This month let’s celebrate with a special fancy dinner at home. Bring out the tablecloth, cloth napkins, special china and candles to make this a night to remember. You can have your children add their favorites into the menu choices or use the ones below. Your child can create invitations and hand them out to other family members with the time and place for this special dinner. This would also be a great way to celebrate a loved one’s birthday, anniversary or even a family Valentine’s night.The night of the dinner let your child help set the table with place cards and candles. Then as the family is seated, bring out each serving separate, rather than serving family style.
Tonight’s Menu
Salad- Cranberry Walnut with
Champagne Dressing
Dinner Entrée-Grilled Meats
or Seafood
Side- Potato Skins
Dessert- Chocolate Fondue
Cranberry and Walnut Salad
Ingredients:
- 1 head Iceberg lettuce, washed and shredded
- 1 cup chopped walnuts
- 1 cup dried cranberries or craisins
- 1 cup shredded parmesan cheese
- Garibaldi’s Champagne dressing, found in the grocery store
Directions:
Have your child place the rinsed and dried lettuce in a small bowl for each person eating dinner (think like a restaurant). Then sprinkle with walnuts, cranberries or craisins, and top with shredded parmesan cheese. Let each person add their dressing when they eat.
Grilled Meats or Seafood
Ingredients/Directions:
- Favorite meat/seafood of your choice - Salmon, Shrimp, Steak or Chicken
You can also do a combination of two meats like chicken and steak or offer steak and shrimp (think surf and turf). After you grill your meat, slice into small slices and serve.
Potato Skins
Ingredients:
- About 1 large baking potato for every 2 people
- 2 cups shredded cheddar
- 6-8 bacon slices, cooked and crumbled
- Sour cream on the side if you wish
Directions:
- Wash the potatoes and bake at 350 degrees for about 1 hour or until soft when you poke a fork into them. Then cool completely.
- When cooled, slice open length wise and scoop out the potato. Make sure you leave a little of the potato pulp inside.
- Save the scooped potato to make mashed potatoes another night.
- Slice the potato skins all the way through length wise then cut one more time across so that you have two large chunks of skin. You can cut each chunk again to make 4 potato skin pieces if you want more skins per person.
- Rub the skins with olive oil and bake for 10-15 minutes at 350. You are trying to make them crispy here. Then add the cheddar cheese and bacon and bake again for 10 minutes. If you want more of a twice baked potato simply add some of the cooked potato back in. Serve while they are hot.
Chocolate Fondue
Ingredients:
- Chocolate to melt. You can use the candy melting pieces or a bag of milk chocolate or semi sweet chocolate chips. Fresh fruits, etc.
Directions:
Melt chocolate in a glass microwave safe bowl. Start out at 45 seconds and go from there until the chocolate is melted. You don’t want to prepare this early as it will just get hard again.
- You can create your own fondue pot by adding a small, votive candle under the raised dish to keep it warm. Adult supervision is recommended.
- Use a variety of items to dip in chocolate. Some suggestions include sliced bananas, strawberries, pound cake or marshmallows.
- You can prepare this dessert early by dipping the items into the chocolate and laying them on wax paper. Refrigerate until hard and then place on a serving plate until ready to eat.
