Gourmet Dinner for Grandma

I spent some time selecting recipes that I felt would be simple enough for a cooking lesson for the grandsons.  They wanted to cook dinner.  Now, like usual with kids, things didn't always go as planned but here goes . . .

Baked Chicken Superb

1/2 cup instant potato flakes
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/4 cup melter butter
1 frying chicken (3-1/2 lb), cut up

On a piece of waxed paper, combine potato flakes and grated cheese.  Melt butter in large shallow baking pan.  Roll each piece of chicken in butter and then in potato flake-cheese mixture.  Place chicken pieces in pan, sprinkle with salt and pepper and bake in 350F oven for about 1 hour.  Serves 4

So I didn't want to buy instant potato flakes, mostly because I don't like them; we used breadcrumbs.  And chickens were expensive, but chicken thighs were on sale at a good price.  Needless to say we bought the chicken thighs.  I skinned the chicken thighs when we got home because I'm not a big fan of chicken skin either.  So, while I think we tried to stay true to the original recipe, we actually may have improved upon it.  Taylor really enjoyed measuring and breading and chatting with me.  I enjoyed it too.

We were originally going to make Orange Carrots.  Maybe another day.  I wanted to make sure they ate the carrots, so I made Candied Carrots instead.  And I knew at least the older two liked cheesy broccoli so that was our second veg.  Candied Carrots are so easy to make, as Austin found out.  He peeled 6 carrots and then used my crinkle-cutter (I don't know what its really called but it makes a wavy cut through the veg which I like and so do the boys) to slice the carrots.  When they were cooked we added a couple of spoonfuls of butter and a couple of spoonfuls of brown sugar and tossed.  Simple.  I decided to keep the cheese sauce simple so opted to buy a packaged mix.  I think the reason Austin chose to do the veggies is because he likes using the peeling knife and crinkle-cutter.

The Basmatti rice was cooked in my rice steamer.

Cameron made the brownies from a mix.  He stirred it well and then we poured it into a cake pan to bake.  I think Cameron chose to make the dessert so he could lick the spoon.  To finish up the brownie sundaes we placed a brownie in each dish, added a big scoop of vanilla ice cream, a big scoop of marshmallow creme and, of course, topped it all with chocolate sprinkles.

The entire meal was delicious.  I will definitely be using this chicken recipe again.  The chicken was crispy outside and so tender inside!  The veggies were very colourful and tasty.  And the dessert was the crowning glory of the meal.

I have to admit that I just made another sundae to eat with my tea tonight . . . LOL