Last night, I really wanted to put together a stellar meal for my parents.  I planned a 3-course meal, complete with everything a dinner should have.

Still keeping with my appetizer project, I made lemon-rosemary chicken.  Technically, they are supposed to be on skewers and served with a dipping sauce.  Unfortunately, we had no skewers and I did not have enough marinade to make the sauce but the chicken itself (although it didn’t look too great) tasted fantastic.  I think I will grill it for my parent’s dinner party.  But all in all, we’ll call it a win.

For the main course, I made rotini alla vodka.  The vodka sauce was quick-cooking and delicious; I even threw in a little dried tarragon just because and added a little extra vodka.  I slightly overcooked the pasta (total rookie mistake – I was so mad) but it turned out delicious anyway – my parents ate all of it! (For the recipe, visit my Tried & True page!)

To go along side, I attempted a recipe I found on My Baking Addiction: Beer Bread.  Since we didn’t have any self-rising flour like the recipe called for, I used all-purpose instead.  Mistake number 1.  The bread hardly rose and was dense and wet in the middle with a heavy beer flavor.  The edges and top that were done were golden and tasty, slightly sweet from the 1/3 cup of sugar the recipe called for.  I would definitely make it again, except this time, I’ll use the correct flour.  Oops.

Finally, to round out my meal, I made chocolate-chip biscotti.  Well, almost chocolate chip.  No mini chocolate chips in the house?  No need to panic.  Hershey kisses chopped up into chunks works just fine!  They were almost all gone and were fantastic.  Sweet but not so that you couldn’t eat them all without being sick.  Plus, the chunks of didn’t all melt so every once and a while you got a nice, big, warm piece of hershey’s milk chocolate – what’s not to love about that?

My only regret is that I totally forgot to take pictures.  Next time for sure.  Anyone wanna give me a really nice camera so I can take photos that I see on other blogs?  I promise to love you forever.