I had some friends over for dinner tonight. With my kids’ help, I planned what turned out to be a great kid-friendly and adult-delicious dinner. My kids are 15 and almost 18. Theirs are 5 year old twins.
For appetizers, I put out some chips and salsa, always easy. I also made up some bruschetta on toasted baguette slices and some crackers with a bit of cream cheese topped with a chipotle raspberry sauce from Costco. For the bruschetta , you toast slices of baguette, spread with a cream cheese and chopped basil mix, broil another minute, then top with a mix of diced tomatoes, capers (or black olives) and green onions. To die for!
The main course for dinner was this recipe for chicken cutlets. These always take a bit longer than I think, but they are easy to do if your company is sitting in the kitchen with you nibbling and sipping on wine while the kids, young and old, are playing Guitar Hero. Slice the chicken up earlier and let it marinate in the buttermilk for the afternoon. If you want to be super organized, mix up the bread crumbs and cheese and seasonings ahead too.
I also cooked up some fettucini with alfredo sauce. It came out a bit dry because I cooked up a whole pound of fettucini, not being used to cooking for 7. I’ll add more sauce tomorrow. We have at least a 1/2 pound less so I could easily have gotten by with much less.
I made a simple salad of romaine lettuce with some chopped cucumber and tomatoes from the garden, and served a few dressings on the side.
For dessert, we drove over to Yolatea in downtown Pleasanton. Great place to for kids and adults, as everyone can take just as much as they can eat/want.
Not a fancy dinner but one that seemed pleasing to all palettes and let me enjoy the company. I meant to send my friends home with some cucumbers and tomatoes but we got distracted by a dance-off and then going to dessert.
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