Dinner Date

Please excuse this temporary interruption of our previously scheduled cruise programing. =)

You may remember from this post that my good friend Erika had us over for dinner a few weeks ago. We had such a good time. It was so nice to take a little break from life and visit with friends that the fabulous meal Erika made was just icing on the cake. =) It got me to thinking... having people over for dinner is fun... fairly simple to do... and for crying out loud... why don't we do this more often?!?!

I love to cook and hang out with people so you would think this is a no brainer... and it should be... but I just don't make it happen like I should. We have Wii night and take turns cooking... and I love those get-togethers... but those aside... we really don't have people over. Like ever. I guess I think "we're too busy", "I haven't had a chance to clean the house", "the house is a total construction zone and nothing like what I want people to see our home as", "what if they don't like what I make?", etc...

When I showed up to Erika's she said "I was going to change into something cute but then I thought about it, and realized, it's just Alisha, I can wear a t-shirt!" Exactly. I love it. She's right. Friends don't care! Friends are just happy to hang out no matter if you're perfectly accessorized or if you're in a t-shirt or, ssshhh, fat girl pants. They don't care if there's dishes in the sink and a pile of laundry on the back of the couch. Heck, there's a chance they won't even notice your fabulous new wall color or stellar throw pillows. Plus, I bet friends really don't care if you eat a frozen pizza or an exquisite 5-course meal. I mean, do you?

SO - of course we'll be returning the favor to Erika and Dereck but I decided that first, I'd try my hand at spreading the love. Our dinner date at their place was such a bright spot to me, I wanted to, hopefully, share that with someone else too. Just so happens I hadn't seen my friend Kayla in a while and we had some catching up to do.

We settled on last night and I gave them the option of cavatini or chicken enchiladas. They chose the latter and so that's what I made! =) I make cheesy chicken enchiladas... not red sauce enchiladas. To be honest, I typically make a recipe (when I actually follow one) that includes a sauce base of cream of mushroom soup (because it's quick, easy, and it's pretty good too) but I decided to try something different last night and made Pioneer Woman's recipe. It was more time consuming and involved more ingredients but I think it was worth it. =) (PS - I used flour tortillas instead of corn, 86'd the cilantro and jalepeno, and added more paprika (accidentally...haha.) Not bad. I also made guacamole (not gonna lie... I'm not awesome at that) so we had chips and dip but that was it. Kayla brought over some delicious cookie brownie bars though... best of both worlds... can't beat that! =) And we just chatted to our little hearts' content! I even got to color with Journey! I call it a success. A picture-less success maybe, but a success none-the-less.

Homework: invite someone over for dinner this month. You try, you like. =D

**Special thanks to Erika and Dereck for re-instilling the desire to do this, to Pioneer Woman for the tasty recipe, to Mark, Kayla, and Journey for the awesome company, and to Dac for cleaning up afterward.