Week 3: Double Date in Emilia-Romagna, Italy
I know I know, I’m a day late in posting to the blog and its only week 3. I’m getting back into the swing of this so cut me some slack. I’ve already gotten an earful from the woman. To the 9 people that read this please forgive me. I will try my best to be on time.
This week we have something a little different we are going to implement during At Home Date Nights. Drum roll please !!!!! Double Date At Home Date Nights !!!!! I bet you didn’t see this coming. Mind Blown !!!
What we’ve decided to do is invite couples over to our home to experience an at home date night with us. We will be attempting to cook foods from places our couples have grown up or cultures they consider themselves a part of. I know, we are nuts. We must try and cook food they grew up eating their whole lives and impress them…or depress them. Time will only tell.
This is going to be new, but I believe relationships are important. We absolutely love spending time with people and connecting. I think sometimes you feel alone as a couple, or most of your friends are in the same place you are in life, busy with work, kids, and neglect spending time with friends because you’re exhausted.
While I believe putting time into your marriage and family should be top priority, don’t forget to connect with friends as well. You never know when there might be a couple out there who feels lonely and is struggling. Get out there, invite people into your home, and show them a wonderful night. On the flip side of that, don’t be that couple that never invites people into your home and only wants to be invited. Get out of your comfort zone and put together a double date at home date night of your own. It will mean the world to that couple.
As a disclaimer, the couple coming over had no idea that they were a part of this at home date night thing. They have no idea we do this blog and no real idea of what at home date nights are. Why would they? They are a young couple with no kids. Every day is a date night!!
Do you remember guys? Remember when every day was a date night. We took it for granted when we were younger. If you have no kids and you are reading this, go out as much as you can! Go and experience life and build up those memories.
For this double date at home date night my wife decided to make two kinds of lasagna and a nice salad. I say my wife because I had no part in any of the meal this time. I can’t take credit for any of it. I picked up the supplies and that was it. We chose Italian because the young man comes from an Italian family. We chose lasagna because we are visiting the birthplace of Lasagna, Emilia-Romagna, Italy. I had to look it up.
My wife and I have been to Italy. I know people talk about how amazing Italian food is, but our experience was less than satisfying. We visited Venice, Rome, Florence, Pisa and a few other places. It might have been the places we decided to eat at. Anyways, I’ve always loved American Italian cuisine. This is something my wife is especially good at. She has a knack for taking a recipe and making it her own and ten times better. She knows how to season things to make flavors pop.
Unfortunately, I have some bad news. The recipe we will be giving you for her lasagna is the basic recipe without her add-ons. I know I know, what kind of a blog is this? I told you it wasn’t a food blog. My wife refuses to tell me the added ingredients she uses to make her food so much better. I can tell you this though. If a Puerto Rican is cooking food for you, there is a 99.9% chance it has Adobo in it. So whatever recipe I give you, add some adobe and see what happens.
Here is a little background on the couple. They are a young couple in their early twenties, and they have been together for about a year. I’ve known the young man for about 5 years now, and the young lady for a little over a year. I’ve been trying to have him over for dinner for as long as I can think but life sometimes gets in the way of things.
We finally were able to lock down a day and we wanted to have him and his girlfriend over. They sounded really excited and so were we. I mean, who wouldn’t be excited to hang out with my wife and I, we are awesome…..and humble.
The young man asked me earlier in the day if they could bring something and I mentioned they could pick up a dessert if they wanted, but it really wasn’t a big deal. He said, “no problem.” I already like this couple because you can tell they were raised right. While It didn’t matter to me if they brought something or not, the polite thing to do is offer.
The night started off with me getting home and my wife looking ravishing. She was nicely dressed and wearing her sexy apron. Ok, it’s not a sexy apron, but something hit me in the feels seeing her work that lasagna. I was starving and couldn’t wait. She told me she made two lasagnas. One was with zucchini and one was with normal noodles. She knows I’m trying to eat healthy and didn’t want me to feel bad for eating delicious normal lasagna.
I was like, “really, zucchini lasagna, can I be normal for one day?” She said I would love it and have to eat my words. I doubt that.
She asked me to cut up the onions for the salad and to prepare the table. Right when I got everything setup the couple arrived. The young lady had an angel food cake in her hand and apologized it was still in the baking pan. I could care less, I LOVE CAKE ! I couldn’t believe she baked something, and she baked it from scratch !! She even brought fresh strawberries and whip cream. We sure were in for a treat tonight. This meal was going to be sick.
Since we were all starving, we sat down and started to eat. I can’t lie though, we stuck with a healthier option for tonight because the young man is kind of a health food guy.
He looked excited about the salad and I knew he liked it because he had 3 bowls. My wife and I were super happy because usually we make a big salad and there are always leftovers. I’m not a big fan of next day salad. This time, no leftovers and we couldn’t have been happier.
Next we dug into the lasagna and OH MY, it was out of this world good. I couldn’t believe how good the zucchini lasagna turned out. Yes yes, I ate my words while my wife had a huge smile on her face which said, “I told you so.” It was amazing and super flavorful. The noodled version was to die for too. I think everyone had seconds.
We laughed a bunch and talked about a bunch of random stuff. We told them about our at home date nights, but didn’t mention we would be blogging about this. They wouldn’t have acted any different had we told them anyways.
I asked the young lady what they planned on doing for Valentine’s day. She said, “Oh I don’t believe in Valentine’s day….why celebrate somethings that….” The room started to go dark for me, I really didn’t hear anything she said after that. I heard my own voice inside my head talking, “could this be true? I’ve heard of these mythical creatures before, but never really believed they existed.”
My vision returned to me and she was still talking and then I heard, “We are going to do a couples fishing tournament on Valentine’s day and ….” The room went black again as her voice drifted into the distance. I thought to myself, “Is this real life? Did my wife slip me something and I’m starting to hallucinate and hear things? Did this chick just say she doesn’t believe in Valentine’s day and she is going to go fishing on that day? This is some heavy Jedi mind trick stuff right here.”
My vision returned again to me and she was all bubbly and smiling. My wife communicated with me telepathically since that is how married couples communicate after being married for 15 years. Without moving her lips, I heard her voice inside my brain say, “There better be flowers, chocolate, and an amazing dinner, this is my hallmark day and you will respect it.” I nodded because I’m a smart man.
Don’t mess with Valentine’s day guys, even if your chick offers to go fishing with you it might be trickery. This couple is young, in that stage, where you want to do whatever you can to impress the other person. In all honesty though, she was dead serious and genuine.
We were done with dinner and it was time for the activity. If you know us, you know we love board games. This is the perfect thing to do with couples when you invite them over. It creates great memories and usually ends with so much laughing you have a headache afterwards. This was no exception.
After dinner it was time for heavenly angel food cake with strawberries and whip cream. This was so light and delicious. The perfect dessert after eating lasagna. I’ll see if I can get the recipe for everyone. It was definitely a winner.
For most of our double date at home date nights we will do board games. It’s simple for everyone to do and puts less stress on the couple preparing the meal. Also, who doesn’t have a good amount of board games? If you are one of the few, invest in some.
The game we decided to play was called The Meme Game. I’ll leave a link in the recipe/activity section at the end if you want to pick it up from Amazon. The game is exactly like apples to apples, only fun. Just kidding, I know there are a lot of people that like apples to apples. I’m not one of those people.
Anyways, the premise of the game is everyone gets 7 cards with random meme like captions on them. Then, a picture is shown to the whole group and you decide which one of your caption cards best matches with the picture. Basically, you are making meme’s, hence the genius name. One person is sitting out and decides which caption works best with the picture. If He/She guesses your caption as the best one, you get the point. EZ PZ.
As expected, the game was a huge success and we had a bunch of laughs. I did learn something about myself during gameplay. I learned I’m completely out of touch with what certain phrases mean, and all the different social apps which are available today. This eye-opening experience has relegated me to official, old guy status.
One of my cards said, “When you get called over for Netflix and Chill, but after 4 hours you realize there will be no chill”. I held on to this card because I had no idea what it meant and how to apply it to any of the pictures. At the end of the game I was like, “this card is so dumb, I would love to spend 4 hours watching Netflix and just chilling.” The young couple busted out laughing and my wife gave me the look of, “really, you are so old.”
They explained to me what “Netflix and Chill” means. If you don’t know, then you are old like me. If you know, it’s because some young person told you.
One of my other cards said something about this app called Bumble. I again had no idea what this one was and neither did my wife. I guess it’s a good thing because she would have no business using it.
Apparently, there is a dating app or friendship app where women must make the first move. I’m like, “Thank you God I’m married. I would hate to put myself up on some meat market app for chicks to judge me based upon my looks.” I mean, I’d probably get a million responses per day, but who needs that kind of attention.
I feel bad for young people today. They have so many distractions to deal with when forming real relationships. I love how I met my wife. I love our story and one day I’ll write about it.
After we were done with the game, I had to introduce them to one of my favorite things on earth. Virtual Reality! Yeah, I’m one of those crazy people. I love Virtual Reality. It’s something I’ve always dreamed about when I was a kid and its finally available for the home consumer. It’s quite extraordinary and I love showing people it.
I could probably write 10 more pages about showing the young couple virtual reality, but I’ll spare you. It’s something you must experience for yourself to see how amazing it is. We played for another hour or so and laughed so much. Watching people do virtual reality is also highly entertaining. People are in awe of it and get lost in their own virtual world.
The young man was rolling all over the floor dodging imaginary bullets. The young lady had her turn and didn’t want to stop playing. I’m pretty sure if they didn’t have to work in the morning, they would have stayed all night. I would have loved every minute.
After we were done playing, they had to go. It was an amazing first double date at home date night and we look forward to sharing with other couples our passion for putting time into our relationship and showing others how important it is.
I hope you enjoy following along with our At Home Date Nights. We encourage you to do this on your own. You will see a difference in your relationship, I promise. Let us know in the comments how your date nights are turning out. Also, we post updates in our Facebook group, Instagram, twitter. You can find those links to the right under the “About Us” section.
Thank you again and remember, your marriage is worth it !!
Here is the link for the What do you MEME? Party Game. It’s $29.99 on amazon. You don’t have to play this game, you can play something else you have on hand to save money.
Appetizer Cost : $ 14.75
Main Course Cost: $ 16.00
Activity Cost: $ 0-30.00
Week 3 Total Home Date Night Cost: $ 30.75 – 60.75
Sahyli’s Go To Dinner Salad
Ingredients
- 11 oz Organic Spring Mix
- 10 oz Organic Grape tomatoes each cut in half
- Newman's Own Raspberry & Walnut Vinaigrette Dressing 1-2 Tbsp per serving
- ½ Red Onion sliced
- 4-8 oz Walnuts chopped
- 5 oz Feta Cheese crumbled
Instructions
- Slice the grape tomatoes in half, and slice the onion into thin strips.
- toss the spring mix in a salad bowl with half the walnuts, red onions, grape tomatoes, and feta cheese.
- After mixing everything up well, put the rest of the stuff on the top of the salad except for the Vinaigrette Dressing. People can use however much they want on their salad. You could also use Italian dressing with this salad.
Notes
Zucchini Lasagna
Ingredients
- 1 lb ground beef 15/85
- 1 Egg beaten
- 2½ cups Shredded Mozzarella cheese
- 15 oz Ricotta Cheese
- ½ cup Shredded Parmesan Cheese
- ¼ cup chopped fresh italian parsley
- 26 oz Jar of Spaghetti sauce choose your favorite
- 2 Zucchini sliced in strips
Instructions
- Slice the Zucchini into small strips. About 1/8 thick. Do not cut them so thin where you could see through them. Use a mandolin if you have one. My wife didn't and that's what it looks like the picture.
- Preheat the oven to 350°F
- Brown the ground beef in a large skillet on medium-high heat.
- While the meat is browning, mix egg, 1-¼ cups of mozzarella cheese, ricotta, parsley, ¼ of Parmesan cheese together in a mixing bowl. blend together well and set aside
- Once the meat is browned drain the meat; then return it to the skillet and add in the spaghetti sauce. Stir everything up. Ok, this is where you also need to add in some secret seasoning. I'm guessing it's adobo….good luck my friends.
- Once everything is mixed well take 1 cup of meat mixture and spread it to the bottom of a 13×9 inch baking dish. Top with 3 zucchini noodles, ⅓ of the ricotta and then add another cup of meat mixture. Repeat this 2 or 3 times.
- Top the remaining 3 noodles and meat sauce with 1¼ cups of mozzarella cheese and the remaining ¼ cup of Parmesan cheese. Cover with greased foil.
- Bake for 45 minutes, remove the foil, then bake for another 15 minutes. Let it stand for 15 minutes before serving.
