Creamy Italian Chicken

No pictures, just a heads up.  Just deliciousness.  And easiness.  Two of my favorite things.

Word on the street is my mom used to make this, but I don't remember that at all.  I got this recipe from a friend the summer we lived in Dallas, Mariah.

Essentially you take:
1 can of cream of chicken soup
mix it with one 8 oz box of cream cheese
1 package of Italian dressing
1 stick of butter
some milk, however much you want to make it as thick or thin as you want.
I usually only add 2 (frozen or thawed) chicken breasts, but you could easily fit 3 or 4 in the pot.

Crock pot on low for 7-8 hours.  It makes a ton of delicious creamy sauce, so be sure to make pasta or rice to serve it with!

Delicious!!!

Rating:  4.0 stars.

Monterey Chicken

Last night's dinner was a success.  It was super easy.  Callen didn't rant and rave about it like he did the other night with the last chicken dinner I made, but I liked it.

Monterey Chicken

1.  Pound out the chicken breasts until flat, then cook.  I used my George Foreman grill.  (Which, by the way, how do you even clean???  Don't get me wrong, I do my best, but there always seems to be a little left over from the last meal...)


2.  Get your ingredients ready:
     -grated cheddar cheese
     -chopped tomatoes
     -bacon bits (I cooked real bacon and tore it into pieces)
     -BBQ sauce (I used Sweet Baby Ray's)

3.  Layer on your ingredients.
     -1 TBSP BBQ sauce, spread across the top of the chicken
     -1/4 c. cheddar cheese sprinkled on
     -1/4 c. tomato sprinkled on that
     -as much bacon as will fit on top of that
     (I think the actual recipe called for onions, but we don't do onions in this house)

4.  Bake at 400 degrees for about 5 mins, just long enough to melt the cheese.


Enjoy!  I pulled out some limes and we squeezed a little juice on top, which added a nice little...  what's the word, pizzazz!  (How do you even spell that?)

Rating:  I thought it was great, hubs said it was "good".  So overall, 3.7?

Chocolate Zucchini Bread

Heck yeah, this was DELICIOUS!  And since I'm trying to be extra healthy, I feel like this counts, since it is FULL of zucchini...  Chocolate, too, but who's counting?


So here goes.


Chocolate Zucchini Bread

I loved her tip of wiping down the top inch of the pan, that was something I didn't know.  And it worked!  My loaf is nice and round across the top.  No sinking in around the edge.  Oh the things you learn.

So, essentially, mix all the dry ingredients,

Mix all the wet ingredients,

Mix the dry and wet together.
Add the chocolate chips.
Pour into the pan.
Cook.

Easy enough, right? (Can you tell I forgot to take more pictures.  I'm terrible at that.  I think I just get so excited to get it cleaned up and in my mouth that I lose sight of what's important.  :) )

And I went ahead and made one loaf of bread and one pan of 12 muffins in liners.

Overall rating:  5.0 stars.  I have no complaints about this recipe and I absolutely LOVED them.

Radishes

What the heck to do with radishes???

I got two bunches in my Bountiful Basket this week.  Here's a recipe I found and need to keep for this week.  So I haven't made this yet, but am planning on it.

SAUTEED RADISHES

I substituted olive oil for the butter and orange juice for the lemon juice. No chives either. Could be why they were only so-so. 

! bunch radishes
Boiling salted water
3 Tablespoons butter
Two tablespoons lemon juice. 
Fresh chopped chives

Thinly slice radishes and blanch in boiling salted water for 30 seconds. (Ok, I skipped this step also).

In a saucepan, melt butter. Add the lemon juice and blanched radishes. Cover and cook over medium-low heat for 2 minutes, shaking the pan gently several times. In the last minute, add the fresh chives and stir. 

Tater Tots

For some reason, I always want to spell it tator tots.  Maybe because they're potatoes?  Not sure.

Anyhow, this was somewhat of a disaster.

Bake the potatoes, then grate them while they're hot.  I've tried this before and this time it went a lot better.

Then add a few things, flour, salt and pepper.  Roll them into balls, then fry them.  Seems simple enough.  However, I don't think my oil was hot enough and the balls sat in the oil for too long, cuz they from this:

to this:

They didn't stay together.  So I turned up the heat, tried the next batch

And they stayed together much better.  I forgot to take a picture of the ending, but they worked for what I need.  I plan to make a tater tot casserole tomorrow and so these are now in the freezer, waiting to go on top.  Cheese will be spread over it, so even if they are crumbly and frankly just ugly, they still taste fine.

Overall rating:  3.0 stars.  Next time I'll just buy tater tots.  Even if I am trying to save money and use up my potatoes before they go bad...

Baked Parmesan Chicken

This recipe really surprised me.  It has such simple ingredients, I didn't expect much from it.  But let me tell you, the flavor really packs a punch.  Callen even said that this definitely needs to go into the rotation.  And he doesn't say that much.  So already, I'm going to go ahead and give it a rating of 4.8 stars.  And the sauce was great, I should have made rice to go with it...

Simple enough.  Lay the chicken in a greased cooking dish.  Mix your ingredients together and pour over the top.  I halved the recipe and used 1/2 greek yogurt and 1/2 mayo to make it a bit healthier.  In fact, I would say I used more 1/4 mayo and 3/4 greek yogurt.  But whatever.

Sprinkle on a little cheese and cook at 350 for 45 minutes!  My chickens were pretty thick, I should've given them about 10 more minutes, but they were still delicious!

Cauliflower

I have tried several recipes lately with cauliflower.  Not that I ever buy it, but it occasionally comes in my bountiful basket.  So I've been experimenting.  I know I don't like it raw.  So I've tried cheesy cauliflower pancakes, they never really got crispy and I don't like mush.  I tried mashed cauliflower.  Oh my gosh shoot me now.

This is what I finally settled on.  Oven roasted cauliflower.  Seems simple enough.  And actually, they were good!

Cut the cauliflower into florets, then wash and dry.  Add a little chili powder, olive oil, and I used garlic salt and boom!  Done.

Roast them at 350 for about 20-25 mins, flipping them every 10 mins and you've got yourself a healthy little side dish!  Callen even liked them.  :)

Definitely a 4.0.

Chicken Alfredo Lasagna Roll Ups

I forgot to take pictures of this recipe, so I hesitate to post it, but I want the recipe catalogued, so I'll just steal the pic from the recipe site.

I try to stay away from white sauces in general because of the high fat content, but red sauce is giving me killer heartburn these days (less than 3 weeks to go!), so sometimes you do what you gotta do.

Start by cooking your chicken.  I used one large chicken breast and boiled it.  I boiled whole wheat lasagna noodles at the same time.  I used 6 noodles.  Well, I actually boiled 7 cuz I tend to have a noodle casualty every time.

As they were cooking, I grated some mozzarella cheese (not sure how much) and got out oregano and garlic salt.

Then comes the assembly.

Spray a cooking dish.  Lay out a noodle.  Sprinkle on 1/6th of the chicken (since I have 6 noodles).  Spread about a tbsp of alfredo sauce over it.  Then sprinkle on some oregano and garlic salt.  Finally, sprinkle on about 1 tbsp of mozzarella cheese.  The recipe says to put it all at the top, but I found that rolling was easier if I spread it out along the noodle.

Then comes the rolling.  It tends to make a mess if you overfilled it, but if you roll it gently and loosely, I could keep it all inside (or just shove it back in as you go).  Lay it in the dish, then repeat with the other 5 noodles.

Finally, spread alfredo sauce over the top of the noodles and sprinkle with more cheese (my bff makes fun of me because she says I like to smother everything with cheese.  Are there people who DON'T smother everything in cheese????)

Bake at 350 for 30 mins and you've got yourself some deliciousness!

(This picture looks like they also used some cheddar cheese.  That could probably also be delicious.)

Original recipe here.

Overall rating:  4.0 stars.  Mostly because of the health issue.  But they are pretty easy to make and a good change of pace when needed.  And I would bet that these would freeze pretty well if you needed to.  Probably just freeze it before you cook it.

Zucchini Boats

This is one of our favorites.  And I love how healthy it is!

Start with some zucchinis, hollow them out.  I used a melon baller.  And I did 3 zucchinis.

Then I browned about a half a pound of turkey meat with one minced clove of garlic.  The original recipe (from cooks.com) also calls for onion, but that's a swear word in this house.

Then I added the spices (which I don't usually measure, I just eyeball it).  1/2 tsp. basil, 1/4 tsp. oregano, and 1 tsp. worcestershire sauce.

 Last but not least, layer all the ingredients.  Put the zucchinis in a dish, scoop in the turkey, pour over a can of tomato sauce and sprinkle on some parmesan cheese.

Bake at 325 for 50-60 mins and it is done!  Delicious and nutritious!

Rating:  4.9 stars.  I can't think of anything much better than this.

Navajo Tacos

I asked Callen a while back some dishes he remembers from when he was little.  He mentioned tamales and chicken and dumplings and navajo tacos.  Very different from what I remember.  I remember mac and cheese with tuna fish and tater tot casserole.

I made the chicken and dumplings a few days ago so now I was on to navajo tacos.

Now I've been out of town for a week so Callen has been on his own.  Which means he was ready for some healthy meals.  In fact, I am pretty sure he even mentioned the word "diet".  So I decided to make whole wheat scones.

I halved the recipe (and still ended up with 3 dozen scones).  I don't know if that made a difference, but the dough ended up very... wet.  So even though I let it rise for almost 2 hours, it didn't rise at all.  But I was out of time, so they went in the fridge anyway to cool.

I had to add a ton of flour as I was rolling it out, but it still looked like whole wheat dough.

I cut them up and then fried them.  I just used generic canola oil and it was fine.  The dough didn't really puff up like it did when I made regular scones a year or so ago.  Not sure it if was because they didn't really rise or because they are wheat or a combination of both.  They puffed a little, but not big and round like normal scones that I drool over.  Oh well.  They still tasted just fine.

Next came the chili.  Super easy and quick to make, perfect to put in the crockpot so we could go fishing and have dinner pretty much ready when we got home.  When I checked the recipe originally for ingredients I needed to buy, I missed the "chili packet" ingredient.  I guess I just thought it was "chili powder".  So I had to make my own chili packet...  I just googled it, though I can't remember what site I used.  They all look the same.  

Nice and steamy.

Just throw the chili over the scones, add a little cheese, lettuce, sour cream, whatever and done!  (Yeah forgot to take a picture of the final product.  But trust me, it was pretty).

Overall rating:  3.8 stars.  Next time I'll make regular scones.  Or figure out how to make these ones puffy.

Chicken and Dumplings

When I asked Callen what types of things his mom used to make, he couldn't come up with a bunch.  He did mention chicken and dumplings.  NOT something we used to eat in my family.  The first recipe/attempt I made was a disaster.  Callen diplomatically said something to the effect of, "This isn't how I remember it, but it's good".

So here is attempt #2.  Find the recipe here.

I started by boiling the chicken and making the dumplings.  (Callen asked me later why I didn't just buy the dumplings.  Who knew you could actually do that?)

Cut them up, then boil them about 20 minutes in the chicken stock.  They looked weird to me, but apparently that's what they are supposed to look like.

Then just add the cooked/diced chicken and it's done.  

There was not a lot of spice and the dumplings' texture kind of weirds me out, but the only difference between this version and what he knew was that it was a little more "yellow" than normal.  But he went back for seconds, so I guess it was good enough to pass.  And I did get a "This reminds me of my childhood" as he was eating.  So I felt like this recipe went much better...

My opinion?  Kind of bland and like I said, weird texture.  So purely because of those two, I would have to say 2.8 stars.  A little better than half, but not something I will ever make if Callen isn't there.

Fried Chicken

Today's recipe came from here.  I made a few changes so I'll put the recipe here and show you what I did differently.  It seems easier than explaining it step by step.

Homemade Chicken Nuggets

Equipment:

Cast iron skillet or large stainless steel saucepan
Tongs
Small finger bowls or ramekins

Ingredients:

Chicken meat, pastured or free-range organic (3 pounds)
Organic whole milk yogurt or buttermilk (2 cups) — enough to cover the chicken — where to buy yogurt
Yellow or white onion (1)- didn't use
Garlic cloves (2-3)
Paprika (1/2 tsp)
Cayenne pepper (1-2 pinches)
Sprouted flour (1 1/2 – 2 cups) — where to buy sprouted flour- I used regular flour, it was what I had.
Sea salt (1/2 tsp) — where to buy sea salt- once again, I used regular salt.
Freshly ground pepper (1/2 tsp)
Beef tallow, lard or expeller pressed coconut oil — expeller pressed is flavorless so you don’t taste any coconut flavor (2 cups) — where to buy coconut oil-yep, you guessed it, regular oil.  I didn't want to spend a bunch of money when I had other things I could use.
Raw honey — where to buy honey

Directions:

1. In a bowl, Pyrex baking dish or plastic freezer bag, marinate the chicken, cut in nugget-sized pieces, in yogurt or buttermilk with the chopped onion,smashed garlic, paprika and cayenne pepper for a minimum of 4 hours and up to 2 days.

2. Place chicken in a colander and drain off the excess buttermilk or yogurt.

3. Add the sprouted flour, sea salt, ground pepper, and chicken pieces to a large plastic freezer bag, zip to seal, and shake until the chicken is completely coated. You can also dredge the chicken in the flour mixture in a large bowl if you prefer.

4. Set a cast iron skillet or large stainless steel saucepan on medium heat and add the 2 cups of expeller pressed coconut oil.

5. The oil is hot enough when it starts to bubble — but not so hot that it’s smoking. Add the chicken pieces to the pan and fry for 3-5 minutes on each side, until dark golden brown.  I had to fry it more like 7-10 mins on each side to make sure they were cooked all the way through, maybe my chicken was too big??

6. Using tongs, remove chicken nuggets from the skillet and place on a cooling rack on top of a cookie sheet, or on a plate or cookie sheet lined with a paper towel. Add sea salt to taste.

7. Serve with small bowls (I use small ramekins) of raw honey for dipping.  I just served them with ranch, I didn't use honey, though it probably would have been delicious!

This post is part of Food Renegade’s Fight Back Fridays blog carnival.


Overall rating:  Easily 4.5 stars.  Brooklyn even eats these!