Spread the love
As promised, here is a new date night idea that your husband/boyfriend/whomever will love!
My husband & I try to do a date night about once a week or once every two weeks. Typically we go out to eat then pick up our son from his grandparents’ and come home.While this is great and fun because I love hanging out with my cute husband, it’s been getting a little monotonous. Plus, I’ve learned that I’m really not a huge fan of restaurant food..
So for last nights’ “date night” we decided to do things a little differently with a night in.
The movie was up to my husband. The only rule: Italian theme.
This was an easy pick for him. The Godfather won hands down.
If that’s not your thing, here is a list of other, highly ranked Italian movies:
- Life is Beautiful (kind of sad, but very good)
- Bread and Tulips
- La Dolce Vita
- A Bronx Tale (love this)
- Goodfellas
- Once Upon a Time in America
- Casino
Now onto the food:
First up–Zesty Italian Noodles
I was pretty pleased with how this turned out and Scott LOVED it! You can find the original recipe here. The only thing I changed, was that I used white wine vinegar & a little chicken stock instead of the Chardonnay.
Now, we had to have an Italian themed drink to go along with it & we’re not really wine drinkers so we decided on…
Italian Sodas!!
If you’ve never made Italian Soda before, it is super easy! All you need is ice, club soda, half & half, and flavored syrup.
Pretty much any recipe blog I’ve visited acted like you can get the flavored syrups everywhere and maybe that’s true in other parts of the country, but here I couldn’t find ANY!
I searched everywhere! Walmart, Target, grocery stores, I even checked out the liquor store. The only flavors that were available were Hazelnut & Caramel. So I purchased some grenadine instead and we made some cherry-pomegranatey Italian sodas. Still delicious, but next time I’m planning ahead and buying cool flavors online like these Monin Flavored Syrups from Amazon.
Time for dessert! Dessert was probably my all time favorite out of everything!
Marscapone Chocolate Mousse
This was super easy and sooo delicious. If you don’t know what Marscapone is, it’s a type of Italian cheese. It is kind of like a mild cream cheese. If you can’t find any at a store near you, you can make a copycat version which is 8 ounces of cream cheese whipped with 2 tbs butter, and 3-4 tbs sour cream. The key is the sour cream, because it helps to tone down the cream cheese flavor. If it’s too overpowering, it won’t taste right.
I put the mousse in semi-sweet chocolate candy cups that I made using a Wilton candy mold, but I have to be honest. It wasn’t my favorite. I had a hard time peeling the chocolate cups off once it hardened; a lot of them broke =(
Check out the recipe for the Marscapone Milk Chocolate Mousse here.
So there you have it. An Italian themed date night.
To change things up a bit you could also put one of you in charge of dinner and the other in charge of dessert. Or you could make it a double date and do an Iron Chef style of cook off (provide basic Italian ingredients and see who can make the best meal without a recipe).
Out of things to talk about with your significant other? Check out my post with over 75 conversation starting questions, I guarantee you haven’t asked each other yet!
Leave a Reply