Girls Night Recipes

When my friends and I plan girls night, it always involves sinful snacking. If there were a night to fry something, this would be it. Lots of jokes (sometimes at my expense), lots of fried food, lots of wine, lots of chatter around the roar of a fire - no boys allowed. You won't find spicy chicken wings or philly cheese steaks anywhere near our buffet. Let me highlight some of our favorite snacks for girls night!

Fried zucchini slices, otherwise known as Zucca Chips are so perfect for girls night! For one, they are quick and easy. Secondly, these are delicious!

Be sure to buy at least one zucchini per person because they shrink up and we tend to eat these by the handfuls.

As soon as you pull them out of the fryer, allow them to drain on a paper towel and sprinkle with salt right away.

While we were at it, we also thinly sliced potatoes and fried them up as well.

Drain on a paper towel and sprinkle with salt.

For the chips, we made a really special sauce to drizzle over the top. We started by making a roux with butter and flour, then added milk and crumbled blue cheese.

Because it's girls night, we also indulged in a little BACON! I learned that you can microwave bacon...yup, I didn't know you could do that.

Freshly fried potato chips, drizzled with hot blue cheese sauce and sprinkled with chopped bacon. Unbelievable!!!

It wasn't fried, but we also splurged on a delicious homemade pizza.  The dough was a breeze to make ahead. I made a homemade marinara sauce that served double duty for girls night.

The sauce starts with grated carrot, diced onion, garlic, tomatoes and lots of Italian seasonings, especially a healthy pinch of red pepper flakes. A portion of this spicy tomato sauce was smeared on the stretched dough and then topped with mozzarella, shaved prosciutto and grated Parmesan.

The snack that we keep talking about are these homemade mozzarella sticks. These warm, gooey and crunchy snacks start with a familiar string cheese. Using wonton wrappers, we rolled these up like little burritos and sealed them closed using a little dab of water.

Next, we fried these up in our very popular fryer until the wonton turned golden brown.

These homemade mozzarella sticks were seriously good - I don't mess around when it comes to cheese! Fried cheese! Oh my!

We ate these crunchy hot and cheesey sticks dipped in homemade spicy marinara. This is a recipe perfect for a girlfriends get together utilizing store bought shortcuts that will save you time, but doesn't sacrifice flavor.

I can assure you we will make these again and we are even thinking of wrapping the mozzarella sticks with pepperoni before wrapping in the wonton wrapper. that would be just out of this world.

We ate well, really well. We talked until all hours of the night, drinking wine and sitting by the fire. I can't imagine a more perfect evening with the gals.