Friday Night Dinner

TBI gets to come home on the weekends, and we try to make the most of our time. I had a work thing to do on Saturday early in the morning, so we stayed in on Friday night and I made a special meal for him to precede the ice cream sandwiches seen below.

I made The Pioneer Woman's Spicy Chicken Legs, and while they were good, they lacked the excitement I was hoping for. I even added several good chugs of Franks RedHot and a generous amout of cayenne pepper to her recipe, but still they were pretty tame. They were very juicy, but not as herby and hot as I hoped they would be.

I also made roasted red potatoes, and all I have to say is, Make These Immediately.

Get two pounds of red potatoes, rinse them and cut them into fairly small bits - I think I cut them in 9ths.

Get out a cookie sheet, dumped the potato cubes on it, and pour 1/2 of a cup of olive oil over them, followed by a dash of seasoning salt and a package of onion soup mix. With a spatula, stir them around. I also threw a little minced fresh rosemary on there because I had it.






Heat the oven to 450, and throw em in. It will seem like they're cooking quickly, but I left them in at 450 for 20 minutes, then I lowered the heat to 400 (because I put the chicken legs in) for another 30 minutes. You want them browned and crispy on the outside. You could probably cook them even longer than that for a really crispy outside, which I think I will do next time.

TBI loves green beans, and we all love bacon, so I made extra-special green beans. Here's the process.

Heat a large saucepan of water on the stovetop, and dump in a bag of frozen whole green beans. Add some sort of base - I used mushroom but beef would work or vegetable. While that simmers, fry some bacon. I used three strips and cut them up with kitchen scissors right into the large frying pan. As soon as the bacon is crisp, drain off most of the grease, and drain the water off the blanched beans. Put the beans into the frying pan with the bacon, add some salt, pepper, and minced garlic, and turn the heat to low, stirring the beans occasionally and letting them get softened.

The Pioneer Woman also supplied an obscene recipe for buttery herbed bread, so I threw some of that together, since it's not a meal unless you use bacon and at least four sticks of butter. All in all it was a pretty easy meal to make, but seemed like a special one - even though I left the chicken under the broiler just a minute too long. Oh well.