Mother's Day 2009

Menu:
* Appetizer: Baked Brie en Croute
* Main dish: Cider-Cured Pork Chops
* Side dish: Twice-Baked Potatoes
* Dessert: Vanilla ice cream

* For DB: Chicken Nuggets in Sleeping Bags

BAKED BRIE EN CROUTE
The Baked Brie recipe came from Food Network and a chef named Jill Davie from Josie in Los Angeles, a contestant on The Next Iron Chef. We haven't been into the US version of Iron Chef; too formalized, I guess. We prefer the organic chaos of Hells Kitchen and Last Restaurant Standing. Maybe we just like the Brits, too. But I like the sound of some of Jill's other recipes, too. We found this one because we were looking for brie in puff pastry.

We didn't find as big of a wheel as she calls for; maybe ours was 5 or 6 inch. So we only needed 1 sheet of puff pastry and didn't use all quarter-cup of the dried cherries. Oh, and it only had to bake for 30 minutes.

Oh, now I see it says to turn the oven down after 20-30 minutes. Uh, we didn't do that. Maybe that's why ours was so liquidy. We though we needed to let it rest longer before we served it. (We'll try both things next time.)

CIDER CURED PORK CHOPS
We've had this recipe for a while.

TWICE-BAKED POTATOES
I thought we'd be too full to eat twice-baked potatoes but they actually were a really good complement to the pork, which was much lighter than beef. Following an allrecipes.com recipe, we baked the potatoes at 350F for an hour (my in-laws kept trying to convince us they had to cook at a higher temp but we held firm), then cut off the top and scooped out the inside, mixed in the other ingredients (we left off the bacon but it sounds delish) and let them sit on a baking sheet until it was time to put them back in the oven, again at 350, for 15 minutes or so.

Since it was Mother's Day I actually didn't help with the potatoes. Thanks for your help, Anna!

CHICKEN NUGGETS IN SLEEPING BAGS
I for one was very excited to have a whole sheet of puff pastry left over from the baked Brie. I made Chicken Nuggets in Sleeping Bags for DB. I actually saw the recipe on boxtops4education.com but don't want you to have to join the site to see the recipe, so I've linked something very similar at Recipezaar, another site we trust.

I was so pleased he not only tucked right into them but also really liked them; we just never know about something new. I left off the ham. The cheese baked really nicely, almost disappearing into the pastry. And DB himself had the best idea for making the face -- I told him I left off the faces since he doesn't like ketchup,and he suggested using Easy Cheese next time!