It’s not often that I cook dinner for my parents ~ this is mostly because until recently, I very rarely cooked.  But today, my parents, and my mom’s brother and sister both came to our humble abode, and we enjoyed watching the final nail-biting moments of the PGA tournament, and I fed everyone, all by my onesies.

We had chicken (cubed, sprinked with paprika, stuffed into a greased glass dish, and popped in the oven for 20 minutes at 375 … my rule of thumb is that when the juices run clear, the chicken’s cooked ~and I let it sit for a little before serving it, to make sure it stays as juicy as possible…), sausage (popped into oven at 375 for 25 minutes), curry dipping sauce, mandarin orange salad, and pull apart bread.

Mandarin Orange Salad Ingredients:

1/2 bag of baby spinach

1/2 bag arugula

1/2 cup parmesan

1/4 cup EVOO

1 tbsp lemon juice

3/4 cup drained mandarin oranges

1/4 cup crunchy chow mein noodles

1/4 cup crumbled Feta cheese

What to do:

1.  Put the lettuces in a bowl.  Sprinkle parmesan, olive oil and lemon juice on top.  Mix.

2.  Add oranges, feta cheese and chow mein noodles.  Toss. Serve.

Simple, right? 🙂

Pull-Apart Bread Ingredients:

1 package Grands biscuits (Pillsbury, or generic ~ it doesn’t matter); cut into quarters

1/4 cup grated parmesan

1/4 cup melted butter

What to do:

1.  Preheat oven to 375.  Grease a large bread pan.

2.  Dip each quarter of biscuit in butter, and roll (somewhat sparingly) in parmesan.  Push all pieces into the base of the bread pan.

**I find doing one layer ends up producing the most evenly cooked loaf of ‘bread’ … but if you want to get crazy, you can do two layers!

3.  Cook for 18-20 minutes.  Should be golden brown on top.  If not, cook until the top starts to brown, pull out of oven, and let sit for 5 – 10 minutes before serving.

It was a truly great dinner, rounded out by Cheesecake Stuffed Stawberries.  Yummers.