Family Dinner Experiment...so far so good

So I decided to actually implement the family dinner plan that I've wanted to do for a long time. Each person takes a night and plans the meal and cooks it. We started on Saturday and Brydin (11) got to start. He made fajitas, a bean dip, and a cheesecake all with minimal supervision. I was there mostly to say...Um....check the recipe again. He did a great job and Landin (13) was the only one not to eat it (anyone surprised? We weren't.) :)

Yesterday it was my turn. I made potstickers and fried rice from scratch and got premade egg rolls. The rice turned out very good. The potstickers smelled amazing the entire time I was putting them together. I had to make a conscious effort not to taste the filling...it smelled so good I wanted to see how it tasted...but the major ingredient was raw ground chicken. Church wasn't until 11:30 so I thought I'd be prepared and made the potstickers before church. I put the assembled potstickers in a baggie and put them in the fridge. That was my undoing. When I tried to fry them I found they were one enormous mass of potsticker rather than the individual dumplings I had spent an hour assembling. I was so upset! So instead of frying them the whole lump went into the oven and we just cut pieces off. It still tasted really good...just wasn't the effect I had wanted.

Tonight was Kierstin's turn. She made macaroni & cheese with hot dogs. I really don't like the mac 'n' cheese from the box that my kids love so I was happy that she agreed to make it from scratch. I also convinced her to leave the hot dogs to the side so that those who don't want the hot dogs IN the macaroni (me) didn't have to have them. She also made these cute little strawberry/kiwi "shortbreads" out of a kids' cookbook. She's 7 so her part in this was slicing hot dogs with a butter knife, stirring and adding ingredients but she didn't care. I also let her assemble the dessert basically by herself so she was happy. It was really easy. The shortbread was really the buttermilk biscuits in a tube that were baked and then cut in half. Then put in a little scoop of whipped topping, some kiwi, and some strawberries and then put the top back on.

I think tomorrow night is Billy's night. I'm liking this. If I can keep up getting menus from everyone for 2 weeks out then we might be able to keep this going. We are even eating at the table as a family...without the TV on!! Yea! It's amazing what you can do when you have a normal Mon-Fri 8-5 job. I could get used to this. :)