Impromtu Party

Saturday nights are usually reserved for fun food, often finger food. It's hard to drum up the energy to put in a lot of effort though when I'm home alone with the kids for ten days straight while T is away on a business trip to Tokyo. This past weekend, however, I resolved to keep the standards high. I made sure we had all the fixings for chicken fingers and oven fries, a favorite with the kids.

We had newspapers spread out all over the living room floor with the furniture pushed back against the walls, and all three of the kids were painting when the doorbell rang late Saturday afternoon. It was our neighbor and her three kids + one tag along dropping by to say hello and to play for a while. Friend and I chatted for a while, and when I realized that the clock was inching it's way toward 5:30 (past time to start dinner) I invited them to stay and join us. Fortunately, the only packages of chicken I had found were huge, so I had bought plenty. Friend called her sister who was waiting for them at home who then came over with her toddler to join us. Suddenly I was fixing dinner for 3 adults and 5 children when I had thought we would be lonely on our own!

I'm not good with delegating in the kitchen, but Friend crushed the Ritz Crackers in a ziplock bag while I quickly sliced the potatoes, drizzled them with olive oil and slid them into the oven preheated to 400 F.

Then, while Friend and Sister supervised the kids playing in the basement and also set the table, I grated some parmesan into the crushed crackers and added 1 tsp paprika. I cut the chicken breasts into "fingers," coated them with olive oil and then the cracker crumb mixture. These also went into the oven about 40 minutes after the potatoes. I took the potatoes out and gave them a flip and a stir, then all the chicken and the potatoes went back into the oven. We sliced some cucumbers, opened a package of baby carrots for the kids and tossed together a salad of baby spinach, crumbled blue cheese and sundried tomatoes in olive oil for us adults. A simple, successful meal.

The only snag was that I had filled the dishwasher earlier in the afternoon, but forgotten to turn it on, so I didn't have enough clean, child-friendly plastic dishes or utensils on hand. Sister remedied the situation by washing some by hand, but again, I wish I had remembered to turn it on when the dishwasher was basically full when I started to clean up after everyone had gone home and the kids were in bed.