without them!  Kids were pleased.

In the evening, we had friends over for dinner.  It was potluck.  I made a spinach salad with strawberries, pecans and that awesome poppy seed dressing that Julie brought over for Jill's birthday.

Poppy Seed Dressing

1/3 cup cider vinegar

1/3 cup vegetable oil

1/4 cup sugar

1 tbsp Dijon mustard

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp pepper

1 small onion

**Process until smooth.

**Then stir in 2 tsp poppy seeds.

I really think it's the onion that makes this dressing so freakin' good.  So use a small one but don't skimp!

Sunday was a baking day for me.  Breads specifically.  I wanted to prepare a couple kinds for Sophie's party menu and pop them in the freezer:  pumpkin chocolate chip bread and banana tea bread.  But then I figured, while I was at it, I'd try another bread recipe from Pinterest that sounded reeeally good to me:  snickerdoodle bread!  Once you've got the basic bread ingredients all out on the counter, it's really not that much more work to try out multiple recipes.

Mmm!  I froze all but one snickerdoodle loaf and, oh my goodness, was it ever good!!  Cinnamon sugar "crust" on top and cinnamon chips baked into the bread.

After baking, I made dinner.  Despite how it sounds, I wasn't in the kitchen the entire day.  ;)  Just nap time and a little after.

It's asparagus season again!

And with that, I made my friend Sarah's lemon chicken and asparagus pasta.  (Recipe previously on my blog.)  Delicious!

On Monday, we were having burgers on the grill.  So I tried salt and vinegar broiled fingerling potatoes from Pinterest to go along side.  I would have liked them a smidge crispier, but they were good!

Another night this week, I prepared the homemade strawberry ice cream for Sophie's birthday party.  Anything to get prepped in advance!  This was the first time I'd ever made homemade strawberry before.  (Recipe came from the Cuisinart Ice Cream Maker booklet.)  It required washing, pureeing and straining the strawberries; boiling the cream, tempering the egg yolks; combining, cooling and finally churning the mixture in the ice cream maker.  Because it had to cool, this was a two-day process.  I got a double batch of the mixture made on one night and then churned it the next day.  Totally worth the effort!!!  Amazing flavor.  Though I actually liked it a little better when it was just soft and cold right out of the machine, instead of days later when it had hardened into typical "ice" cream.

On Thursday night (?) this week, I tried crispy southwest chicken wraps from Pinterest.  Craig and I loved them!  Kids... not so much.  ;)

And then Thursday night, I spent making Sophie's birthday cake for her actual birthday (banana bread cake with brown butter frosting - picture to come later) and French breakfast muffins for her birthday morning breakfast.  Both recipes from Pinterest.  Sophie's really been digging bananas lately, so when I asked her if she'd like a banana cake for her birthday, the answer was an emphatic "YES!"

And these little muffins were sweet and crispy on the outside and soft and crumbly in the middle.  I had the batter scooped into the muffin cups the night before and then baked them that morning so they were warm and crispy.  When they're warm out of the oven, you dunk them in melted butter and then in cinnamon-sugar.  Soooo good.  The blogger recommended perhaps leaving the extra butter and cinnamon mixture on the table for extra dunking.  That was dangerously delicious!  I might recommend letting them cool a bit longer than I did.  The cinnamon-sugar looked better as a topping when you could see the crystals on the latter bunch of muffins I did, as opposed to dark and wet-looking on the really warm muffins.  Make sense?  You can see the difference in the pictures.

For Sophie's birthday dinner, I asked Craig what he thought Sophie really ate well and would like for dinner and he said, of course, pizza.  We had a busy day planned and I decided that not cooking a meal was fine with me!  Sophie loved it!