Hey, Hey, Good Lookin', Whatcha Got Cookin'?

So, the other night, Rachael Ray and Paula Deen Merri and I

decided to whip up some fabulous dishes for supper.

We love cooking (well, if collecting recipes and writing them

down on pretty little recipe cards counts).

Let me rephrase that,

we love the idea of cooking.

Anyway, first things first.

We had to narrow down all of our amazing recipes

and go shopping. Of course, we couldn't pick something

like taco salad, macaroni and cheese, or spaghetti.

No, we had to choose menu items that called for

dried basil, fresh parsley, and minced shallots.

Since we just happened to be out of those necessary items,

off to Wal-Mart we went.

After approximately 45 minutes in the produce section alone,

we made our selections and headed for the kitchen.

Here was the menu for the evening.

Menu

Shrimp Scampi Linguini

Zucchini Casserole

Maggiano's Salad

Banana Cream Pie

We chopped and minced and diced and sliced

and sauteed and studied those recipe cards

for what seemed like hours.

Here we are hard at work...

 And, yes, Merri was definitely crying. :)

Well, our hard work paid off!

Who would've guessed that we were such beastly chefs?!

We invited some friends over and let them eat first to see if they survived

and enjoyed our nice meal.

The fruits of our labor...

Merri's shrimp scampi linguini

(Let me just tell you that it tasted like it came

straight out of Red Lobster's kitchen.)

Zucchini Casserole

(recipe courtesy of my sister's sister-in-law...if that made sense)

And the Maggiano's salad...

And the banana cream pie,

which I actually had to make the next day because I just ran out of time!

And apparently, they don't show Martha Stewart rolling out her own dough.

That business is messy!



What you didn't see...

Me catching the pie right before it slid out of the pan.

What we wish we had done...

Cleaned up as we cooked.

That was a whole lot of dishes. :)

What we didn't think about...

The fact that the smell of onions and shallots really stays on your hands for days.

Talk about a social hindrance.

Next time, you should just come on over!

A good meal is always better when it's shared with sweet friends.