Tastes like Chicken

We’ve been eating out way too much lately. It’s always bad when our daughter, Alexis, has something going on. Right now it’s softball and highschool. These activities usually require me to take on the roll of the taxi driver rather than the cook. However, tonight I made it a goal to be both! I served a quick and easy meal that satisfied everyone!

Easy-Peasy Chicken Legs: (okay, you might not find peasy in the Merriam-Webster dictionary…but I’m sure it’s in the Urban one!)
Oven at 350 degrees
6 Chicken Legs (rinsed and pat dry)
6 thin slices of butter
garlic
smoked paprika
pepper

Side #1
3 red potatoes
3 thin slices of butter

Side #2
Green Beans and Almonds

Okay, this is going to be simple. I put the rinsed and dried legs in a 8×8 casserole dish. I put some minced garlic over each leg and gave them a little massage. I laid one slice of butter on each leg, a little bit goes a long way. I then sprinkled on some smoked paprika. (I got this paprika for some deviled eggs I made awhile back. I don’t think I’ll ever go back to that plain ol’ stuff I used to get!) I take my pepper mill and do a few turns over each leg. These legs are looking mighty fine!! (ZZ-top song now fills my head.) “Shes got legs, she knows how to use them.”

Anyway, I throw the casserole dish with my speckled chicken legs into the oven. Now I move onto my side dishes. I decided to go with baked potatoes…I told you I was doing it easy tonight! I picked out 3 red potatoes from the bag and I rinsed them under the cold water. I then got my hand-dandy foil out and pulled off three pieces. I placed a potato on each sheet and cut a slit in the top of each. I put a slice of butter on each potato and then closed them up. I threw them into the oven next to my chicken legs. I let all of that cook for 45 minutes and then pulled them out of the oven.

Now all I needed was a veggie. I decided to go with the green beans and almonds from General Mills. I have to say that I love these things! They are easy, only takes 5 minutes in the microwave and taste so much better than canned.

That was my easy (peasy) dinner. Actually I think it took more time to write all this down than it did to prep everything! But this keeps me on my toes…and I am learning things in the process. Like how much I love to use butter!! haha

 

Thrifty!

Alexis had a scrimmage game against another softball team today so I had the whole house to myself. I blogged earlier about my the game hens I cooked for dinner on the 27th. Well, 4 Cornish Game Hens for 3 people left us with a lot of leftover chicken. So today I spent a lot of time in the kitchen being THRIFTY!

As I was looking in my cupboards for inspiration two little, magical chefs appeared on my shoulders. I bet you’d like to know what kinda stuff I have in my cupboard, right?! I promise there are no magic mushrooms or anything of the sort in there. Anyway, these two little chefs…okay, there were no chefs. But those two chefs represent what I was pondering for the chicken! On one hand I knew I could make the old standard, Chicken Salad! It’s always great to have a light sandwich for lunch and it couldn’t be easier! But the other “shoulder” had a different idea. Chicken Tortilla Soup. My mind started to reel! What should I do? I decided to take the chicken out of the fridge and have a look at what I had to work with. You know what I found? I found I had enough chicken to do both! I felt those little chefs dancing for joy as I hopped around the kitchen gathering the ingredients for my first meal.

I decided to start with the chicken tortilla soup. I figured that Alexis and Chad would be wore out from sitting in the hot sun and would be in need of some comforting food. Soup might not be the best for a hot day, so I turned a couple fans on and put the air down to 74 to set the mood.

Chicken Tortilla Soup

Chicken Tortilla Soup: Okay, I admit that I make this often. But never the same way twice. I like to scavenge through the kitchen and just throw stuff together.

1 box of Spanish rice (I usually use this as a base for the soup, it has a great spice and I LOVE rice)
8 cups chicken broth (from bouillon cubes..if I had been thinking ahead I could have boiled down some the chicken parts a couple days ago for the broth)
1 onion
1/2 red pepper
1 can of diced tomatoes with zesty jalapenos
1 can of diced tomatoes with green peppers and onions
pepper
cumin
black beans (leftover from a southwestern salad I made a couple nights ago)
About 3 cups leftover chicken, cubed

There’s not really much to this one. I kinda just throw it all together. Today I started with the rice and broth and let it cook until the rice was about done. Then I threw in the onion, red pepper, tomatoes and spices. I let all that stuff cook for about 15 minutes on medium heat and then I threw in the beans and chicken. I ended up adding more pepper after I tasted the juice, but oh my it was tasty!!

I then moved onto my Chicken Salad!

Chicken Salad: This took only a few minutes! I absolutely love my Cuisinart Smart Stick. This baby has been with me for awhile now and has made my life so much easier.

rest of leftover chicken (maybe 2 cups)
1-1/2 stalks of celery
1/2 small onion
1/4 cup mayo

I put the leftover chicken into the food processor attachment on my Cuisinart Smart Stick and chopped it up pretty fine and emptied it all out into a bowl. I then put the stalks of celery and the small onion into the processor and did the same thing to them. From there I put everything in the bowl and mixed it up! No rocket science here!

I finished a little after noon and started to feel pretty proud of myself! I decided to let the soup simmer until Chad and Alexis got here…

…ring
ring…
…ring

Me: “Hello”
Alexis: “Hey. We are at Taco Bell, what do you want”
Me: *sighs* “I made lunch for us.”
Alexis: *silence*
Me: “Get me a Burrito Supreme.”

Tonight’s menu:
Leftover Chicken Tortilla Soup

 

Home Schooling

The other night I came to a realization about my childhood.   You might be thinking, “Oh no! Not another self-journey story”.  And you’re right…but it’s not like the journey you read about most often.

I had this realization a couple days ago while cooking beautiful Cornish Game Hens.  I was standing there in my kitchen, patting dry the hens and placing them in the roasting pan.  At that exact moment my brain flashed back to my childhood.  I drifted back and tried to picture what my mom might do with these hens.  What would she put on them?  For a little back story, my parents anniversary was to be the very next day, so my thoughts might have been prompted by missing my dad and being so far away from mom when I know alone she must feel.  Either way my realization was this; that I couldn’t think of exactly what my mom would do with the hens.  Why couldn’t I put myself in my mom’s apron?  Well, the only answer I could come up with was that, like most kids, I wasn’t as intent on watching my mom make dinner.  I was more focused on the smells that filled the house and of course the end result..YUM.  So now, here I am.  I’m 32 year old wife and mother and I am just now getting into the hang of things in the kitchen and desperately wishing I had paid a little more attention.

Where would I be if I had watched less TV and watched my mom instead?  I probably wouldn’t be as good at 80s trivia, for one.  If I had been at my mom’s side I am pretty sure I would have a lot more confidence in the kitchen and I’d know more about food than I do now.  But most importantly I would have more memories and a bond with my family that would close the distance between us every time I made something from my childhood.   It will be something I’ll always regret and miss.  It’s ironic that I spent 22 years under my parents’ roof and while a lot of my memories take place in the kitchen, most of what my mom (and my dad) cooked there, in that very kitchen, is lost to the past.

All of this left me with a deep sadness until I came to another realization (hey, I’m on a roll).  I may have regrets about not paying attention to my mom and dad in the kitchen, but there is something I can do for the future.  For my kids’ future, and perhaps to start that self-journey for myself, I’ve decided to do an online blog of my cooking.

With that in mind here’s my first entry!

Cornish Game Hens

Cornish Game Hens: made on Thursday, August 29th, 2009
4 Game Hens
2 carrots
2 stalks of celery
1 onion
1 apple
toothpicks
minced garlic
salt and pepper
1/4 cup butter
a few pinches of fresh basil
1 cup chicken stock

Oven was set at 350 degrees.
I rinsed and dried the game hens and placed them onto the rack in my Kitchenaid roasting pan. I cut up all the veggies and the apple into chunks and stuffed a little bit of each into the cavity of the hen (cavity seems like such a gross word). Anyway, I stuffed those hens as full as I could and closed up the cavity by crossing the legs of the hen over the opening and sticking a toothpick through the legs to make them stay. Usually you can truss them with string, but I improvised with the toothpicks. (Alexis actually gave me this idea when I ran into this problem a few months back with a turkey. She suggested I use kabob skewers since I didn’t have any string. Worked like a charm! Now I like to stab things with wooden objects. Watch out, Buffy Summers!! I’m the new Chosen One!) So, my birds are stuffed and sitting nicely in my pan. Now I decide to throw some stuff on top of them. I go for the garlic first. I rub about a 3/4 teaspoon of minced garlic all over my un-feathered friends. Then I grab the salt and pepper mills and do about one turn of salt for each hen and a few turns of pepper on each. Oh, they were looking good! (I almost took a picture, but I thought it was a little morbid at the time.) Okay, then I took the butter and cut it into 4 slices and placed a slice on each hen. I almost stopped there…but then I saw that my basil needed a little pinching! I pinched off quite a few of them and tore them up and threw on top of the hens! I was almost done, but I didn’t want my little birdies to dry out, so I put about a cup of chicken broth in the bottom of the pan. Voila! Those bad GIRLS were ready to go in the oven.

They ended up cooking for about an hour and fifteen minutes.

By luck the hens were so pretty that I decided to take a picture of them! So that’s another reason they are the subject of my first food blog!

 

Pogo Monopoloy

So, my friend started a blog today and…

…now he wants to play pogo monopoly!!!!

To be continued…

 

Much like a parrot’s first words…

…nothing may come for a few weeks. 

I realize, as I sit here tapping my fingers on the mouse to the tune of Dueling Banjos, that the first words of a blog are the hardest to write.  My mind races as to what I might have to talk about to commemorate my very first blog entry.  Do I wish to be profound, witty or imaginative?  Nay! I do not wish to succumb to that pressure, at least not today!  Afterall, wit, among the other creative words mentioned above, have not yet graced my thoughts this morning.  What has come across my thoughts this morning? I bite at my lip in deep thought as the answer leaps forward from wherever it was lurking.  Unmotivation!  That’s it!  I must stay true to my unmotivated self and so I’ve decided my first blog entry must reflect nothing but the fact that I have nothing to say. Not today.

“You can’t make a record if you ain’t got nothin’ to say” – Willie Nelson and Kid Rock