Chicken Nuggets, Baked Potato, Vanishing Oatmeal Raisin Cookies, Mary’s Easy Bars, Homemade Croutons

I decided to host a Sunday lunch party at my apartment to get some recipes out of the way and to have my grandparents over to visit for the first time. I did all of the shopping and cooking on Saturday to leave my stress level low for Sunday. I caffeinated myself up and got to shopping. Once I finished and got home, I decided to carry all of the bags in one trip. This included 8 potatoes, a 2 liter of sparkling soda, Pepsi and a gallon of orange juice. It was heavy! It took quite a bit of strength to lift the bags up onto the counter. The caffeine made me invincible and I pulled it off. The chicken nugget recipe, vanishing oatmeal raisin cookies and Mary’s easy bars are from Mom, and the baked potato and homemade croutons are from me.
I feel totally lied to….Mary’s easy bars are in fact, not easy. Sure the recipe looks simple enough, mix some ingredients and layer them with a chocolate mixture. Sure it only has a few ingredients. The problem comes when the recipe says mix…batter will be thick. I try to stir the batter, which is useless, apparently thick means cement clay. I think hmmm I can probably do this with my hands, kneed the ingredients together. This was a failure! The batter was not only cement clay, but also super glue. I was covered with a paste and every time I tried to scrap it off one hand, it just stuck to the other. I did the best I could, but eventually had to wash my hands and lose some batter. Then I put the mixture in a greased pan…It was too dang thick though to spread out in the pan like a normal cake! It just slipped along the greased bottom. I decided to do something drastic, creative….perhaps a litter weird; I sprayed cooking spray all over my hands and spread it around like a lotion. Stick to this batter! The oil helped the batter to keep to itself and I was able after a lot of finesse to get the batter ready. I added some chocolate and put batter chunks on top (not an easy task either).
I cut up the chicken pieces without making any contact with the chicken and prepared the coating for the next day. The Vanishing Oatmeal Raisin Cookies went off without a hitch and I ate a warm one as my dinner. I decided to use up some old French bread and make croutons. I cut the bread into small cubes and tossed them in olive oil with garlic salt, pepper, and parsley and then put them in the oven. I started the dishes and wiped the counters down and played with Max..and why is the oven still on? Oh yea! I am making croutons! They ended up burned (I know you aren’t really surprised) but still decent to eat.
I put out some other leftovers I had, salsa, cranberry salsa, and scramble. The guest list included; Grandma, Grandpa, Mom, Dad, Ali, Shannon and Shannon’s boyfriend Conner (or if you are Ali you can call him Simon cause you can’t remember his name). We ate and visited; Max was excited to have people over to play with. Thank you for coming family!