Food and Friends

This weekend, I wanted to try out cooking with friends. It is much more fun than cooking alone. We had a blast! Three of my friends from college came over, we picked dinner and dessert recipes from pinterest, and we made a grocery list. We selected pan roasted chicken penne with sun dried tomatoes (long name) for dinner and tiramisu for dessert (a little ambitious…I was worried). 

            A little back ground information on my friends.  I was in a sorority in college.  It was one of the best decisions I ever made because not only did it give me great experiences, but it brought me the majority of my closest friends.  Part of the sorority experience is receiving a “Big” and most people will take a “Little” at some part during their experience.  I was blessed with taking two of the best Littles possible and they also became two of my best friends! (I also have a wonderful Big, but she was not there last night)  My first little, Becca, is also a twin and I became very close with her sister, Sammy. So last night’s dinner event was myself, my two littles Becca and Rachael, and Sammy!

The first step was to go to the store.  I needed a larger frying pan so we went to Walmart (after a trip to the liquor store to purchase the Amaretto for the tiramisu).  We were able to get almost everything except the mascarpone cheese (the boy who stocked the dairy department hadn’t even heard of it!)  and the lady fingers for the tiramisu, which I should have figured.  We then found the mascarpone cheese at Harris Teeter but still no lady fingers (I guess no grocery store sells these?).  At this point, if I were by myself, I would have given up, but my friend had the bright idea of making them ourselves, which we did, successfully! We had to make the dessert first because it needed to sit in the fridge for a long time.  The lady fingers were not originally part of the baking plan so they were a set back in time, but kind of fun to make.  We mixed up the batter and we had to make our own pastry bag out of a gallon sized Zip Lock bag to pipe them onto the pan (we were resourceful).  They were not the prettiest things ever but they turned out good! We soaked them in the coffee and liquor and layered them with the mascarpone cheese mixture and topped it with cocoa powder and chocolate shavings (which we shaved ourselves!) This dessert was 100% homemade!  

While the dessert was chilling in the fridge, we started the pasta dish.  This dish was delicious and so easy! All that was needed was sun-dried tomatoes (we bought the wrong thing-bruschetta topping- but it still worked!), garlic cloves, chicken, paprika, salt, half and half, mozzarella cheese, and penne.  The dessert easily took over an hour to make, the dinner dish only took about twenty minutes! And it was soo good!!  There was also a lot of Amaretto left over so we got super fancy and made the after dinner cock tail Amaretto Sours with lemon juice and a sprinkle of sugar!

We made a very delicious meal without a whole lot of trouble! So I know I am capable of making something really good, I just need to figure out how to convince my future husband to allow them to live with us so they can help me cook dinner! I’m just kidding!  But for real…We are going to make this a monthly occurrence so they are going to help my cooking skills grow and I am excited!  We always have so much fun together and who does not love food?  I know I do!  Until next time!