08 Jul
8 Homemade Dishes in One Weekend
That Husband doesn’t like receiving material things, so I decided to gift him a weekend of meals as gourmet as I could possibly make them. As you’ll see, it was a very indulgent weekend for both of us! I highly recommend everything I made, as the dishes weren’t that difficult, and tasted scrumptious.
I won’t be reposting recipes that I’ve linked to here, but a few of them were out of some cookbooks I own and I”ll write those recipes up and respost them here so you can give them a try!
Birthday breakfast was a Country Frittata With Potatoes, Pancetta & Basil. I was worried that the bottom was overcooked but it tasted wonderful, and the top (as you’ll see below) was golden and cheesy. I pushed the sides over to let the uncooked egg run to the bottom several more times than the recipe reccomended because TH is really sensitive to raw egg.
Served on the red “You Are Special” plate of course. Did your family have one of these growing up?
I meant to make lunch, but we were so stuffed from our late breakfast that we skipped lunch and just had dinner instead. I went all fancy and laid a tablecloth on the table (from Goodwill for $1!)
I found stemmed glasses at TJMaxx for $1.99 each and picked up some Mormon bubbly. The salt and pepper shakers are special because they’re the first gift that TH ever gave me, for my 22nd birthday, right before we started dating. He bought them with a friend and they each gave me one as a late birthday gift, and after we started dating he admitted that he gave me the one with the heart on the chest on purpose. 
Pear and Spinach Salad with Homemade Poppyseed Dressing from my Hometown Favorites cookbook (it’s really a cookbook from my hometown!)
Mushroom Rice Pilaf, recipe from the Williams & Sonoma Bride and Groom Cookbook.
I made the rice in the rice cooker instead of simmering for the recommended 30 minutes. Very quick and easy!
Roast Chicken with Lemon and Herbs, recipe from the Williams & Sonoma Bride and Groom Cookbook.
I meant to make this for lunch on Saturday, but we had it for lunch after church on Sunday instead. Both the pizza and the fries were like a garlic bomb. I LOVED IT.
Garlic Glazed Chicken Pizza with homemade pizza crust. I made the pizza crust using our bread maker, and decided to make one pie with the amount of dough instead of two like the bread maker recipe booklet suggested. This ended up being a great choice because the crust was able to soak up the extra juices from the chicken glaze. The chicken came from the leftover we had from the roast chicken I made the night before. Don’t skip out on the Gruyere cheese, it’s a must-have!
Garlicky Baked Fries. I walked away from this meal stuffed because I could not stop eating these fries.
And the birthday dessert (because their has to be a birthday dessert, even if I forgot to buy candles)…
Molten Chocolate Cake
This is crazy easy people. CRAZY. I halved the recipe substituted strawberries for raspberries when I made the coulis (the strawberries were on sale). And then I put the coulis on the ice cream instead of the cake because I couldn’t bear to dilute the intensity of the molteness with fruit.
See that liquid center? Oh baby.
Really Good Vanilla Bean Ice Cream with Strawberry Coulis drizzled on top.
I used two vanilla beans instead of one. This was a good idea.
One tip: The only way I was able to manage all of this (because it was a lot of work!) was to do all of my prep work the night before. I chopped all the vegetables up and put them in baggies (the fridge has smelled like garlic for days), made the ice cream base, lightly cooked the pizza cruse and wrapped it up tight in saran wrap, seasoned the chicken, and grated all of the cheeses. And then I plugged in my BodyBugg and learned that being on your feet and cooking that long actually burns a lot of calories! Of course I ate them all back, and more, over the next two days.
I'm a farm-raised almost-crunchy stroller-pushing picture-taking lifestyle-blog-writing gastronomy-obsessed divine-seeking thrift-store-combing cheese-inhaling pavement-pounding laughter-sprinkling lover of individuality and taking chances.
we totally had one of those red “you are special today” plates growing up…
but we never used it.
i guess we weren’t special very often. or else we were forgetful. i’ll hope for the latter.
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1Everything looks scrumptious! What a thoughtful and special birthday treat for TH!!
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2What a special birthday treat!!
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3GO YOU!! I should do this someday…yeah…um.
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4wow, can I have you over to cook my birthday meal? Geez, everything looks really good!
very cute story about the salt and pepper shakers
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5Totally awesome Jenna! The meals look divine! I haven’t busted out my ‘soon-to-be-culinary-wife-in-the-kitchen’ skills yet, but I hope to soon! I think I might try some of these recipes too!
As a wedding gift, the eldest woman in our family who is 92 years old gave us her personal recipes in a beautiful book. And they are all traditional Puerto Rican food recipes too. So I am hoping to whip those out and really make them a staple piece in our home.
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6What a great wife you are! Those meals look awesome, and love me the garlic as well. The first birthdays celebrated while married make it extra special too.
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7My stomach is growling right now…
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8Wow! That’s definitely a very nice present! Everything looks so delicious!
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9Hey Thanks for the plug!
Your hubby is a lucky man!
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10We had that exact plate! Crazy!
All of these look amazing!
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11Ohmygoodness, I love the green dishes the rice and roast chicken are in! Where did those come from?
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12Wow Jenna, this all looks scrumptious! Yum, great job!
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13Yum! I have the Jean Georges cook book and have been meaning to make the molten chocolate cakes. Were you able to flip them over onto a plate for nice presentation or did you eat em straight from the ramekins?
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14Ah where did you find a “special” plate?! We had one growing up and it always felt extra good when mom whipped it out for birthdays or a good report card.
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15We had that plate. And we used it as often as possible. Talks/Scriptures/Prayers in Primary, good grades, musical numbers, birthdays, etc. Awesome. We also had a backup plate in case two of us were special at the same time.
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16I made the garlicky fries last night - they WERE amazing!!! I only made two potatoes worth and took off roughly a third of each ingredient. So yummy!
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17I LOVE warm, runny chocolate cakes. I’ll have to buy cute ramekins from HomeGoods (I’ve always wanted to, anyway!) & give it a try!
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