Girls' Night In

A few nights ago, while my husband worked late, I decided to make a nice meal for him to come home to. I fried some potatoes, flavoring them with rosemary, and made chicken marsala (my first time, too). It turns out he doesn't like chicken marsala, but I'd run all over town looking for that damn marsala, so I told him to shut up and eat it. He did so, but I was left with a bottle of marsala, and I really couldn't bring myself to drink it. I decided the best course of action would be to have a dinner party to use up the rest of the marsala in some more marsala chicken - one he couldn't come to. Thus the girls' night in dinner party.

The menu included chicken marsala (Emeril's recipe), a stone fruit and havarti salad (adapted from the latest issue of Cooking Light), and cold pesto pasta. Also, being a girly dinner party, I had to come up with the girliest cocktails I possibly could, and I settled on champagne cosmopolitans. For an appetizer, I just set out some cognac and truffle-flavored pate and crackers.

It was a really fun evening. We sat in the back yard on a blanket and ate dinner, and proceeded to polish off many bottles of champagne. We lit candles when it got dark, and sipped champagne and talked until midnight. It was a perfect way to spend a blisteringly hot evening, and an even better way to finish off the bottle of marsala.



Stone Fruit and Havarti Salad
1 peach
1 plum
1 nectarine
0.25 pounds havarti cheese
Salad greens
1/3 cup walnut oil
1/6 cup balsamic vinegar

Peel and pit the fruits, and dice the flesh into 1/2-inch sized pieces. Cut havarti into cubes of the same size. Arrange salad greens in bowl, and top with fruit and cheese. Make dressing of oil and vinegar, and pour over salad. Serve cold on a hot evening.