chicken

Apple Cranberry Sauce

November 14, 2011 by Marci 3 Comments

This week, I have a few Thanksgiving themed recipes to share. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday of the whole year. I love spending time with family, I love that the weather is getting cooler, and I love the food better than any other holiday of eating.

Probably my very favorite Thanksgiving dish is cranberry sauce. In the last few years, I’ve been enjoying the flavors for the whole month of November, and this year was no exception. I tried a different recipe for cranberry sauce this year, one I read in Cooking Light and then made some changes to it. The one I made last year and in year’s past is great too! It has a lot of fruity flavors like apricot and orange. But wanted to try this one this year, which has a lot of apples.

Apple Cranberry Sauce

Ingredients:

1 bag (12 oz) fresh cranberries
3 apples, I used Granny Smith, peeled and chopped
1/2 C maple syrup
1/2 C white sugar
1/2 C brown sugar
1 bay leaf
1 C Apple juice or apple sider
3/4 C Apple cider vinegar
1/4 C lemon juice
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 C Dried apricots, chopped

Instructions:

Add everything to a pot and bring to a boil.
Reduce to a simmer and let cook until cranberries start to pop and bubble. Remove bay leaf.
Serve hot or cold. Keeps in the refrigerator 4-5 days.

What I loved about the sauce was the bites of apple, and apricots and the pops of cranberries. While refrigerated, it gets thick and delicious. From the original Cooking Light recipe, I added the sugars and apricots because I like my cranberry sauce sweet.

To go with the sauce, we made cheddar chicken fingers from How Sweet Eats. I am trying to like chicken better and wondered if I just don’t know how to make good chicken, so we followed a recipe that looked delicious and hoped we liked it. Jeffrey thought it was great, I thought it tasted like chicken. And also took poor pictures of it, sorry. The link’s pictures make it look much better!

Easy to make, smelled good, nice concept of soaking in buttermilk and dunking in bread crumbs and cheese, but I still can’t get over the chicken. Bluggghhh is what I say to chicken.

Filed Under: Dinner, Recipes · Tagged With: chicken, Dinner, Holidays, Thanksgiving

Chicken and Vegetable Kebabs

May 13, 2011 by Marci Leave a Comment

Happy Friday! Today is a chicken dish. It’s been a while since I made a good one!

First I wanted to tell you about muffins I made a few weeks ago. I took two types of muffins on my weekend trip to Chapel Hill and the Morning Glory muffins were the biggest hit. I am loving them for breakfast with hard boiled egg whites and strawberries! The Blueberry Orange ones are really good too, but they can’t beat a morning glory.

I love an easy weeknight dinner, and my husband loves them more when I cook with chicken. This recipe requires more prep than cook time and is full of vibrant flavors. Many parts can be done far ahead of the dinner hour, leaving you with just a short time in front of the stove.

Chicken and Vegetable Kebabs

Ingredients:

1 pack of chicken tenders, cut in thirds or big bite size
1 red and 1 green bell pepper, in chunks
1/2 red onion
1 C pineapple, in chunks
2 T pineapple juice, from the pineapple (orange juice could work too)
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 T EVOO
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp white pepper (or black pepper)

other vegetable options–button mushrooms, tomatoes, squash, zucchini

Instructions:

In a large ziploc bag, combine the chicken with garlic, pineapple juice and spices. Shake and let marinate for an hour or up to a few hours.
When ready to assemble, add chicken, pineapple and vegetables to wood or metal skewers and cook on grill or grill pan for about five minutes per side.
Serve with white or brown rice and hummus or dipping sauce.

What are your go-to easy weeknight dinners?

Filed Under: Dinner · Tagged With: chicken, Dinner

Best Ever Tortilla Soup

May 5, 2011 by Marci 3 Comments

Happy Cinco de Mayo! Do you celebrate this holiday in your neck of the woods? As you can probably imagine, it’s a big deal in Texas. We drink margaritas for breakfast, beer for lunch, and tequila shots for dinner. Just kidding. We don’t do that. We have queso for three meals. No, not really.

What we do like is Mexican food all year round. In our house, it’s common to add salsa to eggs, guacamole to salads and cheese to everything. We are practically in Mexico anyway.

I saw this tortilla soup recipe and thought Jeffrey would really love it. (Do I sound like Ina Garden talking about her Jeffrey? That’s what I heard in my head.) This has so many flavors of spice like a roasted poblano pepper, a jalapeno, chili powder, and of course cheese and cilantro.

Chicken Tortilla Soup

Ingredients:

1.5 lbs boneless skinless chicken breasts
2 T olive oil
1 large red onion, diced
1 jalapeno pepper, diced (seeds included)
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 poblano pepper
2 tsp chili powder
2 tsp cumin
2 tsp salt
8 cups chicken broth
1 4-oz can diced green chilies
1 cup hominy (canned)
1 14-oz can fire roasted diced tomatoes (or Rotel tomatoes and chilies)
4 corn tortillas, cut into strips
juice of 2 limes
shredded monterey jack cheese for serving
chopped cilantro for serving

Directions:

Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add the chicken breasts and simmer for about 20 minutes, until breasts are cooked through. Drain and set chicken breasts aside to cool. Once cool, chop into cube-sized pieces.
While chicken is cooking, roast the poblano pepper over a burner on a gas range stove or under the broiler. You want the pepper to be very dark and charred—almost black. Set aside on a plate and cover with plastic wrap. Once cool, peel the skin off and dice.
Heat the olive oil over medium high heat in a dutch oven or very large pot. Once hot, add the diced onion and jalapeno and cook for five minutes, until soft. Add the garlic and diced poblano pepper and cook for another minute. Add the chili powder and cumin and mix until well combined.
Pour in the chicken stock and add the diced tomatoes, hominy, green chilies, diced cooked chicken and salt. Bring to a boil.
Finally, add the tortilla strips and lime juice and cook until tortillas soften. Simmer on low or turn off and cover until ready to serve.
Serve with chopped cilantro and shredded cheese on the side.

We thought the hominy was an interesting chewy addition that I hadn’t eaten before, and the tortillas surprisingly dissolved completely in the soup. It was still a brothy soup and not too thick or creamy, and delicious with all of the textures and big bites of chicken.

One thing we did find is that I used cayenne pepper instead of chili powder because I thought I had chili powder but it was really cayenne. Well, 2 tsp of cayenne does not equal 2 tsp of chili powder, and the soup was very spicy. I added sugar to balance it and it worked, but for your soup, use chili powder.

This soup was a winner and a keeper.

Filed Under: Dinner, Recipes · Tagged With: chicken, Dinner, Holidays, Soups

Coc-Oatmeal

January 27, 2011 by Marci 2 Comments

Lots of things happening in this post. I’m trying to write about recent things I’ve tried and they are all getting dumped in this post.

See my latest story on CultureMap? It’s about this Sunday’s Houston Marathon and how to be a great spectator. Check it out! I have two more posting before the weekend too.

Coc-Oatmeal

I made my normal oatmeal and added 1 tsp of cocoa to the pot to give it a chocolatey color and aroma. It didn’t add much in overpowering sweetness, and probably didn’t add any nutrition, so it was just for fun of flavor. Pretty color too!

In the mix:

1/3 C old fashioned oats + 2 T flax meal
2/3 C water
1/4 C almond milk
1/2 mashed banana
1 T raisins
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp cocoa
topped with coconut and homemade granola

Cook like usual: Boil water, add oats and milk. Whisk. Add rest of ingredients. Whisk, whisk until thick. Enjoy!

Easy Weeknight Chicken Dinner

I am trying to come around to chicken a little more, so I bought organic chicken breasts and decided to try a new method of cooking by using the stovetop to crisp the top and the oven to cook the inside.

I adapted this recipe from a cookbook called “Chicken.” I figured they would know well how to cook the best chicken!

Ingredients:

For two large chicken breasts:

3 cloves garlic, minced
3 T rosemary, chopped
1 tsp each salt and pepper
2 T EVOO
1 C milk with 1 tsp lemon juice (or 1 C buttermilk)

Instructions:

Marinate chicken in Ziploc bag overnight or for a few hours.
Cook on stovetop in Le Crueset pan (this was my first time trying it).
Move to oven at 350* after 10 minutes. Cook 15-20 more, until cooked through.

For potatoes and green beans:

Season with EVOO, salt and pepper. Bake potatoes for 40-45 minutes and less time for green beans (add them to the baking sheet with about 25 minutes to go.
I should have seasoned the potatoes with more seasoning, like something spicy or savory.

We liked the flavor of the chicken, but it didn’t crisp on top as much as we hoped. We’ll keep trying!

Parsnip Fries and Perfect Tofu

If you still haven’t tried parsnips, let me convince you why again. First, they look like French fries, but they are a vegetable. Second, they are easy and quick (chop, drizzle with EVOO, salt and pepper and roast at 425 for 35 minutes), and third, they are a great addition to anything when you might want a starch (but it’s a vegetable) or a second vegetable.

I had mine with asparagus (roasted with the parsnips) and stove sauteed tofu. I have been trying different ways of cooking tofu (oven, grilled in rectangles, with more marinade), but the best way is on the stovetop. It gets them crispy outside and soft inside, and they are cute little bite sized pieces.

Here are the steps:

I used Nasoya Firm tofu and sliced it into 6 long pieces.
I pressed it with a heavy block for about 15 minutes, then cut into bite sized pieces. It should make about 64 bites.
Then I seasoned with a mix of Bragg’s Liquid Aminos (more on that later) mixed with 2T olive oil and pepper and garlic powder (just a few shakes of each). I did not add salt because liquid aminos are kind of like soy sauce, and naturally salty.
Then I sauteed on the stove for about 5 minutes per side, flipping so they don’t burn.

I have read about liquid aminos recently as an alternative to soy sauce with far less sodium and a similar taste. It comes in a spray bottle and can be used for sauces or dressings. I wasn’t fond of the smell when prepping, but it blended fine when cooked.

All together, this meal was roasted parsnips and asparagus, tofu, pickles and BBQ sauce. A nice balanced meal!

Are you scared of tofu?

Filed Under: Breakfast, Dinner, Vegetarian · Tagged With: chicken, culturemap, Oatmeal, parsnips, tofu

Christmas Holiday 2010

December 26, 2010 by Marci 14 Comments

Even though we don’t celebrate Christmas, we sure enjoy observing the quiet day off. Sometimes we take wonderful family trips to Paris, sometimes we go to Las Vegas and ignore the holiday because Vegas never sleeps (2008), and sometimes we chill out at the beach.

Jeffrey and I went to the panhandle of Florida with white sandy beaches, although too chilly to get in the water. It was so nice to have nothing to do, nothing to sightsee, and no where to go. And yes, it was nice to not have a puppy bark in the 6 a.m. hour to go outside. Lily went to Dallas to bother my parents and sister.

I have been here twice since I started the blog, once in June, and once in September. It’s funny to look at the same place in the summer, and also compare the quality of pictures with the new camera.

This time, we cooked, shopped a little (3rd largest outlet mall in the country!), read books, walked, and watched movies.

We are thankful for Santa’s holiday too.

Food pictures:

We are lucky to have a full kitchen, so we go to the grocery (Publix is the best grocery in the country!) and stock up to eat at home. I bought a box of Irish Steel Cut Oats packets, which I haven’t had before. The packets are pre-spiced, which was helpful so I didn’t have to buy cinnamon, honey, vanilla, etc. I combined one packet with 1/3 C water and 1/3 C milk. Then topped it with blueberries and a teaspoon of peanut butter. It wasn’t the most filling packet of oatmeal, which is probably why I don’t like packets. But it was tasty, and the peanut butter helped with staying power.

Another breakfast was one I have at least 4 days a week, but it looks prettier with the ocean in the back. And layered in a wine glass.

Fiber One, Kashi Heart to Heart, Blueberries, and Vanilla Oikos. This is my favorite breakfast.

My favorite wraps that I can’t find in Houston anymore are called Flat Out Wraps, Light. They are 90 calories, gigantic and very soft. So good! For lunch one day, I stuffed one with Boar’s Head turkey, Jarlsberg Swiss Cheese, lettuce and hummus. I had an apple and carrots on the side with peanut butter. PB is so good with carrots if you haven’t tried that.

And for dinner one night, we cooked a simple but elegant dinner. When we’re at the beach, I don’t really want to spend too much time in the kitchen, and I don’t want to buy a lot of ingredients that we can’t use up. We bought grouper, potatoes, corn on the cob and snap peas. We cooked them up to look like this.

For the grouper, we seasoned with olive oil, salt and pepper and cooked it stovetop for about four minutes per side.

The potatoes were sliced thin but not all the way down, then rubbed with olive oil, salt and pepper too.

And the corn boiled away until tender, and I added the snap peas near the end to get soft.

Besides food, we played around outside too. The beach looked so eerie without hundreds of people on beach chairs like the summer. But the water was so calm and clean.

We practiced our jumping.

And our cartwheels.

And then we rested too.

We couldn’t leave our computers at home.

Relaxing with wine.

And we saw beautiful sunsets each afternoon. At 4:30 p.m.

Tell me you don’t want to move here.

And how cool are those clouds? Until next time!

Filed Under: Breakfast, Dinner, Hanukkah/Xmas, Lunch, Travel · Tagged With: chicken, Hanukkah/Xmas, Oatmeal, Travel, vegetables

A new love for Quinoa

November 11, 2010 by Marci 4 Comments

Since I’ve been back from Foodbuzz Fest where we went from meal to tasting to sitting to gala, my meals have been pretty simple. I know some people say they “crave vegetables” and that sounds so crazy, but the veggies were lacking over the weekend, so I craved vegetables. Here are a few pictures of some recent homemade eats.

Strawberry Oatmeal

I overdosed a bit on bananas while I was away, so I tried adding strawberries to stovetop oatmeal instead. I know the banana is important to the texture of cooked oats, so I thinly sliced 3 strawberries and cooked it in the pot.

I love raisins cooked so they can really puff up, and the oatmeal had a pretty strawberry hue. The texture was no different than with bananas.

Ingredients:

1/4 C steel cut oats
1 C water
1/4 C almond milk
1 tsp cinnamon
handful raisins
1 T shredded coconut, some mixed in, some on top
3 strawberries
drizzle maple syrup
Kashi Go Lean for crunch on top

Instructions:

Boil water, then add oats and whisk in. Then add milk and let cook for 5 minutes.
Add other ingredients and whisk together. Let bubble for 5 minutes.
Add cereal on top for crunch.

Quinoa

I have a few foods that I have been wanting to cook at home, and one is quinoa. I have had it in the Whole Foods salad bar, but rarely anywhere else. It seems like a rice or cous cous ingredient where you have to add something to it to make it good, so I decided to finally make it this week.

I really loved it and Jeffrey did too! I did not think he would try this grain, but he did, and liked it. It’s a grain success that I’m glad we can add as a pantry staple for us both to eat. The one cup of dry quinoa cooked up to a lot of volume that will last a long time for future lunches and dinners. It’s great cold too, and is easily adaptable. I really liked cooking with quinoa.

I cooked it like it says on the box.2 C water to 1 C dry quinoa. Then I added dried cranberries and feta cheese. Served with leftover acorn squash and vegetables of asparagus, mushrooms, and water chestnuts.

Why is the picture so yellow? Maybe no more blue plates when photographing indoors.

Jeffrey made chicken that he really liked (marinated in olive oil, Worchestershire Sauce, salt, pepper, garlic powder, onions, parsley, and then sauteed stovetop in olive oil. He said it had great flavor and he was very proud. He had the same quinoa and vegetables too.

And a cute action shot of Jeffrey feeding Lily a piece of string cheese. She works for that cheese!

Filed Under: Breakfast, Dinner, Lily, Recipes, Vegetarian · Tagged With: chicken, Lily, Oatmeal, quinoa, vegetables

Winner Winner Chicken Dinner

October 27, 2010 by Marci 4 Comments

Sometimes chicken makes for a blah dinner, and sometimes great tasting chicken has a lot of breading, is fried, or takes hours to roast.

I saw a recipe on Jessica’s blog at How Sweet It Is for Crunchy Chicken Fingers. With a short ingredient list and no butter, eggs, or oil, I decided to try it. It’s also baked. She writes that she and her husband don’t try too many “strange” foods as Jeffrey calls it, so I know we are similar eaters. It doesn’t hurt that her photos are unbelievable and her baked goods are drool-worthy. You need to go check it out. But remember I warned you if you run to look for a cookie.

Crunchy Chicken Fingers

Ingredients:

1 pack boneless, skinless chicken tenders
2 C low-fat buttermilk
1/2 C whole wheat flour
3 C panko bread crumbs
1 C corn flake crumbs (I subbed Special K, didn’t want to buy a whole box of cereal)
1 tsp sea salt
1 tsp pepper

Instructions:

For 2-24 hours, soak chicken in buttermilk in a Pyrex dish in refrigerator.
Preheat oven to 450*
Lay a wire rack on a baking sheet and spray with Pam. In a sepaate bowl, mix flour, panko, cereal flakes, salt, and pepper. Dip the chicken in the panko mix and coat on both sides, then lay on the baking sheet. Repeat with other pieces.
Spray each chicken piece lightly with Pam to help crisp in the oven. Bake for 12 minutes on each side. Let cool.

So delicious! Jeffrey even liked them a whole lot and gave them his approval. The chicken was crispy, golden brown, and had great flavor. The cooking time was perfect in not drying them out or leaving them undercooked. He even ate them the next night as leftovers! This is a rare thing.

Carrot and Parsnip Fries

I kid you not in saying that Jeffrey actually liked parsnip fries a lot. I did not think he would be into eating a parsnip. I had not cooked with parsnips before, but the pictures I had seen made them look just like french fries. So I had to try.

For the first time making them, I kept the flavors simple. We both loved them.

Ingredients (serves 2 people):

5 carrots
5 parsnips
salt, pepper, extra virgin olive oil, garlic powder

Instructions:

Peel carrots and parsnips and chop off the ends.
Cut in half horizontally and then slice in half vertically. Cut vertical again to get pieces that look like fries.
Lay them all on a parchment paper lined baking sheet (makes for easier clean up) and coat with olive oil, salt, pepper, and garlic powder. Toss around with hands.
Preheat oven to 400*. Bake for 40-45 minutes or until crispy and browned.

We noticed that the vegetables shrunk in the oven quite a bit. I thought there would be more leftover than there was, or we just really loved our root vegetables.

I also have only one oven, so I started the vegetables first, then added the chicken after about 20 minutes and heated the oven to 450* and let them all cook together. Our vegetables cooked for about 40 minutes including the increase in temperature. Plan accordingly if you try this. Just watch until they get crispy.

These fries were delicious! The carrots tasted like sweet potatoes, and the parsnips looked like homemade potato fries but were a little more dense and chewy on the inside but crispy on the outside. I thought they were great. And Jeffrey liked them too! He called it one of our best dinners!

To go with the chicken and root vegetables, I sauteed some sugar snap peas with one half red onion and added some salt, pepper, and teriyaki sauce to the pan. The onions got sweet and caramelized and it all went great together.

Filed Under: Dinner · Tagged With: chicken, vegetables

Apple Cranberry Sauce

Apple Cranberry Sauce

Chicken and Vegetable Kebabs

Chicken and Vegetable Kebabs

Best Ever Tortilla Soup

Chicken Tortilla Soup

Coc-Oatmeal

Coc-Oatmeal

Easy Weeknight Chicken Dinner

Parsnip Fries and Perfect Tofu