Friday Favorites – Family Movie Night Edition (Dinner Included!)

The Disney Channel – a parent’s dream and nightmare all rolled into one.

Want to render your kid absolutely still and silent for a while? Turn on Disney, Jr. for an hour or so. Then, try in vain to pry your child’s eyes away from the screen. It just sucks them in and turns them into little zombies. Some days this is not a bad thing.

I will admit to being perfectly happy to indulge in their Friday evening movie feature with Kidzilla. If we feel like a Friday night in (who doesn’t?) and the movie offering is interesting, we’ll plan a Family Movie Night.

It all started with Lady and the Tramp several months ago. An oldie but a goodie and one of my favorites. We happened to find out it was airing on Disney, Jr. and wanted to introduce Kidzilla to this classic. To add to the fun of the evening, Kidzilla had a few of her stuffed dogs join us and I decided to whip up some spaghetti and meatballs as an homage to the “Bella Notte” scene. You know…the one where Lady and Tramp share the plate of spaghetti in the alley behind Tony’s Italian restaurant. Ahh, love.

Thanks to some frozen homemade versions of both sauce and meatballs in the freezer, dinner was ready in no time and we sat down to eat. Having seen a little preview of the spaghetti scene on YouTube, Zilla decided that the Fab Hub and I should re-enact the noodle sharing part during dinner. Did we oblige? Of course. How silly, right? But Zilla loved it. After a lovely candlelit Italian meal, we settled in to watch the movie. Zilla was also thrilled to discover that one of her favorite bedtime songs, “La La Lu,” is also from this movie.

Our next Family Movie Night adventure took us to China via the movie Mulan. Honestly, I had never seen the whole thing so it seemed like a good choice. That night, we served homemade Chinese food – I forget the exact recipe, I think it was a chicken recipe. It may be on my Pinterest board. Anyway, the stir- fry was another fast prep. We paired it with some leftover fortune cookies from a takeout order and broke out our favorite chopsticks to complete the mood.

The movie was fun and has some catchy tunes. The “I’ll Make a Man Out of You” scene is pretty fun and it’s sung by Donny Osmond so that’s a major win. But my particular favorite is when it reprises later in this scene…hysterical.

A couple of weeks ago we set sail with Peter Pan and Captain Hook and watched the original Peter Pan. Kidzilla was interested but I have to admit it’s one of my least favorite Disney films. We needed a meal, though, and I was coming up with exactly nothing.

Enter Pirate Ship Pizzas. I take absolutely no credit for the idea on these – I found them by doing one of my awesome Google searches like “what the hell kind of food goes with the movie Peter Pan?” and landed on a blog post from Momma’s Playground detailing their Peter Pan movie night food and activities. Thank you to Jamie and her family for their ideas! Her French bread pizzas solved the food dilemma. We added a few Swedish fish to the plate for another fun detail. We had hoped to pick up some gummy crocodiles at our favorite candy stand in the local Farmers’ Market, but they had just sold out the week before. Go figure. So the Fab Dad made a substitute crocodile out of green apple licorice sticks. Definitely not gourmet, but so fun. Zilla designed the sails herself.

Our most recent Movie Night experience was Tangled night. Zilla loves princess movies, so this was right up her alley. For dinner, Zilla and I came up with Tangled Tagliatelle with Sautéed Mushrooms in White Wine Sauce. I’d love to tell you there is a recipe on my Pinterest board to snag…but really we just kind of made this one up because we had some sad looking mushrooms and a large supply of sage to put to use.

We did a pretty standard mushroom sauce – onions and garlic, add your mushrooms, toss in some white wine, some butter, some herbs and seasonings and you’re all set. I may have added a little light cream, too. The result was perfect – just what Zilla imagined. Her review? “This is yum!”

This week I have to leave you with just four favorites rather than the usual five. We’ve watched loads of movies with Zilla, but these were the four we did with a particular theme meal. We’ve had such fun with these lately, though, that I’m sure we’ll do more.

Have you done theme dinner nights with your family? I’d love to know your ideas so we can borrow them!

In the meantime, have a happy weekend! And come back later for a few random funnies from Zilla and the Rotten Cats!