Great Dinner + Funny Movie= Awesome "Date Night" on a Weeknight

And when I say "great dinner," you must be assuming we went out to eat, with my previous track record as a chef, but we actually had a great meal in!  Yesterday I called my friend Shelley in a half tizzy and asked her for some ideas for something different to make for dinner to pull me out of my same-foods rut.  She recommended this Mediterranean Chicken recipe.  She said she made it with chicken breasts instead of thighs and no olives and it was a huge hit at her house.  We don't like olives, but love Mediterranean food, and Kroger has fresh chicken breasts on sale this week, so it was a perfect fit.  Matt doesn't like asparagus, so I made artichoke hearts (which it turned out he tended to hate only slightly less than he hates asparagus) and Near East whole grain roasted garlic/pine nut cous cous for sides.

This recipe calls for actually placing your skillet in the oven.  I have never done this before for any recipe and saying I was uber-anxious might be an understatement.  Minus the burns on my hand and arm which resulted from my forgetting that the handle on the skillet was not cool like it normally would be, I had no reason for anxiety. But leave it to me to forget the entire skillet was in a 450 degree oven...twice.

Another first for me was cooking with wine.  It's a bizarre first, something I feel like I should have already conquered, but I'm never too fancy pants in the kitchen and I just never have had the need to use it.

After dinner, we went to see "Date Night" with Tina Fey and Steve Carell and it was hilarious.  If you like the humor styles of these two jokesters, this film is a must-see.  There were four total people in the theater, which to me, is like unspoken permission to spread yourself out as much as you want in the seats and laugh as loudly of as you feel like laughing.  And we did, which was quite enjoyable.  Not to mention the other two people in the theater were necking and petting on the back row.  We later came to realize that they were super young, as they awkwardly embraced goodbye and went home in their separate little high schooler cars.  So, given the circumstances...partial forgiveness for excessive PDA.

Anyway, so this movie is really funny.  Today, I am thinking back on some of the lines and laughing.  The plot, without spoiling, is about a married couple (Fey and Carell) with two kids.  They have transformed from that lovey dovey, newly married couple into the comfortable team of parents who are constantly going in separate directions, but getting everything done for their kids that they need to get done.  After hearing the news of two of their friends making the decision to split up, Carell decides to take Fey to think swanky restaurant in the city, instead of their typical date of steak and baked potatoes at a local joint.  They get all dressed up, arrive at the restaurant, only to find that they can't get a table.  They move to the bar to wait for something to possibly come open, and hear a hostess calling for a party of two and notice no one is responding.  They spontaneously decide to take the other couple's reservation in order to get a table.  Little do they know that doing this will make for one incredibly interesting night...

Even though this was a really typical "date night" for the Osbornes, we had a blast.

XOXO,

Aud