The Friday Night Dinner Project: Diner Dinner

For this week’s installment of the Friday Night DinnerProject (using Bonnie Stern’s cookbook Friday Night Dinners, Menus To Welcome The Weekend With Ease, Warmth and Flair) I decided to make the Diner Dinner.  Excellent choice.  Our house was in total chaos this weekend.  My son is getting his first tooth, my husband got sick (he never gets sick!) and we had company.  The Diner Dinner was most needed.

Smoked Chicken Noodle Soup

This was first up on the menu.  After checking three grocery stores, I could not find a smoked chicken or smoked deli chicken or turkey, so I decided to just roast a chicken myself.  I roasted two chickens and used the meat from one of them for this soup.  True, it was not smoked – but the soup was still wonderful.  This soup is so simple to make – and very fast.  The timing was perfect with my husband being ill.  This soup looks like healing in a bowl.  The soup was topped with green onions, and to add that smoked flavour I shredded some of the smoked mozzarella cheese that was leftover from last week’smenu.  So good.  My son (he’s almost 1) also enjoyed the soup. Smoked Chicken Noodle Soup

This was first up on the menu.  After checking three grocery stores, I could not find a smoked chicken or smoked deli chicken or turkey, so I decided to just roast a chicken myself.  I roasted two chickens and used the meat from one of them for this soup.  True, it was not smoked – but the soup was still wonderful.  This soup is so simple to make – and very fast.  The timing was perfect with my husband being ill.  This soup looks like healing in a bowl.  The soup was topped with green onions, and to add that smoked flavour I shredded some of the smoked mozzarella cheese that was leftover from last week’s menu.  So good.  My son (he’s almost 1) also enjoyed the soup. 

 After eating this soup and deciding it was good I also had a bit of a brain wave – this is perfect for a quick dinner (with buns, or salad, or Melted Cheese and Corn Quesadillas – in fact I served the leftovers with the quesadillas for lunch today).  Imagine this – you throw a chicken in your Crock-Pot before you leave for work in the morning, using Ricardo’s recipe which roasts the chicken and also provides you with the broth you need for the soup.  You come home from work – throw the broth in a pot, take the meat off the chicken and then follow Bonnie Stern’s recipe for Smoked Chicken Noodle Soup and in about 15 minutes dinner is served.  Good idea, non?

Chicken Meatloaf with Barbecue Sauce

This menu offers a choice between two different entrées, I cooked them both (this being the first one) but for different meals.  The chicken meatloaf is hearty and quite good.  My company loved it.  The Bullseye Barbeque sauce is a nice touch.  I accidentally added two much chicken to this recipe (in fact an entire extra pound of chicken, long story) but it still turned out well.  (We definitely have leftovers!)

Potato and Carrot Mash

This mash is simple and straight forward.  I made it with olive oil, but if you are not a fan of the olive oil taste you could replace the olive oil with butter.  The carrot, potato and sweet potato combination is delicious and healthy.  It is a win win – especially if you have little ones who do not like to eat their vegetables.  This dish pairs wonderfully with the Chicken Meatloaf.

Meatball Sliders

This was the second entrée.  The Meatball Sliders were made with all beef (not the beef/chicken combo – because the chicken I had for this accidentally got included in the meatloaf).  These were my favourite and were very good.  I made them a bit smaller than the recipe called for (so I could fit two meatballs on one dinner roll).  Comfort food central.  These would be excellent to serve at a party.

Iceberg Lettuce Wedges with Thousand Island Dressing

Alright – this is amazing.  First, I loved reading Bonnie’s comments about lettuce snobs not wanting to use iceberg lettuce.  I love this lettuce because it reminds me of my maternal grandmother who always makes a beautiful salad using iceberg lettuce when I go to visit her.  I followed the recipe exactly, I even used the lettuce de-coring trick recommended in the notes (worked like a charm!).  Even my husband, who does not really care for salads, commented that he really liked the homemade dressing and iceberg lettuce combination.  I served the wedges with the sliders.

Carrot Tube Cake

This is a wonderful carrot cake recipe (you can find it at this link, scroll to bottom).  I omitted the raisins.  I also cooked it in a 9x13 pan simply because I do not own a tube pan and everything was so crazy in our house that I did not have the time to make the cupcakes.  There are actually three different recipes to choose from for the icing, I made the Best Ever Cream Cheese Icing.  It might actually be the best ever too.   Simply wonderful.

Now I have to decide which menu to make next weekend...