Weekend Date night

Friday night turned out to be a HUGE success. The meal came out delicious and Jack and I had so much fun making it together. We didn't end up making the dessert, because we got home much later than planned and were exhausted by the time we were done cooking. After I picked up Jack from work I dropped him off at The Great Lost Bear to have a couple beers with a friend while I went to the grocery store. I went to one that I had never shopped at before and was much larger than the Hannaford I am used to so it took an extra long time to find all the ingredients that I needed. Finally at around 7pm we made it home and I was able to lay out all the ingredients and begin cooking.

The cooking ended up being easier than I thought, we started off by mincing the garlic and the onions to prepare the cream cheese filling and extra onion for the balsamic cream sauce. We sauteed the garlic and the onions to bring out more flavor, mixed it in with the cream cheese, and added a little bit of basil. Jack had to filet the chicken as I am not as good as he and pound it with a meat tenderizer until it was as thin as possible. One thing neither of us have mastered is doing this with out creating holes in the chicken, but this time we were able to cover the wholes with the prosciutto so it ended up working out. 

We laid the prosciutto , topped on the cream cheese, and folded it in half. It was now time to begin cooking. The cooking actually turned out to be the most complicated part as we were trying to boil the pasta, pan fry the chicken, pan fry the asparagus, make the balsamic cream sauce, and time it so that every single one came out at the exact same time. This was even more complicated because we only have one large burner on our stove, but we made it work. 

This is my lovely leopard print apron I got from TJ Max for a steal at only $7.00 yaay bargains!

The balsamic cream sauce was as easy as it was a challenge. I realized when we got home that it called for two tablespoons of butter, which, surprise!, we had no butter :-( so I decided that margarine would work just as well and it sort of did. The hard part was after you melted the butter they wanted you to add the onions and let them caramelize, or turn a golden brown, which was supposed to take 15 minutes. I waited and waited and it wasn't changing color at all so I took a break and walked out of the kitchen for just a couple minutes, came back and the onions were burnt to a crisp. I decided rather than try again I would just leave them, because it would have taken much longer and we would have had to wait. Afterwords, I added the balsamic vinegar, let it cook for about a minute then added the heavy cream and parmesan  cheese and continued to stir until all the cheese was melted. It ended up tasting more like alfredo sauce with just a hint of balsamic, but was still delicious.

Little Leia also helped a lot.

The first chicken breast we made ended up burning on one side. Since I usually bake chicken (and the breasts were monstrous) I was unsure of how long it should cook and overcooked it. Jack said it still tasted delicious though. After this was done we threw in mine which cooked just right. We waited for the pasta and we were ready to eat!

TA DA!

It was absolutely perfect. The chicken was incredible even though I ended up taking out a lot of the prosciutto from mine as it was a meat I had never tried before and even though I liked it I didn't love it and thought it would be better to not eat the calories. The sauce on the pasta was amazing it tasted like a tangy alfredo sauce. We sat at the table which is something we don't do nearly often enough and had a very nice romantic night. 

Saturday and Sunday both turned out to be fantastic as well. On Saturday my sister came over and we spent the entire day relaxing. We watched a lot of the Olympic Games which was nice, except for my hormones causing me to randomly burst into tears at any commercial that was slightly emotional. 

On Sunday I ended up waking up at 6am and going to Wal-Mart, because I figured it would be much less crowded then at 8am or 9, which was correct. For brunch I went to Kennebunk, Maine to visit one of my very good friends and her new baby Ella Belle. I hadn't seen her in over five months so it was very nice to catch up and I hadn't met her little girl yet. 

Jack and Baby Ella!

All in all it was a wonderful weekend and a great way to get my mind off the stressful things that have been going on.