I planned our seventh Disney Dinner to coincide with Bastille Day, so I had an excuse to make S’mores French Toast Sandwiches (or “delicious hot schmoes”) as found in Hollywood Studio’s Toy Story Land. Since it was such a decadent meal, we didn’t have dessert, but who needs it when dinner looks like this?!?
For the drink, I used the recipe for Keshian Spiced Milk from the Star Wars Life Day Cookbook…it was very much like a horchata, and very tasty!
Normally I wouldn’t make something like this for dinner, but for a special occasion, it was fun, and it may even return to the table as a dessert in the future!
For our first Disney Dinner after returning home from Disney World, I turned to the “sandwich of the future,” the Handwich! I chose chili as the filling, but there are so many other options…I think we might have to try some more of them! Creating the cones out of crescent roll dough was only a little tricky (the real struggle was getting them off of the forms when they were done!), and they didn’t fall apart quite as much as I expected when we were eating them.
For dessert, I made 50’s Prime Time Café-style peanut butter and jelly milkshakes (or just jelly, for Moose), which were really delicious!
This is about the halfway point in the Disney Dinners I planned, so there’s more fun to come…stay tuned!
What can I say about this year’s summer school? One thing is for certain…I know I’ll never top it!
Yes, we had a reading list, and there were some amazing choices on there (Ladybug in particular really enjoyed many of the titles), but this summer was all about travel and experiences, including visits to Walt Disney World’s EPCOT, Hollywood Studios, Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom. It was like four days of field trips on steroids, where we went on rides, built things, and even learned things! (And let’s not forgot the three days of field trip equivalents in Washington D.C., where we visited monuments and memorials and museums, toured the US Capitol, and walked the grounds of George Washington’s Mount Vernon! Plus the day at Kennedy Space Center after our Disney fun concluded!)
Back at home, we kept the Disney magic going with art projects:
And games:
And lots and lots of cooking! We had 12 “Disney Dinners” at home over the summer (plus the one we indulged in at The Hollywood Brown Derby), which let us sample copycat recipes from the theme parks and the Disney World resorts:
Ladybug and Bunny especially enjoyed baking and decorating some Mickey Mouse cookies:
It wouldn’t be summer school without a Lego build, and we found the perfect set to reflect our summer fun!
And we squeezed in a few craft projects, including an amazing pumpkin coach, a cupcake liner lei modeled by Stitch, and a string art Mickey Mouse head that left glitter everywhere!
We also watched a ton of Disney documentaries (thank you Disney+) and classic Disney movies, some we had seen before, and some that were new to us. I especially loved the mid-century documentaries from when the theme parks were just getting their start, but the more modern ones, that focused on attractions we saw at Disney World (and their California counterparts) were fascinating, especially after we had the experience of seeing them first-hand.
Like I said, there won’t ever be a summer school like this again, where we were able to blend fun and learning and so many experiences together, but I’m really glad we got to do it once in our lifetime!
Although we sampled a lot of food at Disney World, we only enjoyed one full sit-down meal while we were there. It was a really good one, though…we went to The Hollywood Brown Derby!
I really wanted to play I Love Lucy by visiting the “local watering hole.” Actually, I’ve eaten at the Disney World Hollywood Brown Derby before, back when Disney’s Hollywood Studios was called Disney-MGM Studios…so, a pretty long time ago! My memories of eating there were all mixed up with the I Love Lucy episode, so it was exciting to see it again in person!
The entrance is bright, and as soon as you walk in, you see the caricatures on the wall that the original restaurant was famous for.
The restaurant really does look like it did on TV, including the round booths and more caricatures (our favorite of those, seeing as there was no two-frame-picture of Jimmy Durante and his Schnozzola, was a pair of Bob Hopes on either side of Bing Crosby!).
On to the food. We shared a 50th anniversary “EARidescent Sip-a-bration,” which was a lemonade fruit punch with an adorable little Pluto perched on the side that you dropped into the drink to add a little Disney magic. And we got to keep the cup!
We also shared an appetizer, the Charcuterie Board, which was excellent. Several members of our family had the Famous Cobb Salad (which is named after Bob, yes I said Bob, Cobb), but as far as I know, it wasn’t “tossed in a derby.” Turkey ordered the Filet Mignon with Walt Disney’s Roast Beef Hash, and I really wish I had photographed it after he cut into it so you could see how beautifully rare it was!
I may be biased, but I’m pretty sure my meal, the Shrimp and Scallops Newberg, was the best. It was served with a sherry cream sauce, and the waiter (who was fantastic!), brought me a spoon and told me to make sure I finished all the sauce…so I did! It was one of the best meals I’ve ever had!
We shared two desserts, the 50th Celebration Baked Alaska and the Crème Brûlée. Both were absolutely amazing, and look how pretty!
Did I mentioned the wall lamps shaped like derby hats?
We made it out of the restaurant without flinging pie on anyone, so I’m not sure how successful we were at playing I Love Lucy, but we had a great time!
For our fifth Disney Dinner, I turned to a family favorite…breakfast-for-dinner. I chose recipes from the Frozen “Winter Wonderland Holiday Brunch” in Entertaining with Disney to create the menu, starting with Elsa’s eggnog, which was a punch made by mixing my homemade eggnog with 7-Up and vanilla ice cream:
The main course was Anna’s ham, egg, and cheese croissant sandwiches:
I kept dessert simple…strawberry frozen hearts:
This dinner was really fun, and I love any excuse to make breakfast in the evening!
Our fourth Disney Dinner (which was thankfully not a disaster!) was The Princess and the Frog themed. We started, as always, with a drink…Bayou Queen Punch. I made one adjustment to the recipe…since we’re not millionaires, I substituted ginger beer for the ginger juice, which was prohibitively expensive. The drink was refreshing and perfect for summer!
Our main course was Tiana’s Famous Gumbo. I’ve made gumbo before, so this wasn’t totally new, but the preparation was a bit different for this recipe, and I really liked it!
For dessert, I made “Man-Catching Beignets.” It’s not the first time I’ve made this variety of donut, but it’s been so long, I’m not sure any of the children really remembered them, so they were looking forward to trying them…beignets are definitely a hit here!
This was an excellent dinner after a disappointing previous attempt…now I just have to decide what we’re having next!
What was supposed to be our fourth Disney Dinner turned into a major Disney Disaster (I tried a new recipe for spare ribs that just did not turn out), but we still had the drinks and dessert I had planned as part of the meal, starting with the Poisonless Dart, which featured mint and lime:
For dessert, I made Traditional Bread and Butter Pudding with Sauce Anglaise. I love bread pudding, and this recipe did not disappoint!
Hopefully I have a little more success with our next Disney Dinner!
The theme for our third Disney Dinner was coconut…the drink, main course, and dessert all contained some form of it!
We started with a non-alcoholic version of the Monorail Yellow…I substituted apple juice for rum. It also contained orange and pineapple juice, and coconut cream…it tasted like summer in a glass!
The main course was something very new for us…an East African inspired cilantro coconut curry from Sanaa at Disney’s Animal Kingdom. It consisted of butternut squash, cauliflower, red onions, and tomatoes, in a very bright sauce made from cilantro, mint, jalapeño, ginger, and coconut milk. I think everyone was surprised by how much they liked it even though it was vegetarian!
For dessert I made a salted caramel magic bar blondie, inspired by the magic of Fantasia’s “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.”
All three of these recipes came from Delicious Disney…I’m already looking forward to the next dish I’m going to make from that cookbook…stay tuned!
For our second “Disney Dinner” last week, I turned to my other Disney cookbook, Entertaining with Disney, for inspiration. I decided to make two recipes from the “Moana Motunui Island Summer Barbecue” chapter, starting with Te Fiti’s Tropical Punch, a mixture of blue Hawaiian Punch, pineapple juice, and orange juice:
The main course was Moana’s Motunui Sliders (pork tenderloin in Hawaiian BBQ sauce with bacon, pineapple, and pepper jack cheese on King’s Hawaiian rolls):
After being interrupted by the tornado sirens, we finally got around to dessert, a recipe for Chef Art Smith’s Homecomin’ Florida Kitchen Menu Hummingbird Cake from Delicious Disney.
“Try the grey stuff, it’s delicious. Don’t believe me? Ask the dishes!”
We didn’t have a Disney Dinner tonight, but I did make a dessert from Delicious Disney. “Grey Stuff.” The classically dubious dish mentioned in Beauty and the Beast‘s “Be Our Guest.” Except this wasn’t dubious at all…it was delicious! It consisted of cookies and cream pudding piped onto homemade sugar cookies. Mine didn’t turn out quite as pretty as the picture in the book, but it was still fun and tasty!
