Girls’ Night Out (In)

By: Hallee
On: 13 Aug 2009

Tonight, our church youth group held a fund raiser: Parents’ Night Out. All of the youth babysat a good portion of the children of the church, while the respective parents got to go play like grownups for about four hours. Because my husband is currently in a combat zone that requires him to wear body armor as regular business attire, I didn’t really have anything to do. A girlfriend of mine suggested a ‘girls’ night in’, and made part of the suggestion that I cook dinner. (Which I love to do, and she knows it, so it was fine that she suggested it.)

I plotted and planned and worried over what to make. My menu for this weekend was empty because we originally planned to be out of town, so I faced no plan – something that doesn’t allow me to function well at all. I need plans and charts and menus filled out in detail. Finally, I decided to make venison chili, but after digging through my freezer and unearthing the last package of venison, I wasn’t too happy with the way it looked or smelled and made a mental note to transfer any fresh game from the butcher paper to the seal-a-meal so that it wouldn’t freezer burn by August. I dug around in my freezer some more and unearthed four chicken breasts.

My friends would arrive less than three hours from the time that I held the four solid frozen pieces of fowl, I decided that chili was probably still the best route to take. So, I plopped them in the big stock pot, covered them with water and proceeded to make white chili. Considering that it was a recipe that was put together on the fly with the ingredients I had on hand, it really ended up tasting quite good.

As I said in my introduction, our family basically sticks to whole grains and unprocessed foods, but I also qualified that I’m not a purist by any means. That definitely goes for “Girls’ Night In” desserts. It’s all about the chocolate. I have a handy pan set that allows me to make a hollow bundt cake that I can fill with anything from ice cream to pudding. I chose a dark chocolate cake filled with chocolate pudding and covered in rich chocolate frosting and sprinkled with mini chocolate chips. It was quite decadent.

chocolate cake with pudding center

Seated around the living room in comfortable spots with bowls of chili in our laps coupled with plates of corn bread and glasses of iced tea, we watched the movie, Faith Like Potatoes. What an incredible, powerful true story of Angus Buchan’s salvation and the beginning of Shalom Ministries. I cannot recommend this movie enough. It started a little slow. The movie takes place in South Africa and Angus is a Scottsman, so it took a while to get used to the accents and regular subtitles. But, it drew me in until I was so caught up in the movie that a scene during a thunderstorm literally took my breath away. I cannot tell you what happens because I would never spoil a movie that way, but seriously, rent this movie. You’ll be better for it.

At 9PM it was time to collect the children. The kids had an amazing time. Scott loves anything about church so he was happy to go and hit the door running when I dropped them off and had to be dragged out when I picked them up. Jeb, who goes to no one, found a teenage boy and clung to him all night, but started crying when he saw me and held on to me as if his life depended on it. Kaylee, who is 12 and was one of the babysitters, had “so much fun” and would like for them to do it once a month. I don’t know if the youth ministers would be willing to do it that often, but I am thankful for the time they gave the parents and hope that the fund raiser ended up being a blessing for them.