Week 2: Taking in all of Napa Valley.
Welcome to Week 2 of At Home Date Night. I’m going to give myself a quick pat on the back since we’ve made it to week 2 and I haven’t quit. This is a huge accomplishment.
You see, as soon as you start to make your marriage a priority, everything in the world will try to come against it. The kids will get sick, or your car breaks down, or you find out the bank account got hacked. It’s always something. You can’t let it detour you. You must keep pushing forward. I should say, none of those things happened to us. I overcame laziness this week. That’s a bigger step for most than the other crisis things I mentioned. Laziness is a killer. If you want your marriage or pretty much anything in life to be successful you have to kill laziness.
What better way to kill laziness then taking a nice drive through the breathtaking hills of Napa Valley, California with the woman of your dreams. Napa Valley is of course wine country, but it’s also known for some amazingly fresh food dishes. My wife and I really aren’t into wine that much. We share a bottle of Moscato every once in a while, with certain desserts, but pretty much all other wines we are illiterate. We are into driving through beautiful scenery, visiting u-pick farms, and holding hands while strolling through a vineyard. Napa Valley is definitely on our bucket list of places we want to travel too.
For Napa Valley we decided to make something fresh, but fried. Does that even make sense? To me, it does. We made Eggplant & Zucchini Parmesan Bites for the appetizer and get this, Napa Valley Chicken for the main course. The activity we decided on was making chalk stem wine glasses. My wife was like, “Chalk stem wine glasses? That’s so 2015.” Don’t be fooled guys, when we started the activity, she was all into it, and 2015 was an awesome year.
As always, you can skip the rest, if you haven’t already, and jump down to the recipes and instructions for super exciting chalk stem wine glasses. I will warn you now, and again in the recipe section, the Zucchini bites were a total bust. We either did something wrong, most likely, or the recipe we got was hot garbage. We both do not recommend it, but I’ll give my tips on what you could do to make it possibly better. If you are joining along with us then we recommend you do try it so you can see what a complete disaster it was and share in our pain.
Date night started off way better than last week. I was out early from work and on my way home. I called my wife and asked if there was anything we forgot and she said we were all set. The next part leads us down a dark path which is something I still haven’t learned, which is, telling my wife to do anything. Now, don’t get me wrong, my wife is one of the hardest working people I know. She is super woman, does everything, takes care of everything, always thinking about others above herself, but if there is one thing that sets her off it’s being asked to do something or if you really want to blow a gasket, tell her to do something. She likes to do stuff on her own without being told. This is what I did, “Hey babe, don’t forget, it’s home date night so make sure you aren’t in jammies this week, we gotta live what we preach.” …..click. Me, “Umm babe? Hello?…..fudge.”
Why do we do it men? I knew better, but something inside of me said, “I have to point this out.” I got home a few minutes later and guess what, she was already dressed all nice and did her make-up. Yep, I’m an idiot. Now, while I was worrying about what she was supposed to do she says, “Umm, where is the pizza for the kids?” Strike two. This is going downhill fast. Needless to say, darkness was starting to set in over all of Napa Valley.
I turned around, got back in the car, flew to the nearest Chinese place, and flew back home. When I walked in, she says, “Alexa, play You don’t own Me, by Leslie Gore.”
She proceeds to sing all the words all while looking directly at me. I’m pretty sure if there was a women’s bra burning in the local area, she would be the first one to toss it in with a raised fist. I don’t blame her; I’d be right next to her tossing in my tighty whities. I want to be free too.
The song finished up and she walked over to me, picked up the knife, smiled, and said, “can you please cut the zucchini my love?” No problem!
I cut up all the veggies, but we didn’t start on them just yet. The Napa Valley chicken actually needs to be prepped first. While I was cooking the chicken, I see my wife eating shredded parmesan. If you are grossed out by this you are normal. Don’t get me wrong, I love cheese, but eating straight up parmesan is just weird. It’s the kind of cheese that goes on other things, not the kind you dice up and put out on a cheese platter. She’s like, “What? I love parmesan”.
Growing up my sister used to eat parmesan too, but it was the powder parmesan that you get from pizza hut. She would put it in a bowl and eat it with a spoon. These days I try to see my sister when I can, but visiting hours are only between 4-6pm.
Ok, it was time to fry off the eggplant and zucchini. I already knew what was going to happen from reading the recipe. The parmesan / panko mixture was not going to stick. I’ve run into this type of problem before. We tried anyways, but there was no hope for the zucchini. Some of the eggplant did work out though. It was a total fail.
We set it out and I tried the first couple of bites and it tasted weird. My wife was all smiles while she poured herself a bowl of shredded parmesan. I could stomach about 4 of the eggplant ones. They tasted off. Like I said before, we probably did something wrong or maybe the eggplant wasn’t ready or cooked through. It was terrible.
Beep! Beep! Beep! The Napa Valley Chicken was done. Thank you Jesus! We were starving at this point. I pulled the Napa Valley Chicken out of the oven and light broke through the window sill shining upon my delicious masterpiece. I didn’t even have to tell Alexa to do anything. She suddenly became self aware and learned the sense of smell and broke out with audible robot jubilee “Hallelujah, Hallelujah…” I was proud of how the Napa Valley Chicken turned out.
We didn’t make a side because I’m trying to be good and eat depressing low carb meals. If you make this meal and you are a normal person, make white rice with it. It’s recommended and I believe it would pair well.
We were just about to sit down to eat when an all familiar thing happens, the kids interrupt you. Why is it as soon as you are about to take your first bite of anything the kids need something? “Can we have ice pops? Can we have some juice? Oooohhh what’s that smell, that looks good? Can I play Fortnite? Can you wipe my butt?” Ok, the last one doesn’t happen anymore, but that seemed to be the one that would always come up when I was about to put food into my mouth. Who wants to wipe a bunghole right before you eat? Welcome to parenthood.
It’s Home Date Night, so you gotta do whatever it takes to send those little tax deductions back to their rooms and get back to feeling the wind blowing through your hair, with the top down in your 1965 cherry thunderbird convertible, blazing through the hills of Napa Valley. So, I was a responsible adult and said, “Here are two ice cream sandwiches, now get back up their and pawn those noobs at Fortnite like your old man has taught you.”
Finally, just her and I again, two young and in love crazy kids without a care in the world. I was about to take my first bite and she turns to me, grabs my face and looks deeply into my eyes and says, “I haven’t forgotten about the jammies comment.” Oh man, I’m hoping this Moscato I bought starts to kick in.
We finished the chicken and it was time for our activity. We broke out the supplies and we were ready to start and the little one interrupted again. He was having a hard time with understanding it was date night and he needed to stay in bed. He is kind of a momma’s boy. This time he didn’t want anything but dropped off a note for mommy. Here it is:
So, he wanted to know if he could snuggle with mommy tonight. If you didn’t understand kid write.
It’s so funny because my wife is not a snuggler, but I am. There is always one in the marriage. Leave a comment below if you are the snuggler or your wife is. I don’t believe I know of a unicorn couple where both love to snuggle.
Anyways, she says, “I’ll think about it buddy.” He’s seven and unbelievably adorable. I stand no chance against him. He ran upstairs with conviction.
We found a bowl and poured the organic, gluten free, vegan friendly, cruelty free, free roaming liquid chalk. She dipped the base of her wine glass in and then I did mine second. I bet you could have just left it there on its side and let the liquid chalk drip off, but we kept spinning it to make sure the chalk dried even.
The best part about this activity is we were able to sit there and talk. Ladies, this activity might be so 2015, but if you want to talk and have your husband not just fall asleep, this is the perfect activity. He will be so engaged in making sure his stem chalk is even all the way around the base with no bubbles that he won’t fall asleep and you can tell him all your hopes and dreams.
In all honesty, it was really nice. We sat there and talked about life, dreams, kids, moving, vacation, work and of course, whose wine glass looked better. I saw that she had a lump in hers and said, “You gotta get rid of that lump.” She said, “Ok, I think I can fix this by just holding onto the stem and giving it a light rub.”
I couldn’t hold it…. “That’s what she said.” BOOM !!!
I finally got a laugh out of her and knew I was moving out of the jammies dog house. I constructed a cardboard box with her help to hold the glasses on our second coat. We set the box in the corner to let it dry overnight.
Our date night was almost over when, again, my little one came down and with his big doe eye’s looking up at her said, “ Soooo, how did it go?” referring to the note.
I looked him dead in the eyes and crumpled that note up and dunked it into the trash. “Not tonight buddy !!” …..5 minutes later he was snuggled up next to her, while I snuggled up next to Pillowetta.
I hope you enjoy following along with our At Home Date Nights. We encourage you to do this on your own. Maybe you don’t do it every week. Maybe once a month. 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 and whatever else I can figure out in social media. You can find those links to the right under the “About Us” section.
Thank you again and remember, your marriage is worth it !!
Oh yeah, the answers to the questions I had up front. Sorry, we have no answers. Nobody does. We do know our Creator has one serious sense of humor.
Appetizer Cost : $8
Main Course Cost: $10-15
Activity Cost: $8-10
Week 2 Total Home Date Night Cost: $26-33
Eggplant and Zucchini Parmesan Bites
Ingredients
- 1 Zucchini's
- ½ Eggplant
- Sea Salt to taste
- ½ cup Parmesan cheese
- 1 cup Panko bread crumbs
- ¼ tsp pepper
- ½ tsp oregano
- ½ tsp Basil
- ½ tsp parsley
- oil for frying
- Marinara Sauce for dipping
Instructions
- Ok, you actually are going to attempt this. Step 1, Print this recipe out, then crumple it up and trash it. Then go back to week 1 and make those Fried Macaroni Cheese balls. I'm still dreaming about them.
- If you want to follow along with our pain, then cut up the veggies into little squares. Sprinkle with Sea Salt. Put a paper towel at the bottom and let them sit their for about 10-15 minutes.
- Get your dredging station ready by whisking two eggs in and bowl, then on a plate or something flat mix the Parmesan, Panko bread crumbs, pepper, oregano, basil, parsley together. Mix well
- The recipe we got said use coconut oil. Use whatever you have. Get that oil hot and up to 375°F.
- Ok, this is the part where you need to pay attention. Do not just grab a bunch of eggplant and zucchini and dump it into the bread crumb mixture. I think you have to do this very carefully. If you put like 6 pieces in the egg and then into the breadcrumbs and move it around it gets all the Parmesan wet and the breadcrumbs start to clump up and nothing sticks to the zucchini. I would try first using a little bit of flour to coat the veggies, then dip into egg, and then try rolling around. It probably won't work…but you wanted to try this.
- After you see the disappointment of nothing sticking, you toss them into the oil anyways. They take about 1-2 minutes to cook. Then, add in some marinara sauce for dipping and become really disappointed when you try it out and realize you just wasted a bunch of time and you should have listened to me.
Notes
Napa Valley Chicken
Ingredients
- 5 tbsp olive oil
- 1 large sweet onion minced
- 4 cloves garlic minced
- 1½ cup chicken broth
- 1 15oz can of crushed tomatoes
- ½ cup cooking white wine sub chicken broth if you don't have
- ¼ cup brown sugar
- ¾ tsp salt
- 2 lbs boneless-skinless chicken breasts cut into 6 portions
- ⅓ cup flour
- Salt and Pepper to taste
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350°F.
- I like to use my cast iron skillet for this. If you don't have one you'll need some kind of oven safe pot. Heat up the skillet over medium high heat until you just start to see a little smoke rising. Then add in 3 tbsp of olive oil. Move the oil around and coat the skillet.
- Pat down the chicken with a paper towel, cut into smaller sections so you have around 6-8 portions. Then season it with salt and pepper. Don't be afraid to use a good amount of salt here. Chicken breast need help.
- Lay the chicken pieces in the skillet and sear on both sides for around 2 minutes each. You should hear them sizzling. Once done, remove them from the pan onto a plate.
- With the same skillet, add in the rest of the olive oil and saute onions until soft and see through. Add garlic and cook for 30-60 seconds. Don't burn the garlic. Then the chicken broth, crushed tomatoes, wine, brown sugar, and salt. Stir and bring to a boil. Then add the chicken back into the skillet. Try to make sure the chicken is almost all the way submerged in the sauce.
- Bake in the oven for 40-50 minutes
- Serve the chicken hot with rice and some asparagus. I think both would go well.
Notes
Chalk Stem Wine Glasses
Materials
- 1 2 oz Chalkboard paint
- 1 paper soup bowl
- 4 Wine Glasses
- Paper Towels
Instructions
- Pour the whole bottle of chalkboard paint into the paper soup bowl.
- Now dip the base of the wine glass into the chalk board paint. Make sure it covers the whole bottom. Lift up and turn on the side and start to twist it around to coat evenly.
- You are supposed to coat it twice. It takes awhile for it to seem dry. I think we spun them around trying to make them perfect. We were able to talk. Perfect activity for trapping your spouse and making them listen to you.
- The next was my wife's idea. She grabbed one of the hundreds of left over boxes we still have from Christmas and made cut outs so we could let them dry for 24 hours.
- After they are done drying you can write to your little hearts desire on them. I wouldn't recommend washing them in the dishwasher though.
