Daddy's Chicken

Tonight my husband cooked dinner with just a hodgepodge of things we already had on hand.  Grocery day is tomorrow, so he looked around and the dish just sort of presented itself!  Our daughter called it "Daddy's Chicken" while we were eating.  :)

Ingredients

4 boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into bite size pieces

broccoli

green beans

onion

soy sauce

garlic (powder, fresh - whatever is on hand)

oil

pepper

rice

Season chicken with pepper and bake at 375 degrees until fully cooked.  While chicken is cooking, saute broccoli, green beans, garlic, and onion in a bit of oil.  Season with some soy sauce.  When chicken is done baking, mix with the vegetables.  Cook rice according to package directions, and mix with chicken and veggies.

*any of the ingredients could be substituted for whatever you have on hand.  It's a good dish to make when you're running low on supplies before grocery shopping!*

Italian Cheese Bread

This would traditionally be made to go with lasagna, spaghetti, or anything Italian but I'm not going to do that. I had from mozzarella cheese that needed to be used and this bread popped in my head. We're having meatloaf tonight so it'll have to replace whatever potato dish I normally would have decide on. This bread is easy but isn't anything special. I'd make it again because it's easy to get to the table and I don't have another recipe for this kind of thing. If you have one and it's really good, due share!

Bread:

2-1/2 cups all-purpose flour or bread flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon sugar

1 tablespoon active dry yeast (can use instant)

1 cup warm water (120*F)

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

Topping:

1/4 cup prepared Italian salad dressing (I didn't have this so I used butter)

1/8 tsp salt

1/4 tsp garlic powder

1/4 tsp ground oregano

1/4 tsp dried thyme

Dash pepper

1-2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese

1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese

Instructions: 

1. In a bowl, combine the first four ingredients.

2. Combine water and oil; add to flour mixture. Add additional flour if needed to form a soft dough. Turn onto a floured surface; knead for 1-2 minutes or until smooth and elastic.

3. Place in a greased bowl, turning once to grease top. Cover and let rise in a warm place for 20 minutes. (Optional: if in a hurry, just skip this rise.)

4. Punch the dough down; place on a greased 16" pizza pan and pat into a 16" circle. Brush with salad dressing (I use the back of a spoon).

5. Combine the seasonings; sprinkle over top. Sprinkle with cheeses.

6. For a fluffier cheese bread (our preference), at this point, allow the bread to rest for 15 minutes or so. If you're in a hurry, just skip this rise. (The bread will rise while it bakes, too.)

7. Pre-heat the oven to 450*F. Bake for 11-15 minutes or until golden brown. See additional notes for baking tips!

8. Slice into 12 slices. Serve warm.

Weekly Menu

Thursday
Pulled pork BBQ

Asparagus

Friday

Pizza

Saturday

Sausage Jambalaya

Corn bread

Sunday

Mom’s house

Monday

Backyard BBQ chicken

Cole slaw

Corn of the cob

Tuesday

Baked Beans (They are full of meat and other goodies so definitely a main meal dish. I'll probably post the recipe after I make it)

Bread

Salad

Wednesday

Left-over’s

Thursday

Chicken and potatoes

broccoli

Anne said she liked when I posted my menu so I'll do it again. I don't think I'll post it every week. I am looking for a chalkboard at Goodwill to hang in the kitchen though so I can post our menu in our home.

Sour Cream Chicken

Incredibly easy and incredibly delicious. A whopping 4 ingredients go into this meal. I found it the other night while searching through Tasty Kitchen. I should have taken a picture - next time.

Ingredients
4 skinless boneless chicken breast (I only used 3)
8 oz container of sour cream
10.75oz can of cream of chicken soup*
1 cup French fried onions

Directions
Place chicken in a baking dish. Mix sour cream and cream of chicken soup and pour over chicken. Bake at 350 for about an hour. Cover with fried onions the last ten minutes of cooking.


*I started making a homemade cream of chix substitute so it's healthier, in terms of knowing what the heck you're eating. It's very simple and I usually make it in the morning or afternoon so when I make dinner I just grab it from the fridge. I found it over at my trusty Bless Us O Lord.

Cream of chix substitute

2 T butter, melt in pan

2 T flour, add flour to pan

2 t chicken bullion

1 cup milk, slowly add chx bln and milk to pan. Stir until thick and bubbly.

Fajitas

One of my husband's favorite meals is tacos so most Tuesday we do something with them or at least something Mexican. I had flank steak left over in the freezer from making beef and broccoli so I decided on fajitas. And like beef and broccoli it cooks fast because everything in thinly sliced and cooked over high heat.

Ingredients

• 12 oz flank steak (you can use chicken or whatever meat you prefer)
• 1 tbls purchased or homemade Fajitas seasoning (given below)
• 4-6 tortillas
• 2 tbls cooking oil
• 1 cup thinly sliced red or green peppers
• 1/2 cup thinly sliced onion
• 3/4 cup chopped tomato
• 1 tbls lime juice

1. Slice steak across the grain into bite-size strips. Place meat strips in a deep bowl and sprinkle with 2 tsp of the fajita seasoning. Cover and chill 30 minutes (I did much longer as I prepared this during my daughter's afternoon nap)

2. Heat 1 tbls of oil over medium-high heat. Add sweet peppers, onion and remaining seasoning. Cook and stir about 3 minutes or until crisp-tender. Remove onion mixture from skillet.

3. Add the other 1 tbls of oil and the meat to the skillet. Cook and stir about 2-3 minutes until desired doneness for steak is reached. Drain Well. Return onion mixture to skillet. Stir in tomatoes. Cook until heated thought. Remove from skillet; stir in lime juice

4. To serve, fill warmed tortilla with meat mixture. Top meat with anything you want. We did some sour cream and guacamole.

Homemade Fajita Seasoning 

Two things are great about this. One - all of it is used in this one recipe. Two - if you don't have one of the spices just leave it out. I did and I didn't know the difference.

• 1 1/2 tsp ground cumin
• 1/2 tsp dried oregano
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp red pepper
• 1/4 tsp black pepper
• 1/8 tsp garlic powder
• 1/8 tsp onion powder

Recipes

If you're looking for new recipes to try I'd head over to Tasty Kitchen. I've been going through the chicken link alone and have quite a few recipes saved under my new Dinners to Try link under Favorites. I haven't been saving everything that sounds good but the ones that I can actually see myself making. I said a little while ago on my personal blog how I'm getting a lot better at making menu and sticking to them, which was always the harder part for me but sometimes coming up with recipes is just as hard. When that happens now I'll go to my new link. Like I said before, I saved mostly easy weeknight meals but I did save a few that could be weekend fun stuff. We'll just have to wait and see!

Nothing Special

Dan said I should take a picture and post our dinner tonight but it's nothing special. We had Summertime Omelets with potatoes. I throw in whatever veggies are in the fridge and top it with some cheese. My husband loves eggs so that's probably why he thought this meal was so good. I eat it because it's cheap and packed with protein for my baby growing body right now. That's his man portion, for after his man workout.

The Smiths Weekly Menu

June 28^th-July 4^th

Monday

Marinated Chicken Shish kabobs

Corn on the cob

Tuesday

Tacos

Guacamole and chips

Wednesday

Meat loaf

Green beans

Thursday

Left over night

Friday

Homemade Pizza

                -make deviled eggs for Saturday

Saturday

Family cookouts

                -make scones for Sunday

Sunday

Scones for breakfast

Eggs/bacon for brunch 

Chicken Spaghetti

A recipe given to me via my Grandma, given to her via my Aunt. I actually made it yesterday but it was softball night and we never got around to eating it so I put in the fridge for tonight. Tonight was labeled Left Over night anyway so it worked out perfectly. I popped it back in the oven tonight on the warm setting and it was so good; probably better after all the ingredients sitting together a whole day. Another thing, since it called for half a stick of butter I cut other corners to make it a little healthier; see below.

Ingredients:
-1/2 lb to 1 lb of chicken
-1/2 stick butter
-1/2 cup chix bouillon water
-1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
-1/4 c Parmesan cheese (I didn't have this. I had mozz. on hand so I threw a little in)
-1/2 tsp garlic powder (I ran out of this so I added garlic salt; not the whole 1/2 tsp though)
-1 can cream of mushroom soup (I used fat free)
-8 oz sour cream (again, I used fat free)
-10 oz spaghetti, cooked

Directions:
-Cut chicken into small pieces and cook; fry in pan with a little salt and pepper. Remove from pan and set aside.
-Melt together first 3 ingredients
-Add parmesan cheese, garlic powder and soup; bring to a boil.
-Put cooked chicken back in along with the sour cream. Mix well.
-Poor over cooked spaghetti in a 9x13pan. Sprinkle lightly with Parmesan cheese.
-Bake @ 350 for 30 minutes

Serve with a salad and enjoy.

Cherry Tarts

I had some cherries that were a little past ripe and I wanted to use them up so I kind of experimented a little with puff pastry. It was so simple that it's not really a recipe. I think they turned out pretty good; not knock-you-down delicious, but good.

Start with a bowl of cherries. I didn't have very many; there were maybe two dozen or so. Make sure you get the pits out, which is messy business but worth it. Toss the pitted cherries with some flour and sugar and let them sit for awhile to get nice and juicy. You could also add some almond or vanilla extract too.

Unwrap your puff pastry and let it thaw for a bit. The box says 45 minutes but I didn't wait nearly that long; it was more like 20. I rolled it out a little with a rolling pin and then cut it into twelve little squares. The squares were big enough to fit in the cups of a muffin tin with the corners peeking up a little bit.

Then place a couple of cherries in each little pastry cup.














I sprinkled a few of them with some ground almonds too.
Then bake them at 400 degrees for 10-15 minutes until the pastry is puffed up and browned on the edges and the cherries are bubbly.















Then remove the little tarts from the muffin pan, and drizzle them with a mixture of 1 cup powdered sugar/1 tsp of milk/1 tsp. vanilla. (You may have to play with this ratio for the right consistency for the glaze...I just eyeballed it until it was the right thickness.)














Then, eat them up!