Helen & Amber in the kitchen with Martha (well, ok...with a Martha cookbook)

Martha Stewart is the queen of the kitchen…of the whole house really! She knows good things when she sees them, so why not try out some recipes from one of her books for our return to Blog Dinner nights! J

We decided on a very health conscience menu tonight, starring some chicken poached in coconut milk…that’s right! Coconut Milk! YUM!

The Book:

The Menu:

The Undertaking:

Thankfully for our first night back on the task of making a meal for a crowd who were going to be critiquing us, we chose a meal that would be easy and quick to assemble…which is rare for a Martha Stewart recipe (at least in our experience).  We wanted to make sure that dinner was on the table at a decent hour for the kids to eat, so we opted to just feed them some chicken nuggets and raw veggies for supper (I am not sure if they would have enjoyed the coconut chicken anyways).  So really, we made two meals tonight in very good time!

Our prep work was done in no time at all.  Mince this, slice that, chop, chop, chop…DONE!  The main and side consisted of “throw all ingredients in a pot” which is my FAVORITE way to cook! 

Out of the three recipes that we did up for the main meal, the rice noodle cakes demanded the most of our time this evening, because we were frying up little rice noodle pancakes for everyone in one pan and it took some time.  But really, the meal was still probably done cooking in an hour (14 or 15 rice noodle cakes later).

Since we live in a small town and not all ingredients that are found in our favorite cook books can be found in town, we do occasionally have to substitute ingredients.  Tonight we substituted Arugula for Watercress and Radish Sprouts for Soya Bean Sprouts.  Funny thing about Radish Sprouts is that they taste a lot like radishes!  Two of our judges don’t normally eat spicy foods, so we try to make sure we don’t serve spicy foods at our Blog Dinner nights …but neither one of us put much thought into how a radish sprout would taste while out purchasing our groceries this morning. 

I sure realized our mistake this afternoon during prep when I just happened to pop a sprout in my mouth and was completely taken aback by the flavor of it!  I wasn’t really expecting a sprout to taste like a radish, but it’s got the exact same bite to it as an actual radish!  Woopsie daisies!  I laughed out loud and asked Helen if she had ever tasted one of these sprouts before and she said “No why?”, “Because they taste like radishes!!!”  We laughed about it and just hoped that they would go over well in our noodle cakes anyways…there wasn’t anything that we could do about it now.

Radish Sprouts were not the only spicy ingredient in our meal tonight that we snuck past our diners!  There were jalapenos in the salad dressing!  Who knew that salad dressing could taste SO GOOD!

The Judgment:

Arugula Salad

“My favorite part of the meal.  Very tasty with lots of flavor” – Amber’s Man

“I had SECONDS” – (veggie avoider) Helen’s Bob

“Ok” – Stuart

“Awesome!  Very good flavor.” – Andrea

The salad got an average score of 4.4 out of 5.

Chicken:

“I appreciate it for it’s healthiness but chicken and coconut milk are two ingredients without a lot of flavor.  This chicken was moist.” – Amber’s Man

“Tender and yummy.  Coconut milk added great flavor.” – Helen’s Bob

“Chicken = yummy, sauce = good” – Stuart

“Very moist and yummy” – Andrea

The chicken got an average score of 3.75 out of 5.

Crispy Rice Noodle Cakes:

“Again lacking in flavor.  Needed some sort of spicy sauce or something” – Amber’s Man

“Tasty but not very filling” – Helen’s Bob

“Good” – Stuart

“Ok, although I may have had prior expectations (potato – my bad) therefore didn’t give it the best chance” – Andrea

“My favorite part of the meal!” – Teenage Parker (no longer pre-teen LOL)

The Crispy Rice Noodle Cakes got an average score of 2.8 out of 5.

Green Tea with Mint Milkshakes:

“Excellent, very good!” – Amber’s Man

“Delicious and refreshing.  Almost tastes like it is a health drink.” – Helen’s Bob

“It was good.” – Stuart

“Yummy!” – Andrea

The kids all got to have some of our desert too.  Here is what they all had to say about it:

“No, I don’t really like milkshakes...” – Emmersyn (6 years)

“Yum!” – Carter (2 years)

“Delicious!” – Abbegail (6 years)

“I love it!” – Jaxon (6 years)

“This is my favorite!” – Samantha (3 years)

“Super like it!” – Seth (4 years)

We all forgot to score our Milkshakes, but they were very yummy so let say they were a 5 out of 5! J

Helen and Amber’s scores:

“The salad was absolutely delicious!  The lime made it even better!!  I would make this again LOTS!” – Helen

“The salad was FANTASTIC!  Super, super good.  I expected it to be spicy because of the jalapenos, but it wasn’t – it was just really, really good!” – Amber

“The coconut flavor in the chicken was strong and therefore delicious!  I thought it could use a touch of finishing salt but it was fantastic!” – Helen

“Really tasty!  Really happy to be able to taste the coconut flavor in the chicken…I was a little surprised.” – Amber

“It was my least favorite part of the meal.  Too many sprouts and it needed more flavoring.  I added the chicken coconut juice and it helped.” – Helen

“They were okay, but not super flavorful even thought there was a ton of ingredients in them.” – Amber

“The milkshake was really yummy!  So fresh tasting!” – Helen

“The milkshake was SO GOOD!  I love the addition of the mint!” – Amber

We were so pleased with the success of our first blog dinner night all together again after almost 9 months!  In the past nine months, a lot has happened to our little family here in our small town!  Amber and Emmersyn committed a ton of time in the fall to the community theater and appeared in “The Sounds of Music”, which was such a great way to end 2011.  And what better way to start 2012 but to welcome an addition to our family!!!  Helen and Bob had a little baby boy at the beginning of February!  And luck Baby Boy Lewis got to sit at the big kids table during his very first blog dinner night!

I am going to finish up by letting you all know of a little change that is going to be happening to our blog.  Since blog dinner night takes a lot of preparation and balancing of 3 family schedules, we have decided to do our big blog dinner nights once a month and do a blog each week about a recipe that we either find on Pinterest (our new addiction), or online or in a magazine.  In this weekly blog we will share the recipe with our readers so that they can make the recipes that we try out at home too!

We hope that you will enjoy our changes and that you all will try some of the recipes out with us!

Let us know what your favorite recipes are so that we can try them in our kitchens too! J