It was a non-traditional dinner at our house. For all my recipe collecting and sometimes serious cooking, this was a relaxing day.

Chicken Piccata Something

This was a frozen entree I bought at Sam's Club. It is pieces of chicken breast in a garlic sauce with artichoke hearts and capers and tomatoes, but not totally red like a marinara sauce. It can be cooked in the microwave in 10 minutes.

Penne Pasta Veloute

I made that Veloute Sauce in my previous post about Turkey Orloff and used it to coat cooked penne pasta and put shredded mozzarella on the top before baking it in the oven. I didn't want naked pasta squirming around on the plate in the sauce from the chicken, but I also didn't want pasta that was just cheesy. This filled the bill.

Garlic Bread

I usually make yeast dinner rolls, but I took a holiday and bought a loaf of French bread. I could have split it lengthwise and spread it with garlic-herb butter with cheese in it and broiled it. Nope. I sliced it and dipped them in a mixture of butter, olive oil, and minced garlic, then made it a loaf shape again in foil and heated it through. You know - like your mama used to make in the 1960's for a barbecue.

Sauteed Spinach

I sauteed some minced onion in what was left of the stuff I dipped the French bread in, and then sauteed fresh baby spinach in it until it was limp and threw in some crumbled cooked bacon because it needed something, and I've heard that everything is better with bacon. Our guest pronounced it good spinach. She doesn't like canned spinach (who does?).

Fruit Salad

This was red grapes, fresh pears, and a little bit of orange segments in a cream cheese/sour cream mixture sweetened with brown sugar.

Caesar Salad Sort Of

I made some Ranch Dressing from their mix that doesn't require buttermilk, but I used Miracle Whip and half-and-half instead of mayonnaise and milk. The result was thicker and sweeter than it should have been, but I put some grated Parmesan in it and called it Caesar, and garnished the salad with shredded Parmesan-Romano mix. Tasted good; it was refreshing with the other parts of the meal.

Dessert. Hah!

Apple Pie with Vodka Pie Crust

I used that America's Test Kitchen Vodka Pie Crust recipe I posted before. But this time I used all the liquid called for in the recipe, and it was the gloppiest mess, more like cookie dough. I had to chill it thoroughly to roll it out, and it was very soft and puffy feeling. It baked up crisp on the outside but still puffy, and extremely flaky. It was probably the best pie crust I've ever made.



We ate it with eggnog ice cream.

Overall, it was a low-stress dinner.

And my cousin Betsy enjoyed it all. We finished out the day by bowling on the Wii, and then found Christmas songs on the computer and Betsy sang along with them. She loves singing.

I gave her some food containers "as seen on TV" which is all she cared about, and a battery recharger for AA batteries. She goes through a lot of them with her cheap little hand-held electronic games.

I also made some home-made Eggnog recipe that I posted recently. I couldn't find brandy extract so used rum extract, and the flavor was really good. It stayed fluffy in the refrigerator, so not dense like dairy eggnog, but I think that made it go further, and it wasn't as nauseatingly sweet. Princess was very happy with it, as you can see.



There is no booze in that eggnog, Betsy's just naturally loopy.