Chicken Pesto

My amazing brother in law taught me this one...

First buy a pre-cooked chicken. Ours was $9 at our local grocery store.  Jake and I ate that for dinner 2 nights in a row.

When we were done, I pulled all the left over chicken off.  Do you realize how much chicken there is left when you're "done" eating?

The 3rd meal is easy. Leftover chicken bits, pesto, and noodles. Mmmm.  So very tasty.

Recreating Applebees for dinner!

I recently purchased this "Top Secret Restaurant Recipes" book (see it on amazon) to help encourage me to cook at home when I was really wanting to go out.  Unfortunately, it's a lot of soups.  But, it also has some of my very favorite foods (like the bread from Outback! I'm totally trying that one next!)

Last night I tried to make Applebees Fiesta Lime Chicken.  It was delicious!  And, since I was making it myself, I added a little less sauce to mine, and a little less cheese and ate it with beans instead of rice - making it... somewhat reasonably calories too!

Here's the recipe:


Marinade
1 c water
1/3 c teriyaki sauce
2tbsp lime juice
2tsp minced garlic
1tsp liquid smoke (mesquite or hickory)
1/4 tsp ginger
1/4 tsp tequila

Sauce
1/4 c mayo
1/4 c sour cream
1 tbsp milk
2 tsp minced tomato
1 1/2 tsp white vinegar
1 tsp minced jalepenos (canned/jar)
1 tsp minced onion
1/4 tsp dries parsley
1/4 tsp tobasco
1/8 tsp dill
1/8 tsp paprika
1/8 tsp cayenne pepper
1/8 tsp ground cumin
1/8 tsp chili powder
Dash garlic powder
Dash black powder

Other

1 c shredded cheddar/ monterey jack
2 c crumbled tortilla chips
4 chicken breasts

Steps:

1. Marinade the chicken for several hours
2. Make the sauce (put it in the fridge for a few minutes)
3. Broil chicken 3-5 minutes
4. Take the chicken out of the oven and spread some sauce on each piece of chicken (you'll have lots of leftover sauce so you can make this again!) and then top with some cheese. Recipe says 1/4 a cup per 4 oz of chicken, but I used a lot less.
5. Broil an additional 2-3 minutes
6. Top with fresh salsa or pico de gallo. Serve over tortilla crumbs, with rice or black beans

Slow Cooker Chicken Tacos!

I haven't been very domestic lately, but I'm always a dramatic diva!

So, I thought I was going to get laid off this week... (I didn't, everything's fine.) In panic, I turned the AC off, turned every electrical device off, lit a candle, and looked for cheap recipes for dinner. Seriously. By candlelight.

This is the delicious recipe I made - and with ingredients I already had in the kitchen!

Slow Cooker Chicken Tacos

~2 lbs of chicken
1 pkg of fajita seasoning
~16 oz of salsa
~1/8 cup of lime juice (or 1 lime juiced)
black beans or kidney beans (to stretch the recipe - and I had both)
tortilla shells
taco cheese

Put the fajita seasoning in the lime juice and mix up. Put everything in crockpot. Add some water. Cook on low for 10 hours.

Shred chicken. Serve in shells with cheese. mmmmm.

Then turn the AC back on and take one day at a time.

Dinner Diva

That's right, I'm back!

Just a little sampling of the meals I have made in the last few weeks.  Apparently I am completely sick of fast food and have really missed cooking, because I was pretty adventerous the last few days.  Here are my last 3 from-scratch meals:

1. Pineapple Southwest Chicken (previously blogged about.)
2. Stuffed Portabello Mushrooms
3. Chicken Fettuccine, homemade savory herb bread, fruit salad

Monday's meal was pretty involved for me, but the fruit salad was extremely quick and the perfect end to the heavy (delicious) fettuccine.

Mary Beth's Fruit Salad:
Yields 8 servings:
1 apple (honey crisp or other sweet variety), chopped
1 orange, chopped
1 cup pineapple, chopped (leftover from my southwest chicken)
1 TBSP agave nectar (a low glycemic index sugar substitute that is the consistency of syrup so it sticks it all together.)

Stir. Enjoy.

Nutrition
- Calories: 33
- Fat: 0.1g
- Carbs: 8.4g
- Fiber: 1.4g
- Sugars: 6.5g
- Protein: 0.3g

Southwest Chicken Recipe

I saw this recipe on FrugalFlambe, which I *highly* recommend.  (click "FrugalFlambe" to go to the recipe) It's one of the food blogs I read regularly and the recipes are easy and tasty!  I have a few modifications and notes.

Firstly, this recipe really wasn't expensive.  We even used fresh pineapple and fresh cilantro but you could easily sub canned pineapple (which the original recipe actually calls for) and dry cilantro.

• Pineapple substitutes: Either 1 (15 oz) can of pineapple or one cup of fresh diced pineapple.
• Cilantro substitutes: 2 TBSP of fresh cilantro or 2 tsp of dry cilantro

Secondly, it was really tasty!  A really amazing combination of sweet salty and spicy.  Jacob rates my dinners on a scale of "once a week", "once a month", "occasionally" and "wasn't that a nice experiment".  This recipe got a "once a month" because he felt that the novelty of the combination would wear off if we ate it more often.

Thirdly, and this is very important in my house... no leftovers! Well, technically I had like one chicken tender left over but I ate very light tonight. Normally this would have been just perfect for us.  I will note, I would either half the chicken or double the salsa.  The full chicken recipe would yield 4 servings. Even with it halfed, I was still wishing I had just a LIIIIITLE more salsa. Yum!

Dinner of Champions!

More vacation posts coming later, but first, Dinner!

I had one of those days. The kind where I'm both physically and emotionally tired, I need a nap, and I haven't cooked in about 2 weeks and we don't have much food in the house, but Jake won't be home for an hour, so I should probably attempt to make something.

So I went to my very very favorite website, allrecipes.com. A quick search for main dishes with chicken, sort by rating, a glance over the ingredients, and bam, I'm whipping up a batch of "jerky chicken."

It was incredibly fast. I had everything on hand, even though my spice rack is half empty. I subbed some of our cayenne peppers from the garden for the habeneros, and took a nap while it marinated. A little trick I've learned - if you cut the chicken into smaller pieces, it marinates faster AND cooks faster. Magic!

Jacob loved it. I asked if this was a "once in awhile" or an "every week" recipe and he exclaimed "3 times a week!". So I guess it meets approval. And anything I can make in 5 minutes, a 30 minute nap, and then throw in the oven for 15 minutes is a-okay with me.

Domestic Diva Version of Jerky Chicken.

1. In a large bowl or ziplock, combine the following: (I didn't measure anything. No little measuring spoons to clean and who cares if it's exact, it's a marinade!).

• some chopped onion. A few tablespoons
• 3 tbsp brown sugar
• 4 tbsp soy sauce
• 4 tbsp red wine vinegar
• 2 tsp thyme
• 1 tsp canola oil (or sesame. or olive. or whatever you have.)
• 3 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1/2 tsp ground allspice
• 1 habenero. Or 2 cayennne peppers. Or something spicy.
• 2 -3 half chicken breasts, cubed

2. Marinade for 30 minutes or so. Nap. Or facebook.

3. Broil for 5-10 minutes. Yay meat thermometers. Try not to die a horrible uncooked chicken death.

Delicious pancakes

Jake and I love to do pancakes on Saturday mornings. I've been a Bisquick kinda girl, but I recently discovered this delightful product on the baking aisle of my Food Lion. Cultured Dry Buttermilk which keeps in my pantry, but only replaces the buttermilk in my recipes...

My pancake recipe has evolved over time but here is my current delicious recipe for
Saturday Morning Pancakes
Yields 6 large pancakes. (2 is a plenty for one person at our house)
Each pancake is: 130 calories, 2.8 g fat, 20g carbs, 2.2 g fiber, 4 g sugar, 6 g protein.

- 4 tablespoons of buttermilk substitute
- 1/2 cup of all purpose flour
- 1/2 cup of whole wheat flour
- 2 tablespoons flax seed (ground), optional
- 1 cup milk
- 1 egg
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 1 tsp Stevia (sugar substitute). If you use sugar, use 1 tablespoon. Stevia is much sweeter than sugar.

Make batter by mixing all ingredients. Make pancakes. Eat, yum!

Notes:

• Both the Flax Seed and the Stevia were purchased at Trader Joes.
• I have a bag of ground flax seed that I keep in the fridge to add whenever I'm baking. This is optional, but it adds protein, which helps the Glycemic Index of the recipe.
• The stevia was an experiment today. My husband, super taster that he is normally complains about anything that isn't sugar. Stevia is actually a plant extract and Jacob said "I can taste it but it's very mild." I couldn't taste a difference at all.
  
• I add chocolate chips to the pancakes as they are cooking. This is because 1- otherwise the chocolate chips don't get nicely spaced out and 2 - I don't eat chocolate chips in my pancakes, so I can make them to order... giving my husband extra calories and happiness, whereas I can keep the sugar low.
• And of course, I top my pancakes with low sugar syrup. :)

Weekend Warriors

We non-parent married kids tend to take the weekend warrior thing a little seriously. We have no soccer games, no play dates... and so we work!

Last weekend we spent all weekend doing yard work. There was a rented tiller, 6 yards of dirt, 5 yards of mulch, and 2 gallons of paint. We were exhausted! And if this sudden freeze tonight (it's been in the 70's for WEEKS!!) doesn't kill it all, we might actually have grass this year in our yard instead of clover! We also started the garden - potatoes and onions in the ground, and all the other vegetables are started inside.

But this weekend, I cooked. A LOT. I have 2 lasagnas, a double batch of daal, a crockpot of beef stew, and a prepped batch in the freezer ready for later. Oh, and I bought 6 pounds of clementines from Trader Joes. I don't intend to cook anything for at least 2 weeks. Mmmm, delicious homecooked meals.

Totally worth it though. Next weekend - laundry? Ha!

Creamcheese Coffee Cake with fruit preserves.

Last night, I made our new favorite breakfast, a cream cheese coffee cake. I've made it with blackberry and now blueberry jelly. It's delicious. I highly recommend it.

• 4oz reduced fat cream cheese (not lowfat)
• 1/2 c sugar
• 1/4 c butter, softened
• 7/8 c all purpose flour
• 1 egg
• 1/8 c milk (I used 2%)
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp vanilla
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 1/4 c blackberry, raspberry, or blueberry preserves.

1. Grease and flour a loaf pan. In a mixing bowl, beat cream cheese, sugar, butter until fluffy. Add rest of ingredients (except preserves) and beat 2 minutes.
2. Spread batter in a pan. Spoon preserves and marble with a knife.
3. Bake for 25-35 minutes. Cool. (optionally top with powdered sugar)

Nutritional Information: For a slice, 1/12
147 calories; 6.6 g. fat; 150g sodium; 20 g carbs; 0.3g fiber; 11.7g sugar; 2.5g protein.

(Modified from the Better Home and Garden's Diabetic's cookbook)

Chicken Tetrazzini

Currently Playing: Memories Are Made Of This - Dean Martin

Tonight, I tried Lauren's recipe for Chicken Tetrazzini. Jacob and I were both getting sick of the ginormous lasagna I made this weekend and I thought I was going to scream if I had one more tomato based food item.














I added extra minced onions, because I was actually dicing and sauteing a fresh onion, and because Jacob has some Italian heritage, I added red pepper flakes. (he tells me this is the way an Italian dish ought to be eaten.) Lauren, what kind of cheese do you use? We used Swiss because I accidentally bought some a few weeks back so I had it on hand...

Lauren- two thumbs up!! Thanks so much for this delicious recipe!