Meal and a Movie Night

This was my daughter's week to pick a family activity so she created "Meal and a Movie Night".  Her idea was for each family member to find a recipe, make it, and share it with the family as a special meal.  Then, we'd all watch a movie!  Throughout the week, we each picked out a recipe, wrote down the ingredients on a shopping list, and then we went shopping for the ingredients together. 

Although it was difficult timing and coordinating each recipe in the kitchen, everyone agreed that this was one of the most fun activities we've done as a family--and we never left the house.  My daughter chose to try a Paula Deen recipe from Food Network magazine called "Sweet Potato Bisquits".  As usual, she added her own flair, adding cheese to half of the recipe just to see how that would work, and she made them free-form rather than rolled out and cut. 

My oldest son, who has never cooked anything and would even prefer me to cut his own bagel in the morning, chose to make his own version of a Bobby Flay--inspired burger with green chile sauce.  For this, he had to learn how to measure, blend, chop, and create a recipe.  He even learned how to work with grill with the supervision and help of my husband. 

My second son, decided to try something new and complicated--pork pot stickers.  He found a recipe on http://www.recipe.com/ and as usual, wanted no short cuts and wanted to change the recipe to make it his own. My husband and I each took turns supervising and helping him with this recipe--making the dough and filling, boiling them, and then frying them. 

My youngest had been begging to make a recipe he'd seen at a friend's house--milkshakes.  So he createda mint chocolate milkshake on his own.  This was perfect for him as all he needed to do was blend it in the blender!  Boy, was it scrumptious.

My husband and I topped off the meal with a special treat that the kids have never tasted yet--Pistachio Gelati.  The whole meal ended up being a "tasting party" as each dish was something we'd never tried before and happened to have a sort-of international flavor in the end.  My favorite part was getting to work one-on-one with each child in an activity and then coming together as a family to enjoy.  Although we all couldn't agree on the movie (truth be told!), we did watch one together with just some grumbling.  The whole evening was a lot of fun.