The Girls' Italian Meal

Last summer Suzanna started making supper for the family every once in a while.  This spring Abigail took a turn doing the same.  Hillary joined her sisters this spring to make a meal for Mother's Day.  And, Faithful Reader, you know that each of them takes a turn being my assistant in the kitchen for our weekly Scandinavian Saturday suppers.  Well, they were all back in the kitchen tonight to make an Italian meal for the family, and the results were just wonderful.

Our family enjoys the Food Network show Ten-Dollar Dinners with Melissa d'Arabian and often, while watching, will say, "Ooh, we should try that sometime" (remember this?).  After one recent episode, Susan asked the girls if they'd like to make that particular meal for our family, and they decided to do so tonight.  Susan made sure we had all the ingredients, printed the recipes from the show's Web site, and supervised (and assisted liberally) while the girls prepared this meal:

Perhaps you were expecting a photo of spaghetti with canned sauce?  Not from our daughters!

On the platter to the left are parmesan-crusted pork loin cutlets.  In the bowl is garlic-oil-sautéed pasta with broccoli.  On the blue plate are caprese tartlets.  Everything was So!  Darned!  Good!  Lots of great flavors: parmesan, garlic, red pepper flakes, red wine vinegar, fresh basil leaves (from our plant out on the veranda), balsamic vinegar, fresh lemon . . . mmm, it was very good.  Plus, it truly was under $10 for the whole meal (which is the premise of Ms. d'Arabian's show).

And, because it's Ice Cream Sunday in our household, we had to have some frozen treats for dessert.  Might I suggest that you all rush out and purchase some Schwan's triple lemon frozen yogurt?  It is amazingly refreshing and delicous.