Orange BBQ Chicken, Crockpot style

I love being able to throw a couple ingredients in the crockpot and let it cook for a while. And just like that, dinner is created with little effort on my part. Could this apply to other areas of my life?! Kidding.

Found a recipe on Pinterest and decided to make it. I've made it a few times now and it is a hit. Hubby loves some BBQ so it is an instant  hit in this house.

About 4-6 good size chicken breasts, left whole

1/2 a jar of Orange Marmalade (18 oz jar)

1/2 bottle Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce (18 oz bottle ) {I'm sure any other brand will do}

2-4 tablespoons soy sauce

Some seasoning to taste (I used an all purpose seasoning)

Spray the crockpot pan generously with non-stick spray. I've found it helps so much with clean up the more you spray! (Tip: Coconut oil works well with no coconut taste) Place chicken in and cook on high for 3-4 hours or on low for 6-7 hours. Remove any excess liquid that is produced. Make sauce mix in another bowl and to chicken, while shredding chicken. Allow to cook on low for another 30-45 minutes. Add more sauce mix if you like a more saucy meal.

After making this nearly half a dozen times already in the past 2 months, it is a hit and super easy. 

Kid-Friendly, Dad-Approved Dinner

In an effort to be prepared for dinner time ahead of time with these two boys that I live with, I've come up with and found various recipes that help me do just that.

Thanks to various blogs, websites and cookbooks I can continue to find new and exciting things to eat and feed these hungry guys. I never realized how simple Chicken Nuggets were. I find myself saying while making these "Chickens don't have nuggets".

Easy Chicken Nuggets (Original recipe here from Weelicious)

1 lb chicken breast, cut into chunks (I've also used ground turkey too)
1/4 cup old fashioned oats
1/4 teaspoon dried parsley
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon onion powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup panko bread crumbs 
1 tablespoon parmesan cheese grated
**2 tablespoons Wheat Germ (my own addition)

I have sub'd in ground turkey for the chicken and it did not taste any different. I've made these both ways before. I tend to add a little more parmesan cheese and I also added in some dried basil and oregano, about the same measurements as the parsley, to taste.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. In a food processor, combine chicken (or turkey), oats, parsley, garlic and onion powder and salt. Mix until meat is chopped and everything is mixed. 

Place bread crumbs and parmesan in a shallow bowl or dish, add in wheat germ. There is no taste difference. Keeps the nuggets crisp and just adds to crumb texture. Healthy addition! Form meat into small nuggets, about the size of your palm, but really as big or small as you wish. I would recommend keeping all nuggets about the same size, they will cook more evenly. Place nuggets in bread crumb mixture to coat.

Place nuggets on a cooling rack, on top of foil covered cookie sheet. Lightly spray nuggets with cooking spray (I use olive oil spray). Cook in oven for 15-18 minutes, and serve! These are also great as left overs in the fridge and warmed up the next night. Yum!

Huh, still blurry. Bummer.

These also work well if you want to freeze them. Just stop before cooking them. Freeze them on a pan and then transfer to a zip lock bag. When ready to cook, just pop them out of the freezer and onto a baking sheet with the cooling rack and spray with cooking spray. Cook for 18-20 minutes

{Homemade} Chicken-Broccoli Bake

I've had broccoli for a while (or been eating it off and on for a while) and wanted to make something with it. So I came up with this dish by what I had in the kitchen. Man was this good! I made a side of cornbread which went great with this! I must say that EVERYTHING that I made was homemade from scratch. That is right, nothing was out of a box. Except the noodles in the chicken bake dish.

Chicken Broccoli Bake with Cornbread

6 chicken tenders (or chicken breasts, however much you want or have)
2 cans cream of chicken soup (small)
2 cans of water (from the soup can)
1 head of broccoli, chopped
1 medium can diced green chilies
1/2 box or pound of elbow noodles, whole wheat (you can use whatever noodles you want)
salt and pepper to taste
garlic salt to taste

Preheat oven to 375 F. The chicken tenders I used were frozen, so I took those out at the very end and topped them on the rest just before putting in the oven. First, open the cans of soup and empty in a 9x13 inch casserole dish. I used just under 2 cans of water, mix this in. Next, add green chilies. These were not spicy at all, but gave it a great flavor! Mix in the chopped broccoli. Again, add more if you want/have it. Next, I added the noodles, uncooked. The added water will help cook these through. Last, add chicken, raw. I suppose you could pre-cook the chicken and it would be fine. But this worked out just fine for me, and I checked to make sure the chicken was cooked through. Salt, pepper and garlic salt to season the chicken to taste. I didn't use much of any seasoning. I mixed the noodles down just under the surface of the liquids to help cook the noodles, and pushed down the chicken so it would help cook them too. Put in the oven for 50-60 minutes. I checked at 45 minutes and turned the chicken over to make sure it cooked thurough.

This turned out perfect! Seriously, the broccoli with the green chilies and soup mixture had such a great flavor, and the added noodles gave it some more filling. Of course the chicken was good too!

On to the Cornbread.

1 cup flour
1 cup yellow cornmeal
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 egg, beaten
1 cup sour cream
1/3 cup milk
1/4 cup melted butter
**bonus: 2 tablespoons honey

Preheat oven to 400 F. Combine all the dry ingredients. Combine the egg, sour cream, milk and butter and stir into the dry ingredients. I didn't use an electric mixer, it was pretty simple to mix with very little effort. Add in honey at last, and by all means add a bit more if you like. I noticed that the 2  tablespoons I added didn't quite give it the "honey" flavor once baked, but you could tell it was there. Pour batter into a greased 8x8 inch baking dish. Bake for 20-25 minutes. Ta-da!

This whole meal was GREAT. While it took a little time to make, a little longer than some of the dishes I've made, it was worth it. Really tasted like a great home cooked meal. And the left overs? Won't last long...as we're having this for lunch today as I speak.

Happy Weekend!

Twisted Chicken Salad

Coming up with ideas for dinner sometimes can be hard. Usually I think about what sounds good and what I have at home. It also helps to read other food blogs and blogs of friends who post amazing dishs. This brings me again to my good friend Amy's blog which you should all start reading. Man does she post some great recipes and dishs.

This brings me to what I made the other night. It was inspired by Amy's Roasted Veggie and Chicken Sandwich but of course I didn't have all the ingredients and didn't follow all of these directions, but man was it good!

I used about half a block of cream cheese, warmed up. Must be warm in order to mix with the rest of the ingredients. Chopped up a handful of baby carrots, a handful of broccoli heads and about half of a green bell pepper. Cooked about 3/4 - 1 lb of chicken breast, sliced into thin strips in a bit of olive oil and some salt and pepper. Then I shredded it as best I could. Added a few dashs of onion powder and garlic salt and spread this amazing mix on some toasted whole wheat bread.  This reminded me of a chicken salad sandwich. The cream cheese helped "glue" all of the veggies and chicken together.

What a nice and light dinner!

Pesto Pasta Dish & Citrus Decor

I've made a return home after being away in Colorado for almost 2 weeks. Sometimes being home feels good, even though you miss where you were and who you were with. So I've been busy planning what to cook this week for dinner. Sunday I made this lovely Pesto Pasta with Chicken dish. However Monday and Tuesday were a no go since I worked evenings and I wasn't up for cooking dinner at 10:30pm. This dish was pretty easy and I just made it up on the go. I was in the mood for pasta, had some chicken and remembered I had a dry pesto mix in the cupboard to use. I love it when it's that easy!

Pasta of choice (I used Cavatappi)
Dry pesto mix (usually in the store in the spice asile)
for the pesto mix you'll need: milk & olive oil (amounts listed on the packet)
Chicken (I had about 2 small chicken breasts)
about 1/3 cup lemon juice
1-2 garlic cloves, smashed & chopped
seasoning for chicken if you want

I started by cooking the pasta and in another pan cooking the pesto sauce. The pesto was super easy to make. Then as the pasta was done, I added the pesto to the pasta and let it sit for a few minutes. In a skillet pan I put about a tablespoon of olive oil and 2 garlic cloves and turned the heat on medium. I sliced the chicken into bite size chunks and just used salt and pepper to season. I kept it pretty simple knowing it was going into a pesto dish. So the chicken cooked for about 5-10 minutes until it turned white and was almost cooked all the way through. I added the lemon juice now just so the chicken could simmer it in a few more minute, about 5, to get the flavor. Then I added the chicken to the pasta and wa-la!

Now here you can dish up your plate and dig in. I decided to try to bake it. Something about baked pasta sounds fancy, maybe?! So I put the dish in the oven at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes just to get a crispy topping. I thought it would be good to add some parmsian cheese. Yumm! It was a good idea.

All in all, this was an easy dish with ingredients I had on hand. Of course you can make your own pesto or use a different sauce. It was light and creamy. It doesn't look like much chicken, add more if you like, I didn't have much.

Oh yes, and now the citrus decor. Josh had a great idea to use up our excess Lemons and Oranges. He works in landscape and had come across a lot of lemons. We weren't going to be able to use them all before they went bad. Josh is a genius! He took a string of heavy duty string and threaded it between the sliced lemons and limes. This is so pretty and smelled awesome! The smell has kind of gone away as they dried out, but it is SO PRETTY! And such a festive decor for spring. Very cost effective decor I might add!

Grilled Chicken Burgers

I apologize for the lateness of this post, as well as not posting recently. My work schedule has had me on a backwards schedule than the rest of the world so I wasn't really into posting. I'm back!

On Monday (November 8th) I wanted to do a date night with the hubs. Thinking of a more "cheaper" version than going out, I came up with this tasty meal and we dined down by the pool, i.e. where the grill is located. This was pretty simple to set up and put together, would be much easier if I didn't have to transport it down to the grill, but alas it was a "date night out" (to the pool!)

2 large chicken breasts, butterflied
2 small cans chopped green chilies
about 2 cups of Tomato-Basil Italian dressing marinade, or however much you choose
salt and pepper to taste

After slicing the chicken breasts in half to make thinner I cut them into sizes that would most likely fit onto a hamburger bun. Place into a casserole dish to marinade. Season with salt and pepper. Pour Italian dressing over the chicken to marinade. Any marinade of your choice would work, this went really well with the rest of the meal though. Then I put the green chilies on top of the chicken breasts. However, when grilling and flipping over, the chilies fell off but the marinade and grilling gave a lot of flavor to the chicken. I let this marinade for about 2 hours. Longer the better!

I wanted to roast a red bell pepper to put on the grilled chicken sandwich. I took 2 medium red bell peppers and put them directly on the grill. Turning after a few minutes on each side letting them get blackend but not chard. Then take them off the grill and I wrapped in foil for about 10 minutes. This allows the steam to really soften up the pepper. Then carefully remove some of the blackened outer layer, remove stem and seeds and slice to desired size. What a flavor from just the bell pepper!

Deep fried potato skins, at least its what I call it. My dad used to make this for my brother and I when we were younger. I think I probably should have kept them in the oil longer, because they turned out softer than crispy but either way, the potatoes were good!

I used 3-4 medium potatoes and sliced pretty thin, about 1/8". Heat vegetable oil in a pan about 1 inch deep. Tip: I'm not sure if its better for you, vegetable oil or olive oil, but I ran out of vegetable oil in the middle of this so I used half olive half vegetable. Still tasted the same. Once oil is hot, put enough potatoes in the oil to cover the surface and let "fry" for about 5 minutes, checking frequently. Take out carefully with tongs and put on a plate with papertowl to soak up the oil. Top with salt. Yum!

Homemade ranch dressing, as adapted from Rachael Ray. This is pretty good, and pretty close to the real Ranch dressing.

3/4 cup buttermilk
3/4 cup sour cream, I substituted regular Greek yogurt and wasn't much different
2 tablespoons hot sauce, depending how hot/spicy you want it. Recommended to use at least 1 teaspoon
Dill, Parsley & Chives herbs of equal amounts, but to taste

Combine all ingredients into a bowl and mix. This recipe really is a taste test, as you can add more of this and that according to how you want it to taste. I'm still trying to find a dairy-friendly way to make this. I think I've found a way to make dairy-free buttermilk with soy milk, but still trying.

Added the Ranch to my grilled chicken burger with the roasted bell pepper and had some potatoes, what a great date night.

This was a very delicious and inexpensive date night dinner, and for us it was and is still GORGEOUS weather outdoors!

Chicken Casserole Bake

It's chicken week here, I've declared, and started the week off last night with this new conjoured up recipe all on my own! How about that? Of course I had to add in some veggies, are you starting to get the clue here that I love veggies??

2 large chicken breasts, butterflied
2 (15 oz i think) cans of cream of chicken soup
12 small slices of pepper jack cheese (3 per chicken)
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 a can of water
1 1/2 - 2 cups panko lemon bread crumbs
1/2 cup sliced zucchini
1/2 cup chunked carrots

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Bake for 35 minutes, until chicken is done. Check with knife.

I made this on the fly so my measurements weren't quite exact. I had to large chicken breasts and butterflied them. Basically sliced in half to make them thinner. I put them at the bottom of a casserole dish, sprayed with non-stick grease. Place the cheese slices on top of the chicken breasts. If you love cheese and want to add more, feel free. The pepper jack adds a very small kick to this and gives some good flavor to the chicken. Next throw in the veggies. Again, I just used what I had and what I felt like chopping up. Add more or none if you like. Then add both cans of cream of chicken soup and spread over chicken to cover the chicken. This is the best part, I think: spread bread crumbs over the top. I used what I had remaining in the bag and it looked to be about 1 1/2 cups worth. This made it taste so good! Adding that crusty topping made this dish complete. If you've ever had scalloped potatoes, this is way of making the chicken is similar to that, except no potatoes :) Enjoy!