Sunday Themes & Family Facetime Cook Nights

 Sunday nights is when the family comes over for 'Come Follow Me,' dinner, and to watch a movie. I decided this year to have monthly dinner themes to give me some direction on what to cook, and to add a little bit of fun to the dinners. We also do a monthly movie theme for our Sunday night movies as well. I'm just recording these on my blog so I will remember what we did.

January Dinner Theme: Ethnic

Week 1: We were out of town for Noah's wedding.

 Week 2: Mexican-chicken tamale casserole, beans, rice

Week 3: Italian-spinach artichoke pasta, caesar salad, garlic bread  

Week 4: Asian-beef ramen stirfry

Week 5: Western-Texas BBQ beef sandwiches, tater tots

January Movie Theme: Stupid Movies

Week 2: Nacho Libre

Week 3: Napoleon Dynamite

Week 4: Hot Rod

Week 5: Rush Hour

Bailey also came up with a fun idea for us. Once a month we have a family face-time cooking night. We rotate who picks the recipe, then we all cook it on the same night, at the same time, and face-time at random times to see how it's going. We do a final face-time at the end to see if we liked it, what we would change, if we would make it again, etc.. Mason and Bailey picked the meal for January. We made chicken spaghetti from the Magnolia Cookbook. It was super yummy!

Chicken Spaghetti

February Dinner Theme: Restaurant Copy Cats

Week 1: Chick-fil-A nuggets, crinkle fries, and chick-fil-A sauce

The chick-fil-A sauce and nuggets were spot on. 

Week 2: Gone to AZ

Week 3: Olive Garden fettuccini alfredo, salad, breadsticks

This was a good one! The noodles were pretty close, but the salad was spot on! It looked and tasted exactly like Olive Garden!

Week 4: McDonald's Big Macs, fries, and shamrock shakes 

These big macs were spot on. too. The only difference is that the homemade ones are much bigger. I couldn't even finish one. But they looked and tasted just like a McDonalds big mac. So fun!

The shamrock shakes were yummy and super easy to make!

February Movie Theme: Ethnic

Week 1: McFarland USA

Week 3: Crazy Rich Asians

Week 4: The Help

The dinner and movie themes were really fun this month. I will for sure add these categories back in for next year. 

Mark and I picked our family face-time meal for February. We had Mark and I in Idaho Falls, Bailey and Mason in Boise, and Kim and Russ in Arizona. 

We made Mashed Potato Casserole with Crispy Chicken.

Our dessert was key lime pie. I've never made one before, and it was pretty easy and super yummy!

I can't wait to see what yummy food March brings us!