Chicken-Sausage Bake

Captain's Log

New mother edition

Hi everyone! Remember me? I had a baby in July….

 …..and since then, well, cooking has not been a priority. I do still cook, but not in the slow, methodical, "let's document this on the internet" kind of way. 

But I haven't forgotten you! I photographed a recent cooking venture as an example of the sort of meal you can prep ahead of time, bake in the oven with minimal fuss, and then continue to enjoy it for a few days. So I present to you…

Chicken-Sausage Bake!

or "meat salad" as we lovingly refer to it.

You'll need:

• 10 boneless, skinless chicken thighs (two packages)
• Four andouille sausages (one package)
• Maybe a few strips bacon? 
• some potatoes (2-3 medium, one mesh bag of little guys. I like yukon golds!)
• half an onion
• two garlic cloves
• fresh and/or dry herbs: favorites include thyme, rosemary, oregano, "italian blend"
• dijon mustard
• worcestershire sauce
• hot sauce
• olive oil
• any other little seasonings you like, including smoked paprika, cayenne, soy sauce, sesame oil

I start by setting out two pans: a 9x13" glass casserole dish and an 8x8" dish. This makes a lot of food!  If you have a huge baking pan with edges at least 2" deep, use that! We're going to try and brown all this stuff in the oven, and you'll have better luck if the rubble is spread in a single layer, aka in a large pan or distributed between more than one pan. Make sense? You can also halve this recipe and just use one package of chicken. 

If I plan to bake this right away, I'll preheat the oven to 425°. 

Start by cutting up the chicken into bite-sized pieces. I don't know about you guys, but I've always been confused by boneless, skinless chicken thighs. The "grain" of the meat goes in all sorts of directions and it's hard to know how best to shape the pieces. Right? Anyway do your best with these mysterious cuts of meat. It's true what they say: thigh meat tastes better than breast meat, it stays tender longer, and it's way cheaper.

so far so good…
(note fat trimmings up top. I do this because I'm a little crazy about solid fat on meat. You do not need to do this.)

whaaat is this madness

Then I throw the pieces of chicken into my two pans, attempting to be distribute proportionally for the size of the pan.

Then I cut up everything else! And throw it in the pans.

Potatoes…

Sausage…

It's important to use a strongly flavored sausage, like andouille, since it will contribute a lot toward flavoring everything else. If you have an uncooked sausage available, use it!

Onions, garlic, bacon…

lovely rubble

Then I prepare a sauce of sorts. You can come at this a few ways, all of them loosey-goosey in terms of measuring. For example, I think a honey mustard sort of deal could be awesome. (Mix honey, dijon mustard, maybe some thyme, salt/pepper.) Or even barbecue sauce. (Bottled sauce or mix tomato paste, brown sugar, soy sauce, liquid smoke/smoked paprika, garlic powder, splash ketchup.)  Or you could make it "asian" with soy, ginger, and sesame oil. Heck throw in a little pineapple. Or maybe italian dressing! Lemon wedges! Sundried tomatoes! The idea is to mix some stuff together that'll coat the meat/potatoes and lend some flavor. The sausage and bacon contribute a lot on their own, but I've tried this both with and without a sauce and sauce is definitely better!

I prefer "zesty" and "a little bit mustardy". I like to use worcestershire sauce, hot sauce, olive oil, dijon mustard, herbs (italian blend, fresh rosemary) and maybe a teaspoon of smoked paprika. I also add some salt and pepper. As you can see, my mixture totaled about 1/3 cup*.

* After eating this batch, I thought "that could have used more sauce." So… maybe 1/2 cup is a better goal for this quantity of food. 

When it's ready, I pour the mixture over the meat/potatoes and mix it up with my hands. Then I spread everything out so there is as little overlap as possible.

still a lot of overlap. I need a bigger casserole dish!

Now you can cover it in plastic and refrigerate until you're ready to cook it (maybe… 8 hours at most? Not sure of the upper limit here. Do not quote me.). This is a great way to go because everything sort of marinates. But, if you need to bake right away, this will still be awesome without the fridge time. 

Bake at 425° (or even 450°) for 45 minutes, tossing halfway through. This is what it looks like after 45 mins:

By now the meats should all be cooked, but the potatoes, depending on how large you cut them, may need more time. So taste a potato! Keep baking until the potatoes are tender. If it takes a lot longer than 45 minutes, maybe cut the taters smaller next time.

When everything is properly cooked, turn on your broiler for some awesome browning action!

I like to broil this for about 10 minutes (cook for 5, toss it, cook 5 more) or until everything looks browned and crisp to my liking. I did not photo-document this because while it was happening, I was actually on the couch nursing our little one, and I was coaching my husband through it.

Here's what a finished serving looks like:

Not a great picture, but you see the toasty potato on the left? The browned sausage and chicken? 

Prepare a green vegetable for the side and you've got an awesome almost-one-pot meal that should cover your food needs for at least three dinners! Maybe more like six. Depends on the number of eaters and their appetites, of course.

What I like best about this meal is the versatility. All you really need is some meats you like, onion, and potato, and then dress it in flavors you like, then cook it up til it's ready. No pressure! No precision!

Here's a sleeping baby. You've earned it.

Nutella-stuffed Browned Butter Blondies

Captain's Log

If there's one thing my fella loves more than Nutella, it's blondies. Or maybe frosting. I reserve things like blondies for special occasions because they are so rich and delicious, and it just so happened that a couple of weeks ago there was a special occasion. Time for a treat! For those of you not in-the-know, a blondie is sort of like a brownie in the sense that it's a chewy-fudgy textured-baked bar, however they don't have a chocolate base like a brownie. Blondies are, essentially, chocolate chip cookies in bar form. I found this recipe for Nutella-stuffed browned butter blondies a few months ago, made it once, and knew it was a real winner. They're oopy-goopy, sweet but not too sweet, and the browned butter, for all its annoying fad-ness, lends the bars an amazing butterscotch-caramel flavor which you just can't get from regular butter.

So here we go! The original recipe comes from The Food Charlatan and I'm pretty sure I made little-to-no changes to her method. I just took more photos.

You'll need…

• a small container of Nutella (10oz), to be divided and almost entirely used
• 10 T unsalted butter
• 2 cups dark brown sugar
• 4 oz softened cream cheese
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 2 cups flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt

Lemon Blueberry Cake

Captain's Log

Late is better than never?

Two months ago I got together with one of my oldest friends and we made a cake. We took photos, we laughed, we gorged. I promised to blog that experience. And now I'm doing it, okay!? I've been a little preoccupied lately because, as most of you already know, I'm pregnant! Seven months now. And yadda yadda I've been cooking but not feeling like blogging, more introspective than outgoing, etc. And now this dear friend of mine, the friend with whom I made the cake, has moved to Seattle! It was a very fast thing, I think she herself only had maybe ten days' notice, so we didn't even get to say a proper goodbye. I'm so grateful for the weekend we had together back in February, and that we were able to make something together that I can now document for all of [internet] history to see. 

The recipe was lifted from Sally's Baking Addiction and, I don't know about you, but this cake looks like the ray of sunshine most all of us need by late winter. It's fresh, it's fruity, it's tangy, and just the right amount of sweet so you can eat pretty much more than you intended without noticing. 

Whole Roast Chicken with Veggies

Captain's Log

Hello again!

And now for a return to the savory: roasted chicken! A chicken is actually the first item that I blogged a few years ago, but I was still figuring out my blog methods, and I've had a lot more practice at chickens since then. My hubs loves this chicken so much. He requests it maybe once a week? I need more variety than that, so, we eat this probably close to 1-2x/month.

As an overview, my strategy is to keep it simple and let the chicken just taste like an amazing chicken. I don't flavor it much beyond salt, with aromatics inside the chicken which may or may not have any influence at all. I like the skin browned and crispy and the inside juicy flavorful. I cook veggies in the same pan as the chicken so they can soak up those delicious juices. I have a SUPER AMAZING method for roasting potatoes, but I'll save that for another day---today's blog shows potatoes cut up with other veggies around the chicken, and they're pretty darn good that way as well.

Start with a whole chicken. I try to get the organic ones, which at my store are usually about 5lbs. You'll need to add cooking time if yours is larger and, you know, vice versa.

Actually, here's the whole ingredient list:

• 5lb chicken
• 1 medium yellow onion
• 2-4 cloves garlic
• few sprigs thyme (3-6 will do ya) (dried herbs are fine too)
• a lemon if you like lemon with chicken
• 4-5 carrots, more/less depending on the # of people you're feeding. Here I actually used those little baby carrots because they're what I had in the fridge.. maybe two handfuls?
• potatoes, ideally Yukon Gold. 2-4 total should be enough.
• olive oil for drizzling
• salt (highly recommend kosher or coarse)
• pepper

"Key" Lime Pie

Captain's Log

So, it seems I've run out of savory dinner food items that I make well and haven't posted about already on this blog. I could do a roast chicken redux, since I've tweaked my recipe since the original post. I could also talk a little more about pulled pork because I've found an amazing new method which is simpler and more amazing than you can imagine. (Darn, the ideas start pouring in once I get going…!)

But when you get down to it, I've found myself with lots of free time, and thus the ability to indulge myself when I feel like a treat. This has led me to make homemade desserts more often, despite the fact that my fella is completely and totally content with store-bought ice cream. I think I'm averaging about one homemade dessert every ten days… for a Golden Globes party, I made chocolate chunk oatmeal cookies.  For a get-together with an old friend after that, I made mini cupcakes with my grandmother's chocolate icing. Last week it was Smitten Kitchen's Key Lime Pie, and oh boy, it's a goody.

Smitten Kitchen's writeup for the recipe describes it as a dietary salve of sorts for the wintertime blues. I agree with her! This pie is fresh, cool, tart, and refreshing. It tastes like summertime and is an instant mood booster. I didn't tweak the recipe or method at all, so you can always visit the source for the original recipe and you'd miss nothing but, you know, L Flava.

The Best Brownies

Captain's Log

New Look! What do we think?

In other news, this is the third apartment from which I've blogged. Can you believe it? Hopefully we'll be settling down soon.

Here's the new kitchen, before we were really moved in:

Always with the spotlights!

And look! We got a real, adult, not-used couch!

Now, back to food. I have this brownie recipe, and I want to share it with you. It's not my own recipe, technically, nor is it a family recipe. I actually got it from… another blog! I feel a little weird about blogging an already-blogged recipe, but on the other hand the original source doesn't show photos of each step so, I mean, I'm bringing way more to the table, right? Right!

These brownies are fudgy and hefty, with a nice crinkly crisp crust on top. They're pretty much what everyone wants out of a brownie, in my opinion. (Conventional brownie discussions claim there's a group that likes "cake-like" and a group that likes "fudgy," but, honestly, who wants cake-y brownies? The gloopy factor is part of the definition of brownie. Just have cake instead!)

Here's the recipe, from browneyedbaker.com:

• 1 1/4c flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 2T cocoa powder (the darker the better)
• 11oz coarsely chopped dark chocolate (I think hacked-up choc chips would be fine!)
• 2 sticks of unsalted butter
• 1 tsp instant espresso powder (I used instant coffee and.. more on that later)
• 1 1/4c sugar
• 1/2c brown sugar
• 5 eggs, room temp
• 2 tsp vanilla

 To start, preheat the oven to 350° and grease a pan. The original recipe calls for a 9"x13" pan, but, well, the only pan I have that meets these specs is glass and a little sloped on the edges, making the edge pieces thinner than the inner pieces. I don't like that. Instead I chose to use a wedding gift, a 9"x9" pan, and hope for the best. I tried to use parchment scraps along the bottom so I could "lift the brownies out" when they were cooled, but, well, it didn't work. DO NOT follow my lead here:

Just Checking In

Hi everyone!

So, I'm not dead. We just moved across the country (two week road trip!) and are just now getting settled back East. We should have internet in our apartment pretty soon, and asap thereafter I'll start blogging again.

After all, I'm just about back to where I was when this blog was launched, which is to say: New City, No Job. Progress!

Bridal Apple Pie

Captain's Log

As many of you know, I got married almost a year ago. Ten months, to be more precise. That means that nearly exactly one year ago, on August 2, I had my bridal shower.

Evidence

I flew East to make final arrangements and to celebrate the wedding with my best gals in a very cool, very Old Virginia location. My sister was the organizer. She had this great idea to make the RSVPs into a recipe book---she asked each invitee to respond on a pre-addressed postcard and, whether the answer was yes or no, to contribute a recipe that she particularly loves so that I, the bride, might have a little something new to work with later on. At the shower I told the ladies that I'd blog their recipes… I'm sure by now they all thought I was lying. 

But no! Last week, I received my recipe book, bound and ready! And I made one of the recipes! And I took photos!

This week's blog is from my mother-in-law. She says on the postcard that it actually comes from her mother, given to her by her grandmother, and that it originates in Women's Home Companion. What history! I just had to give it a shot myself. But first, a quick word on my mother-in-law: She has remarkable spunk and warmth and she set me right at ease when I first met her in… 2007, was it? Thereabouts? She has always welcomed me into the family, even in the early days, which was so valuable to the development of my relationship with my fella. She also models incredible strength and optimism, which I admire and aspire to possess myself. I'm looking forward to our return East, when we can all sit together on the porch and drink wine and snack on Sun Chips.

But on to the pie!

Blueberry Pie

Captain's Log

Summer Dessert Edition

Hi everyone!

Well, it's hot and breezy in Seattle, which makes me feel like doing two things: Swimming and Eating Fruity Baked Goods, like pies and cobblers. Heck, three things: let's add guacamole. And drinking rosé. Um, and sunbathing? Ok, well, I mean, you get it. Most seasons carry with them certain traditions and yearnings and mine involve the above.  

Our grocery store had huge cartons of Oregon blueberries on sale ($4? Maybe?) last week so I got one and immediately thought "how in the world am I going to eat this many blueberries?" My husband said "make smoothies," to which I said "You're right, a pie would be amazing!"

I've never been that much of a pie-baker… maybe 3-4 a year at most. That may be more than a lot of people but I suppose what I mean is that I don't have a "personal recipe" or any particular methods that I can claim as my own. Every time I make a pie, I learn something about more/less fruit, more/less bake time, etc., and then I wait four months before making another one. 

ANYWAY

I used to use Smitten Kitchen's all-butter recipe because Crisco creeps me out sometimes, but after a few tries I thought that recipe made a tough crust. Could it have been my methods rather than the recipe? Of course! But this year I chose to abandon SK all the same and try out Ina Garten's recipe instead. And it was amazing! My filling recipe was a little clunkier, but I believe I learned enough from it to instruct you faithful readers with adequate know-how.

Also I don't have a food processor** and so I did all of this by hand. I have a very strong suspicion that pie crust is way, way simpler with a food processor.

**Those of you who attended my bridal shower are probably thinking "Wait, didn't she get an awesome Braun multi-function food processor at her bridal shower? Right off the registry?" and you are correct! We didn't bring back all our wonderful wedding presents because we knew we'd be back in Virginia in a year and it seemed silly to take the larger and/or more fragile items across the country with us. Therefore, we have a whole load of wonderful new-home new-marriage gifts waiting for our return East.

Here's the recipe, filling + crust, to be detailed further below:

CRUST

(from Ina Garten, 100%)

1.5 sticks cold unsalted butter

1/3 c shortening 

3 c flour

1T sugar

1t salt

6-8T ice water

FILLING

(from The Kitchn, with some adaptations based on my experience)

6 cups blueberries

3/4-1 cup sugar

4-6 T cornstarch

zest from 1/2 lemon

2T lemon juice

Pinto Beans and Ham

Captain's Log

I've been doing some reflection, and can you believe it was just a year ago that I'd (finally) gotten a job? Seven months out here, countless applications. Of course I was particular about the kinds of jobs I applied to, but still it was quite a long dry spell! (For the unfamiliar, I work at a little grocery store that is operated by a restaurant group. It's their first venture into retail and it's been really interesting watching the company adapt to customer needs, figure out how to properly use the space, how to re-order and stock things efficiently. How to manage staff. And so forth.) The store was still under construction, not open to the public, and we were training in a nearby restaurant. Even now we're three weeks away from the anniversary of opening. It was cool and rainy much of that time. I and my colleagues were so curious about what the store would be like. It felt like such an experiment. 

Anyway, this has nothing to do with today's post. 

I am a huge fan of bean soup. Of the beans + ham variety. Split pea, yes please! Red beans, pass 'em over! And for today: Pinto beans! Beans are so inexpensive and such a good source of nutrition. I never really thought about this as a kid, when we'd have beans fairly regularly, but it also makes a huge difference if you cook them from their dry form rather than use them from a can. If you use beans from a can, I think they just taste like the water they were packed in. If you cook them yourself, they produce  a lovely hearty broth which is simply like no other. 

My method for cooking beans is pretty straightforward:

Chocolate Pavlova

Captain's Log

Hi everyone!

Happy springtime/early summer! We just got back from an awesome family wedding/vacation along the Gulf Coast. I'm sunburned and bug-bitten, but I'd expect no less from leisuring in the wild South. 

Here's some photo evidence:

Not bad, eh?

Now, back to food, ya lazy bums!

Meatball Stew

Captain's Log

Hi you guys! 

How's it going??

I've been embroiled with work (a promotion!) and a FitBit battle and thus my free time has been somewhat… absorbed… by exercise and resting and whatnot. As always I'm still cooking, though. This morning I plugged in the ole camera to load my food photos and I discovered meals and photo sessions I had totally forgotten about. You see, I always intend to write blog posts, it's just my execution that needs work.

Anyway, my goal today was to type up an amazing pinto beans 'n' ham soup, but instead I'll do meatballs because, lo and behold, I had the whole cooking venture all photographed and ready to go. These are from February.

Stovetop Steak

Captain's Log

Growing up, we had steak pretty much every Friday night. Every week! Can you believe it? It sounds so luxurious, in a way, and so sinful, in another. My parents are die-hard fans of Dale's Steak Seasoning and always used that as their marinade before grilling on a gas grill in the backyard. Mom would marinate and prepare the veggies, Dad would grill, and it all would come together in a glorious dinner to be enjoyed as a family while watching a movie.

(Ok, in all honesty, the Family Unit aspect of this dinner was somewhat lessened once my sister and I were teenagers with cars and friends and boyfriends… but the cherished memory lives on! And many of those boyfriends and now-husbands have enjoyed Steak Night themselves.)

Dale's comes from Birmingham, Alabama, and thus has only regional availability. What's a gal to do when wanting that awesome family steak, but not having a) the obligatory marinade, and b) the essential gas grill?

Enter The Salt Trick. I did not invent this. I think I read about it somewhere once, and I know my brother-in-law has done this before (which makes me think it is an Alton Brown technique, or perhaps America's Test Kitchen? Or Cook's Illustrated magazine? Help me out, Sister.). But anyway here is what you do:

Potica, or Very Important Holiday Pastry

Hello Old Friends!

I have been cooking, I swear.

…birthday presents for Mom:

Tomato Soup

Captain's Log

Behold: Last culinary venture in our old apartment

Hi Everyone! It's been a couple of weeks, and I apologize for that. We just moved, as I may have mentioned, and we have pesky jobs, and, well... here's another recipe that I love! I made it in the old apartment. A couple of weeks ago. We're full-time in the new place now. Next post should have awesome lighting, yay!

I first made this tomato soup for a group of our friends while vacationing in the Poconos. We had it with grilled cheese, as one generally must do when eating tomato soup. I started with this recipe from Emeril Lagasse and I've since tinkered and changed it so it better suits my needs. (I do NOT make the grilled cheese from Emeril's recipe. Not for any particular reason. I'm a GC traditionalist myself... all I need is bread, butter, cheddar, and maybe a clove of garlic to rub over the toasty bread edges at the end.)

Here's Emeril's recipe unedited, from the Food Network:

• 2 T unsalted butter
• 3 oz prosciutto, chopped
• 3/4 c onion, chopped
• 1/2 c celery, chopped
• 1/2 c carrot, chopped
• 3/4 tsp garlic, minced
• 1 bay leaf
• 1/2 c tomato paste
• 2 T flour
• 2 c peeled, seeded, chopped tomatoes
• 3 c vegetable or chicken broth
• 1/3 c heavy cream
• salt/pepper

The recipe also involves apple cider vinegar and sugar, cooked together until it's a light caramel and then stirred into the soup at the end as a sweet/tart balancer. I don't do this. It confuses me.

Blackberry Peach Shrub

Captain's Log

The Girlcat

aka the "hers" cocktail from our wedding

Here it is! Here's how the sausage was made! See my earlier post on shrubs for a full explanation of what we're working with.

We bought three (or four?) boxes of blackberries from Pike Place Market. One box is about six pints. But we only got one such box at a time since the process was a mess and labor-intensive. We wanted to work with the freshest fruit possible. So we would buy one palate of berries, process it, wait a week or two, then buy another.

Ice Cream Sandwiches

Captain's Log

Just Trying Something

also we got married seven days ago

So, I haven't been cooking much lately. Or rather, I haven't been cooking in the same sort of careful, photo-documenting way that drove so much of this blog earlier in the year. But! Good news! I made ice cream sandwiches a month or two ago (...) and I took pictures of it. So here we go!

This recipe is one of several that gets me thinking about Dutch-processed cocoa versus regular cocoa. You know how the Dutch stuff pops up every now and then? How Oreos are a darker brown than other chocolate cookies? Dutch-process cocoa has a reputation for being "better" and having a truer chocolate flavor, or something. I think technically it's just cocoa that has been treated with alkali and that the pH has been affected by the process... something something baking powder not baking soda, or vice versa, for effective leavening. (Better internet explanation here.) I don't ever see it in grocery stores, though, so maybe it's just not a "common people" sort of ingredient? Anyway. I spotted a carton of a Dutch/regular cocoa blend at the store and thought I'd give it a try. Photo here:

Dutch process is on the left. Surprising difference, no?

I got the ice cream sandwich cookie recipe from Smitten Kitchen, as I do so many others. Here it is, for your convenience:

Beef Bourguignon

Captain's Log

More Slow-Cooker Adventures

Continuing my interest in using my new cookbook, this past week I decided to make Beef Bourgignon. AKA Beef Burgundy, AKA "beef stuff with wine." It sounds very fancy, but don't let the French fool you: this is a peasant-style meal, intended to use the cheapest and toughest cuts of meat in the most delicious way possible. Basically wine-y pot roast. I checked my new book for a recipe, and I found four.

The fourth is on the previous page, for you fact-checkers out there.

I cobbled these recipes together to create my own. This, for the record, is essentially what I always do when I cook... I just more typically use the internet rather than a physical book.

Here's what I used:

• Five slices reduced-sodium bacon
• One package stew beef (1-1.5lbs)
• 2-3 T tomato paste
• 1 yellow onion
• two heaping spoonfuls of flour
• 1 T beef Better Than Bouillon + 1 cup water (more on this later)
• 1 cup Côtes du Rhône red wine (more on this later)
• 2 bay leaves
• 1 spring rosemary
• few dashes of dried oregano
• 2-3 peeled and crushed cloves of garlic
• salt/pepper to taste
• 2-5 carrots
• 2/3c frozen pearl onions
• 1-2 potatoes, cut into bite-sized pieces (or those adorable tiny red potatoes..)
• crusty bread

This made three hearty servings. I think it could be comfortably feed 4, but you might want to serve a salad or something too to be sure. Alternatively, you could do what I intend to do next time, which is: get a second pack of beef, add more veggies and a whole bottle of wine, and enjoy leftovers for a few days.

Slow-Cooker Chicken Cacciatore

Captain's Log

Long time no see!

Memories of a Bridal Shower edition

My bridal shower was about (/exactly) ten days ago and I have to say: I was so honored to have so many amazing women present. Showers are such a strange thing, in a lot of ways... I can't help but wonder "What did I do to deserve all this praise and attention beyond saying yes to an incredible man?". Alas, as I sort my way through the wedding process, I am learning and appreciating the role that weddings and wedding-related events have in uniting families, in solidifying old (and new) relationships, and in expressing support for what we certainly feel is a strong and happy match just bursting with potential. 

It's awesome (awe-some) to look around a room and imagine a similar lineup at Christmases and Thanksgivings and Birthdays and Reunions to come in five, ten, twenty years from now. So much love!

Which brings me back around to the blog: It turns out most of the shower attendees are readers of OBC (Okra's Book Club) and I can't wait to continually express my gratitude to them by using the gifts I was given for new posts. I am pretty sure I am not supposed to be using any wedding-related gifts before the wedding, so today's post will circle around a gift and only partially use a different one. The recipe? Slow-cooker Chicken Cacciatore, as adapted from Fix-It and Forget-It Big Cookbook: 1400 Best Slow Cooker Recipes, by Phyllis Pellman Good. This mammajamma was a gift. I was also given a new slow-cooker, but that one will have to wait until after the wedding.

Here's the recipe, as printed in the book:

Low-Fat Chicken Cacciatore

• 2lbs uncooked boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cubed
• 1/2lb fresh mushrooms
• 1 bell pepper, chopped
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 12oz can low-sodium chopped tomatoes
• 6-oz can low-sodium tomato paste
• 12-oz can low-sodium tomato sauce
• 1/2tsp dried oregano
• 1/2tsp dried basil
• 1/2tsp garlic powder
• 1/2tsp salt
• 1/2tsp black pepper

And here are the directions, as printed in the book:

1. Combine all ingredients in a slow cooker.

2. Cover. Cook on low 8 hours.

3. Serve over rice or whole wheat pasta. 

Chicken Strips with Balsamic Dipping Sauce

Captain's Log

First, the excuses

I cannot BELIEVE I used to cook homemade meals, like those displayed on this blog, 3-4 times a week! My job has me on my feet all day, lifting, carrying, standing, walking, and the idea of chopping vegetables and browning meats just makes me tired. I used to enjoy it maybe 2-3 times a week when I had an office job, but I feel another level of physical exhaustion these days that just makes cooking feel like a burden. My schedule is also arranged in such a way that I never have two consecutive days off. This is because of a choice I made (more hours, more money!) but it's really made those involved, delicious meals a rarity. I do still cook, and my fellow helps quite a bit. It's just more of the heat-and-eat variety, or the classic our-kitchen-is-kind-of-a-mess-so-I-can't-take-good-blog-pictures-right-now. 

And now food

I got this recipe originally from (guess where?) The Food Network, and I've since adapted it some to suit my needs. The original recipe, for example, involves marinating the chicken. I don't do this. I also don't use the same vinegar/oil proportions recommended for the dipping sauce. These chicken strips, plus mac n cheese, is one if my love's favorite dinners. Here's what you need:

• a package of chicken tenderloins (or sliced chicken breast)
• 1-2 eggs
• maybe 1 cup flour
• maybe 1 cup breadcrumbs
• 1/2 cup grated parmesan or grated other hard cheese, like asiago
• oil for drizzling
• 1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
• 2 garlic cloves
• salt/pepper
• a few tablespoons olive oil