Tonight's Dinner

The 'breading' for the chicken. Special K cinnamon & pecan cereal.

In it's ground up form.

On the chicken before going into the oven.

1/2 hour in the oven at 350 and it comes out fully cooked and still juicy.

I also made a sweet potato casserole to go with it.

In Which I Commit Dinner

Here's another installation in the 'oh good lord she cooked!' saga.

Today, roast chicken. Or, really, yesterday. Since it's quarter past midnight here and all. Sleep. Whatever.

First off, buy a whole chicken. :) We get the Perdue Oven Roaster & Parts. I throw the 'parts' away, because I haven't found a recipe for cooking them that doesn't involve frying, and I can't eat them fried what with the butter and all being un-good for the diet and no one else in the family wants to eat chicken hearts.

The rule is 20-23 minutes per pound at 350 in the oven.

You prep the pan, which for me is just lining it with non-stick foil. We have a turkey roasting pan which is just lovely. The chicken comes out so insanely moist, and you leave all the fat drippings behind. The chicken needs to be unwrapped and the little package with the 'parts' pulled out.

Then you wash the chicken and drain the fluid out of it. I also look for little feather bits while I'm doing this. They cook fine and you can actually eat them and they're just tiny things, but if I see them I have to remove them. It's a mental thing.

I coat the chicken in olive oil before breading. What I do is lay the chicken in the pan and then pour a little oil into my palm and basically massage it into the chicken. I find it easier to get just a thin layer and get it into all the nooks and crannies on the chicken that way.

My breading is a mix of store bought Italian bread crumbs, Season All, Onion powder, Garlic powder, Oregano and Parmesean cheese.

Again I leave the chicken in the pan and pat the breading on by hand. We don't want a real thick crust because most of us can't eat the skin anyway, and making sure it gets into every part of the chicken ensures that the taste of the breading is in every bite.

Once I have the chicken ready and the oven is to temp, I pop it in and wander off for an hour and a half (usually. It's all dependent on the weight of the chicken). We have stuffing, typically, which I am not allowed to make inside the chicken. Parental preference. And a veggie, depending on what's in the house and what we feel like.

Making Spaghetti Amber Style

We start with the basic sauce. It's two cans of diced tomatoes and a can of Prego spaghetti sauce. I know that somewhere there's someones Italian grandma rolling in her grave, but I'm German and my ancestry doesn't care that I use premade sauce. :) The Prego has mushrooms in it, and I'd love to add more but Dad doesn't like 'fungus' so I suffer without huge chunks of yummy mushrooms in my sauce.

Sauce out of a can is boring. So we need one each of red, yellow and green peppers. An onion and a clove bulb of garlic.

You have to clean the seeds out of the peppers. The easiest way is to cut the plug out, kind of like carving the lid of a pumpkin to make a jack o'lantern. Then you can cut the pepper in half and clean out the seeds.

This is everything that goes into the sauce. Half of each of the cleaned peppers, half the onion and one of the little bit thingies off the garlic. Lobe? I don't know what it's called. The whole thing is a clove, but I don't know what that piece it breaks into is called. a clove of garlic. The whole thing is called the bulb and the little bit is the clove. Thanks sanil!

I'm just using the first pepper as an example. We have this nifty chopper thingy which makes dicing really fast and easy. Everything gets chopped into fine pieces.

Everything all chopped up and mixed into the sauce base.

We use ground chicken instead of burger whenever we can. I seasoned it with garlic powder, onion powder and Oregano. You just 'brown' in in the pan, which with chicken means that it turns that cooked chicken white color. Not brown brown like you get on beef.

Then I add the chicken to the sauce, cover, and leave to simmer for about two hours. The noodles and garlic bread don't take long at all. Just heat the oven for the bread and cook for 6 min. And the noodles just require about 6 min in boiling water.

The finished product.

Dad getting ready to eat my experimental spaghetti. I'm happy to report that as of 9:20 this evening he's still alive. :)

A Little Bit of Domesticity

We have this arrangement at my house. My mother cooks Monday through Thursday nights, my sister cooks on Friday nights, and I cook on Saturday. Sunday is usually left overs.

These are last nights offerings, in progress.


First we have corn on the cob, bubbling happily in the pot. I'd never actually made corn on the cob before (and I jokingly asked if it was microwaveable), so I wasn't sure how to tell if it was done. For some reason I sort of thought that maybe it would sink (since it floats naturally). But no. I looked it up before I started cooking and you just boil it for 10-15 minutes, and it's done.


Here we have chicken breasts. I breaded them with a mix of this Italian bread crumb that we have and Parmesean cheese. Everything is better with cheese!

Now, there was also a salad, but I didn't make it. My sister had made a *huge* batch of salad for the night before, with lettuce, cranberries, nuts, onions, mushrooms, and tomatoes. So we ate more of that. And there's *still* more. She might have gone overboard.


I also set the table. I see you being impressed with our fine crystal and china! :p We have about 30 of those little plastic cups. They give them away at the local baseball games, and my mother just...she always comes back with a *ton* when they're doing it.


*And*, unlike certain people in the household *coughmomcough*, I do not leave the kitchen a disaster when I cook! I have no idea how she makes the level of mess that she does, but when my mother cooks, there is a *stack* of dishes in the sink and she somehow manages to get whatever she's cooking all over the outside of the pans. I have no idea how...Anyway. My grandmother always made us do dishes as we were cooking (as we got the chance), so there wasn't a huge mess for afterwards.

Five Thousand Two Fed

Okay, so it was three tilapia fillets and some rice, not five loaves and two fish, but whatever. I'm working at a disadvantage here! :)

I, have baked fish. It turned out *perfectly*. Not dry, undercooked, burnt, nothing! Yes, yes, it was a very simple recipe, but I refuse to allow you and your 'reality' to infringe upon my victory!

Just in case any one's wondering, here's what I did:

1. Preheat oven to 400

2. Wash fish and pat it dry

3. Brush lightly on both sides with extra virgin olive oil

4. Season with a little salt

5. Season with Season-All, Onion, Garlic, and Oregano

6. Bake for ten minutes

Voila!

Really easy, but tasty!

Plus, my sister *hates* fish. And she wanted to try it. I'm not going to lie, she didn't suddenly love fish, but she said it was good. :)

My Weekend

To make myself happy, I took the weekend off.

Meaning, I did a whole lot of nothing. I did everything around the house I needed to do on Saturday morning, and then I spent the rest of the time watching Merlin and Leverage and Supernatural eps and went to the movies and saw District 9 (which I enjoyed).

I drove around a bit too. I *like* driving around in Myrddin. I talk to him a little. :)

The picture above was my brunch on Sunday. You fast for at least an hour prior to receiving Communion, so what I usually do is just eat a slightly larger meal after Mass, instead of getting up earlier to eat.

I made myself scrambled eggs with cheese and ham (it was supposed to be an omelet, but I got distracted and didn't flip it in time) and fried potatoes. Now, you may look at that and think, 'hmm...not very healthy' and you'd be right. Mostly. However, I make it with EggBeaters, reduced fat cheese (I forget the percentage, but it's good stuff), low salt/fat ham, 2% milk, the 'special' heart smart butter, and I don't fry the potatoes in grease. I make the eggs and then fry the potatoes in the leavings of the egg pan, with a little Season All.

"Cooking" With Amber...

One of my favorite cold snacks. Very easy to make, and no cooking required.

Edit: We just call this 'Cottage Cheese Salad'

1. Ingredients: 1 large bowl, 1 mixing spoon, 3 tubs of cottage cheese (24 oz.), 1 tub of Cool Whip, 2 cans of fruit (mixed or otherwise), 1 box of jello mix (flavor up to you, but I recommend a fruit flavor of some kind - *not* pudding mix. Jello - the jiggly clear stuff.). Now, I use all fat free, lite, etc. but, depending on your dietary requirements, that may not be necessary for you. It's the basics, cottage cheese, cool whip, jello flavor, fruit. Also, for those who don't consume pork products, I believe that there are some jello substitutes that are acceptable, but I don't know exactly what they are.




2. First, take the mixing spoon and carve out a scoop of the cool whip. How big a scoop is up to you, I tend to make it just a little bit bigger than the spoon bowl itself. Less, the result is a little less sweet, more, and it's more sweet. Keep in mind you'll be adding fruit, so that adds sweetness to the dish.




3. Dump all three tubs of cottage cheese into the bowl, and add the packet of jello flavoring, in powder form. Mix well. You want the color to be as even as possible, which means that the flavor you chose will be throughout the dish.




4. Drain the cans of fruit. Again, the particulars are to taste, but I tend to use mixed fruit and mandarin oranges. My mother only uses mixed fruit. Dump the cans in one at a time, mixing thoroughly between each can, to spread the fruit out as evenly as possible.

5. End result:




You can either serve immediately, or put back in the fridge to chill before serving. The food *will* have to be refrigerated. Also, *cover* in the fridge, or it dries out.


Now, it is also possible to add fresh fruit - grapes, raspberries, strawberries, bananas, etc. The only difference is, those really do need to be added *just* before serving, since they tend to go brown or mushy in the fridge once cut up.

Like I said, quick and easy. It's got kind of a messy look, I admit, but it tastes wonderful. A nice cool snack, and healthy too. And if you've got kids, they can help with every last step of it.