Lovey Dovey Dinner

Do you know what we're doing today

We're going to be preparing a lovey-dovey meal. And I'm in the kitchen with my favorite man

I can't wait. For this romantic meal, y'all, I'm treating my Michael to a mini lamb shoulder

Paul had a little lamb. I'm not so sure why, because we had plenty of ham

A smashed potato cake overloaded with all the fixings. Ooh, these are getting bigger and bigger, Daddy

a beautiful southern cornbread salad. And you can see that this is going to have

real pretty colors, Michael. And for dessert, we're going to be spreading the love

with a simply delicious strawberry cake. I'm going to prepare us a minted lamb

You like lamb, don't you? Oh, I love it. You know, lamb is not one of those dishes

that Michael and I eat a lot of because we're so busy eating seafood and steak and things like that

But I've got a slight, oh, it's probably two and a half, three pound lamb shoulder

And, Michael, what we're going to do is make a marinade. Okay

I'm going to need a half a cup of olive oil. Okay

I'm going to need a fourth of a cup of honey and a quarter of a cup of wine vinegar

and I'm going to be chopping us up some garlic and some fresh thyme for our marinade

And you can just whisk it all together right in that big measuring cup, Michael

Okay, I'll do it. So what's your most romantic meal? I love standing rib roast

That's one of my favorites. You do love standing rib and I love it with a bone in, don't you

That's why I like you, girl. So that's a quarter of a cup of wine vinegar

Well, I've got the garlic coming. I want to get it minced up real good

I'm going to do a couple of tablespoons of fresh thyme and a couple of tablespoons of fresh mint

How much thyme is that, a minute? He's funny, isn't he, girls

He's not just cute. He's funny. I'll tell you what, Michael. You be mincing up that mint, and I'll be mincing up the thyme

Ooh, this thyme smells so good. Put that mint in there, boy

All right. Grab your meat. Throw it in the bag. And then we're just going to pour our marinade

Ooh, my gracious. It smells so good. Now what we're going to want to do, y'all, is let this marinate for at least one hour

But you know, if you want it stronger, then just do this the night before

Mikey, if you'd go down and wash your hands. I'll do it. I'm going to get my little lovey-dovey started on the next dish

I'm ready. We love meat and potatoes, don't we? I'm telling you. Well, we got our meat taken care of

So we're going to be making now a smashed potato cake. So we've got some Yukon Gold potatoes that we have cubed

And we have cooked them. So, honey, would you drain those in the colander

Sure. And I'm going to kind of just be picking up for a second

Okay, and pour them back in there. And I'm going to bring these up here

And if you would, be grating us some cheddar cheese. And we'll need, you know, half a cup to a cup, depending on how cheesy you like it

And I'm going to be cutting this up about a half a cup of green onion

So what I need for you to do now, Michael, is take these potatoes and mash them up for me

So I'm going to be getting our other ingredients together. All right, so I've got our one egg that's slightly beaten

Now I'm going to need a clove or two of garlic. And, Michael, if you would, I'm going to need about a fourth of a cup of butter

It's right there in the butter dish. So a fourth of a cup would be a half a stick

I've never heard you use a half a stick of anything, butter. Tell everybody what song you were singing before the camera started rolling

Paula had a little ham. I'm not so sure why, because we had plenty of ham

Y'all see what I mean? He turns my tickle box over. Okie doke, those look beautiful, honey

All right, now we got a half a cup of bacon cooked over here. You can dump in your cheese. Okay

We dump in the garlic and the green onions And now if you would measure out a quarter of a cup of sour cream Look it up We going to put sour cream in there

And while you're doing that, I'm going to come down here and I'm going to put like three tablespoons, y'all, of olive oil in our pan

And, Michael, we need two cups of Panko breadcrumbs. They're a Japanese bread crumb, and they make things real, real crispy

And then I'm going to take about a cup, cup and a half over here

because once we form our potatoes, then we're going to encrust them in that pan coke bread crumb stuff

Here, let's get the egg in there. There we go. And I want to put a little salt

And a little pepper. I was with you until you did the panco, so..

Then you lost me. Okay, doll baby. Okay. So we're going to form these into little patties

Ooh, they're still very, very warm. Just like this, please. All right, so Michael, I'm just going to put that potato cake down in that panco

Put a crust on it, huh? Yes, we're going to put a crust on it

So you can make these different sizes. Ooh, these are getting bigger and bigger, Daddy

Look at those, y'all. We cook them three or four minutes on each side until they're nice and golden brown

Don't these look out of this world? How about giving your little wife a kiss

Okay, I'll get you one. Coming up, we're going to create a southern cornbread salad

Hope it tastes as good as it looks. I'm telling you. And we continue cooking up our minted lamb

Oh, good. It's searing up nicely. And later, y'all, I'm going to show you how to take a box cake mix

and have your man follow you anyway. Michael, if you just drain that corn

I'll do it. I'm going to make us a cornbread salad. Oh, that sounds great

I'm going to take some savory cornbread that I've baked off. Uh-huh

But before we do that, what I'd like to do, Michael, can you sear the lamb for me

Put a little olive oil in your pan. Okay. All right. Take your meat

Okay. And just pull it out of your bag. And what we're going to do is we're going to sear this off

Y'all hear what he's saying? I want this meat seared all around

Okay. So that the juices will hold in. And I'm going to come down here and I'm going to take our cornbread

You want me to grate some cheese? I sure do. I'm going to need two cups of cheese

Pass me the red kidney beans. Yeah. Now, I'm cutting this cornbread, you know, in little one-inch cubes

I've actually had this salad put together a couple of different ways

I've had it before where you crumbled it. But, you know, I might just kind of do like that while I'm putting it in there

But I'm not going to crumble it. I'm going to leave it in kind of cubes so I get more cornbread in each bite

And I'm probably going to use just a couple of cups. And that's going to be the base to our wonderful salad

My next layer here is a can of kidney beans that I've drained. Just evenly all over the top of that cornbread

It's like a trifle almost, isn't it? Yes, we're doing a cornbread trifle salad

That's exactly right. And then I'm going to layer the corn next

and you can see that this is going to have real pretty colors, Michael

Uh-huh. Going all through it. How's that lamb? Oh, good. It's searing up nicely

You can see, Michael, that I'm searing that off in my cast iron

because that cast iron will get so nice and hot for me

Uh-huh. And I just like the way that sears. All right, now

What do you need me to do? You get your tomatoes and you do them right here and then just dice them up for me

I'll do it. Michael. Yes. You know, we've never discussed this much

Uh-huh. Being on TV. How has that affected you? I knew as a child that it would be just a matter of time before somebody discovered me, so I knew I was going to be on TV

Oh, you did? Oh, sure, I did. But before I met you, it was like maybe on America's Most Wanted or something like that

Well, I got a story. The other day, when I went to Bunkle Bubba's Oyster House, Hank went with me

Wait, wait, wait, y'all. For those of you that don't know, a lot of people do know this

Hank is Michael brother and Hank was home So we had to make a trip to Bubba It one of our favorite places to go And this lady she came up to me and said

are you Michael, Paula's husband? I said, yes, I am. She said, it's so good to see you

Where is Paula? I come all the way from North Carolina to meet her. I said, you got the booby prize

You should get to meet Hank, my brother. So, Michael, what we're going to do now

is back here at all. Right. Get you a piece of tinfoil

I'll do it. And we're just going to cover our pot. We'll cook it right in the cast iron

Uh-huh. Because that's already hot. So when we put it in the oven, it won't have any cool down time

Uh-huh. We're going to cook it to internally 180 degrees. And that's going to take two to two and a half hours, y'all

Now I'm finished up with our layer of bell peppers. All right

Now let's come over here, and I'm going to take these beautiful tomatoes, Michael

that you have cut so lovingly and beautiful, and I'm just going to pile those up

Hope it tastes as good as it looks. I'm telling you. And now let's go ahead and add our layer of cheddar cheese

We're going to put about eight ounces of just a buttermilk dressing

Right, dressing. Yes. So this is 16 ounces. Uh-huh. It's about half

So about half a bottle. But you know, sometimes I don't always quite go by the directions

Sometimes I have to say, oops. I like plenty. I like plenty of dressing

And see, I want it to run down in there. Run down the side? Yes

It sure looks good. Doesn't it look good? Now, all we have to do is put this in the refrigerator

and we're going to let it chill for about two hours. Oh, yeah? Yeah, you want to just stick it down in the refrigerator drawer

Why not? Yes. Look, that fits perfect down in there. Now, you get to cleaning up your mess

Yes, ma'am, Miss Paula. Coming up, the easiest strawberry cake ever. And we're going to have a good old time on

And later, we show off our minted lamb. Ooh, look how good that looks

I got Michael in the kitchen with me, y'all. And for my lovey-dovey meal with my husband

I am fixing to make a simply delicious strawberry cake. All right, Michael

Uh-huh. if you would take those strawberries laying right there. I got them

Now, these are just frozen, thawed strawberries that I bought from the grocery store

about 15 ounces worth. Just puree them. And I'm going to be adding them to my cake mix

Now, I am using just an 18.25 box of cake mix, and this is a white cake mix that I'm using

To my cake mix, I'm going to add a small package of strawberry gelatin

And now I'm going to add four eggs. Oh, that's great. You can be the beater man

Okay. All right. Well, wait, wait, wait. Wait, wait, wait. You don't mind very well, do you

Sure I do. You know what? Why do you do them separate

because I want to check each egg to make sure it's all right

Okay. I don't want to ruin the whole bowl. Okay. Now I'm going to add a fourth of a cup of water

Give me this thing, Michael, please. Thank you. Now if you'd measure me out, I cut half a cup of vegetable oil

Adding the vegetable oil will make our cake nice and moist, Michael

All right, now you can beat it, baby. Okay. And I'm going to be cleaning up

It's what I love about cake mixes. They're so easy. You can just dump them in the bowl

You don't have to have this fancy technique. All right, Michael. What

You can go ahead and add our strawberries now. Okay. I don't want any on my white shirt

I want to stay clean for our meal. Yeah. And then I'm going to let my hair down, and we're going to have a good old time on

Now, I've got us two cake pans over here, y'all, that I've sprayed real well

So our cakes will come out nice, and they won't stick to the pan

And I'm going to bake our cake layers for 20 minutes at 350 degrees

So what I need for you to do, Michael, is take our batter

Take our batter. and divide it equally now among our cake pans

Okay. You don want one layer to come out real fat and the other one to come out real skinny Okay Oh

Okay, so let's start eyeballing this. Now, I like to take my cakes and kind of drop them on my counter

And as I do that, you can see bubbles rising to the top

It's little air bubbles that are in our batter. and that will prevent our cake from having holes all in it

Those bubbles are just a bursting. Perfect. That is perfect. You know what, Michael

What? I think you might be on to something. All right, let's get these in the oven

because I'm really getting hungry, and you know what? No, baby, our lamb is in that oven

Let's put these in the little oven. All right, so we're going to move on down here, Michael

And you can man the equipment. Sounds good. The heavy equipment. Now, I'm going to take a half a stick of butter

Okay. And I'm going to take this eight-ounce package of softened cream cheese. Okay

This has been sitting at room temperature, and you can see just how soft this is

we're gonna make a cream cheese icing and it's gonna be delicious

Now you just mix that up and when we come back I think our lovey-dovey meal

is ready to pull together, don't you? Well, it's looking good. It is looking good, isn't it

You know what? What? I love you. I love you more. You want me back in a minute

No, I don't. Coming up, we top our simply delicious cake with a cream cheese frosting that's kissed with the flavor of strawberry

Doesn't that look delicious? So, Michael, you're getting the lamb out. I am

Smells good, doesn't it? It does smell wonderful. And look at my cake layers

Ooh, I can't wait. Look, I mean, you divided them perfectly. Two perfect, the same size cake layers

Oh, look how good that looks. Oh, gosh, it shrunk, didn't it, Michael

Oh, yeah. Looks good, though. Ooh. Michael, if you will slice the lamb and be plating that up, I'm going to put together a frosting

I'll do it. If y'all remember, I had my cream cheese and my butter

Now I'm going to add about a half a teaspoon of strawberry extract

And because I'm not able to use that many strawberries in my frosting, I'm going to add just a few drops of red food coloring because I want it just a little pinker

And that should do it perfectly. Now, I'm going to put in a fourth of a cup of pureed strawberries, because you want to be careful that you don't put too much liquid, or your cake frosting will just roll off your cake

Looks good, doesn't it? Good. All right. To my cream cheese and butter, I'm going to add seven

Don't have a heart attack. Seven cups of powdered sugar. And now you have to remember, powdered sugar is so fine that it doesn't equal like one cup of regular granulated sugar

All right, so that's four. So I'm going to beat this up a little bit, and then I'm going to add my last three

It's time to frost this beautiful cake. Doesn't that look delicious

Those potato cakes look amazing, Michael. Ooh, I'm telling you. Dig deep on that salad, Michael

Get down in there and get all the cornbread and the red beans

Ooh, that looks good. Yes, doesn't that look yummy? Hey, I've got the cake

Oh, good. There you go, my precious. Thank you, darling. The king of our home

Oh, I'm going to try it. Delicious. Are you eating your cake now

I did have a piece. I don't know why you have to wait until I ask. So you really do like the lamb

Oh, yeah. I thought it was going to be bad. You did

You did. Mmm. I've had so much fun having our lovey-dovey meal together today

Me too. And I'm so glad y'all could pop in on it and share a little time with us

And you know we always send y'all loving best dishes from our kitchen to theirs, don't we, Michael

Yep. See y'all later