Olive Garden Date Night at Home (Recipes Included)!

My husband and I celebrated our 3rd wedding anniversary this past week. We were able to go out on a date a few days before, but I decided to come up with something to do on the actual day of our anniversary that we could do at home! My husband had to work late, so I had everything all ready for him when he arrived.

It was almost as good as actually eating at Olive Garden, plus you don’t have to pay a tip!

I have to confess, we eat dinner in front of the TV a lot, so it is a big deal for me to set the table!

Here is the menu I made for our meal. I tried to make it look like an actual Olive Garden menu, to seem a little more authentic. I also included a blank menu, in case you don’t want to serve the same food that I did. You can copy and paste this into Word, re-size and print!

Allow cream cheese to come to room temperature. Cream together mayonnaise (or sour cream), Parmesan, Romano cheese, Mozzarella, garlic, basil, and garlic salt. Mix well. Add the artichoke hearts and spinach (careful to drain this well), and mix until blended. Store in a container until you are ready to use. Spray pie pan with Pam, pour in dip, and top with cheese. Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes or until the top is browned. Serve with toasted bread.

Place bag of salad in bowl. Place red onion, black olives, banana peppers, tomatoes, and croutons on top of salad. Add some freshly grated Parmesan cheese if you like, and add plenty of Olive Garden Salad Dressing on top. You can add more or less of each ingredient depending on your preference.

Camille made these breadsticks a few weeks ago so I knew they would go perfect with our Olive Garden meal. Because I was short on time, I used Rhodes Rolls frozen dough, thawed it, shaped breadsticks, brushed butter on top, sprinkled on garlic salt and cooked it at 375 degrees for 15-18 minutes. They still tasted so good, and you wouldn’t know they weren’t made from scratch!

Procedure:
1. In the mixing bowl of dough mixer, mix together 1 1/2 Tbsp softened butter, flour, sugar, salt, yeast and water and make smooth soft dough. (If you don’t have a dough mixer, simply mix ingredients together in a bowl using a large spoon. When dough becomes too hard to mix using that, pull out of pull and knead on a floured surface until dough is smooth. I kneaded mine for about 5 minutes and it turned out fine)

2. When dough is ready make elongated shape of bread sticks having 1 1/2” thickness and 5-6″ long.

3. Place these sticks on a greased baking sheet by keeping 2-4 cm distance in between sticks cover the pan and let them rise to double in size for 60-80 min (keep in a warm place for faster rising).

4. Meanwhile preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

5. Brush breaksticks with melted butter and sprinkle with garlic salt. Bake for 18-20 min until they are barely lightly golden on top (don’t over-do it!). Serve warm breadsticks with marinara sauce for dipping.

We always have these on special occasions! You can see my step-by-step posthere.

Easy Chocolate Dipped Strawberries:

1 pkg. milk chocolate chips

4 Tbl. vegetable oil

1 pkg. strawberries

1 pkg. white chocolate chips (optional, only if you want some white chocolate on top)

2 Tbl. vegetable oil (only if you are using white chocolate chips)

Aluminum Foil

Baking Sheet

Line baking sheet with foil and set aside. Wash and dry all of your strawberries. Add whole bag of chocolate chips & 4 Tbl. of oil to a saucepan over low heat. You’ll want the heat to be as low as possible! Whisk chocolate and oil together constantly as it melts. Hold each strawberry by the leaves and dip into chocolate. Make sure to not get the leaves! Gently set each dipped strawberry on foil lined baking sheet. After all of the strawberries are dipped, place baking sheet in the fridge for 30 minutes.

If you want white chocolate on top:

Melt 1/2 bag of white chocolate chips and 2 Tbl. of vegetable oil on Low heat. Constantly mix with whisk until completely melted. Use a spoon to drizzle white chocolate on top of each strawberry. It will look like a disaster! Place baking sheet bake in the fridge until ready to eat. Remove from sheet and serve.

This is such a great idea. I could live on their salad…I have seen their recipe before, but I feel like it always had gelatin in it so I never made it. I might have to try this…the pasta and dip look wonderful, too!

You are my hero! I used to work at the OG in college and I still love it to pieces. I am pinning this post and will be trying these recipes very soon!I would love if you stopped over to link up at Get Schooled Saturday a Too Much Time on my Hands!

Awesome idea! My husband and I love Olive Garden, but unfortunately we can’t afford to eat their very often. Another great place to get recipes is right from their website http://www.olivegarden.com/Connections-to-Italy/Recipes/ the even give us their spinach artichoke dip recipe! Love the menu idea!

Love this! I’d do Zuppa Toscana instead of Pasta e Fagioli though because I like it better. I use this recipe here: http://www.food.com/recipe/olive-garden-copycat-zuppa-toscana-38298. I do make a few variations though… I use regular whipping cream instead of heavy whipping cream to save a few calories. I also slice the potatoes into big circles, like moons – I think the cut is called Rondelle. I don’t chop the kale, I just rip it with my fingers. I like bigger pieces instead of teeny little ones. Anyways, I’d highly recommend this recipe if you don’t have a version of your own

Welcome to our site! There are six of us girls . . . no boys! Now that we have grown up and moved far apart from each other, we use this blog to stay in touch and share our ideas. Feel free to take a look around!