BBQ Baked Chicken

As you can all probably tell by now, we love chicken in this house. Well I do anyway. I don't eat much red meat so when I do cook it, it's usually for the boys and then I make something separate for myself. Anyway, we unfortunately do not own a grill and I love BBQ chicken. So I decided to try something new. I'm sure someone has done this before somewhere so if I inadvertently ripped off your recipe, I apologize.

Ingredients

3-4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts

1 bottle of BBQ Sauce

1 bottle of Guiness

Directions

Place the chicken breasts in a baking dish, pour BBQ sauce and beer over the chicken. Let marinate overnight in the fridge.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Bake chicken in sauce for about 25 minutes or until cooked all the way through.

I served the chicken with a baked potato, and french style cut green beans. It was a fantastically easy and very delicious dish.

Printer Friendly Recipe

Chicken and Biscuits

Chicken and Biscuits happens to be one of the recipes I loved growing up. I unfortunately lost the recipe my Mom gave me, (I will ask her for it again), so I went on the prowl for the recipe to try and find it. I found several different recipes and I found one that looked promising, but I however do not remember where I found it. With that said, here is the recipe and if you know who came up with it, please let me know so I can give credit where it's do.

Ingredients

1 can condensed cream of celery soup

1 can condensed cream of potato soup

2/3 cup milk

1/2 tsp poultry seasoning

1/8 tsp ground black pepper

2 cups frozen mixed vegetables

2 cups cubed cooked chicken or turkey

1 package refrigerated biscuits (I didn't have this on hand, so I made Bisquick biscuits. The recipe is on the side of the box. If you would like a copy of the recipe, please let me know and I will send it to you.)

Directions

Heat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Stir the soups, milk, poultry seasoning, black pepper, vegetables and chicken in an 11 x 7 x 2 -inch baking dish.

Bake for 20 minutes or until the chicken mixture is hot and bubbling. Stir the chicken mixture. Top with the biscuits. (This is where I deviated from the recipe. I baked the biscuits seperately and then spooned the mixture over the biscuits when serving. I baked the chicken mixture for about 25 minutes.)

Bake for 15 minutes or until the biscuits are golden brown.

 This recipe came close to what my Mom used to make, but it just wasn't there. I will have to try it again with a few changes to see what I can come up with.

Printer Friendly Recipe

The Purple Monster of a Quilt

I've never really been a crafty person. I am such a perfectionist that even the tiniest flaw in anything that I am making frustrates me and I want to give up. So I put away the thoughts of doing anything crafty as it intimidated me way too much.

A few years ago while I was living with my parents and learning how to live life as as a single parent I decided that making a quilt would be a good idea and a good time waster. I had no clue what I was doing. I forgot pretty much all the basics to sewing I learned in home mech in junior high, but I didn't care. I was going to do this project no matter what, and if there were flaws, I wouldn't let it get to me. So I packed up the boy child and off we went to Hancock Fabrics. I really had no plan in mind, but I figured buying a beginners book to quilting and the fabrics I liked plus all the tools I needed, I would be good. Two hours and two hundred some odd dollars later, the boy child and I left Hancock fabrics with everything I needed to make this amazing quilt.

We got home and I layed everything out, and setup a little sewing station. (By the way Mom, thanks for letting me use your sewing machine!) I flipped through the book and figured out a design and set out to measure, cut, and iron all the pieces. When I was done, I started to sew the beginnings of my quilt.

I worked on this quilt nearly every day for a month. Buying and cutting more fabric. Learning and trying to maintain a 1/4 inch seam. It's a lot harder then it looks to maintain a perfectly even seam. I even used a strip of white tape as a guide line and I still manage to flub it in places. But I was told that was to be expected when doing your first quilt anyway.

I started off with three different fabrics and unfortunately, I used an old camera phone to take these photos so the pictures don't really do it justice.

I started out with cutting two of the fabrics into squares, and the other one into four strips as a border. I layed them out on the floor to get a feel as to what it will look like when finished.

 Using 1/4 inch seams, I sewed all the squares together and in this photo, only two of the sides. 

As much as I loved the look of the quilt, I felt like it was missing something. So to continue on with the project, I ended up buying five more different styles of fabric. I unfortunately do not recall how many yards of fabric I got for each fabric. Once I had the fabrics, I surfed the internet looking for a way to put it all together. That's when I got the idea to log cabin all this fabrics.

The two different log cabin squares sewn together

After completing all the squares, I layed it out next to the completed portions of the quilt. As you can see, the corner squares I combined different fabrics including the fabric from the inner squares.

So there you have it. My unfinished quilt. Stay tuned for the finished product. (Which I hope will be soon.)

Chicken Stir-fry

Everyone loves a good stir-fry right? I know I do. It's a quick dinner to make especially on those nights where you are running around like a chicken with its head cut off. The following is a recipe that I have experimented with over the years.

Ingredients

1/3 c soy sauce

2 Tbsp brown sugar

1 clove garlic, crushed

1 tsp ginger

1 tsp cornstarch

1 1/2 lb chicken (cut into bite size)

1 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil

1 mixed bag of stir-fry veggies, frozen

Directions

Combine first six ingredients with 1/4 cup water in a bowl, mixing well. Marinate chicken in sauce for 10 minutes. (You can marinate overnight if you desire) 

Drain chicken, reserving marinade. Heat oil in skillet. Add chicken in small amounts to prevent crowding. Stir-fry until brown. Remove from skillet and set aside.

Add frozen veggies to hot skillet, stir-fry for 1 minutes. Add 1/4 cup water, cover and steam for 3 min or until veggies are tender crisp. Return chicken to skillet, adding marinade, heat through stirring constantly.

Serve over rice.

Printer Friendly Recipe

Cinnamon Raisin Bread

The other night I was hankering for something sweet and very yummy tasting. I wasn't sure what I wanted, I just knew I didn't have much on hand to make any kind of dessert. I had an apple pie filling, but I really didn't want to make any pie shells. I saw we had a bunch of raisins though and then the idea formed that I wanted cinnamon raisin bread. So close to midnight, I embarked on an insane late night baking frenzy. I found this recipe here.

This recipe makes a total of 3 loaves.

Ingredients

1 1/2 cup milk

1 cup warm water (must be between 110-115 degrees)

2 (1/8 ounce) package active dry yeast

3 eggs

1/2 cup white sugar

1 tsp salt

1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened 

1 cup raisins

8 cups all-purpose flour

2 Tbsp milk

1 cup white sugar

3 Tbsp ground cinnamon

2 Tbsp butter, melted (approx)

Directions

1. Warm the milk in a small sauce pan on the stove until it just starts to bubble, stirring occasionally.

2. Remove from heat.

3. Let cool until lukewarm, about 120-125 degrees.

4. Dissolve yeast in warm water and set aside until yeast is frothy, about 10 minutes or so (make sure your water is at the correct temperature or the yeast won't activate.) Then mix in egg, sugar, butter salt and raisins (stir in the cooled milk slowly so you don't cook the egg.) Add the flour gradually to make a stiff dough.

5. Knead the dough on a lightly floured surface for a few minutes until smooth.

6. Place in a large, buttered, mixing bowl and turn to grease the surface of the dough.

7. Cover with a warm, damp cloth and let rise. Allow to rise until doubled, usually about 1 1/2 hours.
(It was at this point that I was wondering just how sane I was to embark on this baking expedition.)

8. Roll out on a lightly floured surface into a large rectangle 1/2 inch thick.

9. Moisten the dough with 2 tablespoons milk and rub all over the dough with your hands.

10. Mix together sugar and cinnamon and sprinkle mixture evenly on top of the moistened dough.

11. Roll up tightly (the long way)

12. The roll should be about 3 inches in diameter.

13. Cut into thirds, and tuck under ends and pinch bottom together.

14. Place loaves into well greased 9x5 inch pans and lightly grease tops of loaves.

15. Let rise in warm place, uncovered, again for about an hour.

(This is where I was starting to get loopy and had to reread the recipe three or four times to make sure I wasn't seeing things.)

16. Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes or until loaves are lightly browned and sound hollow when tapped. (I set my timer for 30 minutes and checked the bread. I ended up pulling it out at 35 minutes and it was done)

17. Remove from oven and let cool on rack.

18. Take melted butter and spread over tops of loaves.

19. After about 20 minutes, lay loaves on their sides and remove from pans.

20. Allow to cool before slicing. ( I didn't make it to the cutting part as it was nearly 330am and I was falling over exhausted. But when I tried it the next morning...yummy!)

Printer Friendly Recipe

R.I.P. MCA

I'm sure by now that everyone has heard that Adam 'MCA' Yauch from the Beastie Boys passed away yesterday due to complications from cancer. This was a sad sad day for the music industry...well...they were the voice of a crazy and hectic generation in the 80's and for those of you who grew up in the 80's know what I'm talking about.  As such, in remembrance of MCA, here is our 80's teenage and young adult anthem.

French Bread Pizza

Ingredients:

French Bread loaves

Pizza Sauce

Shredded mozzarella Cheese

Whatever toppings you want.

If you want to make your own french bread, you can find the recipe here


Cut the French Bread loaves in half lengthwise. Then cut to whatever size pizza you want to make. I cut mine in thirds so the slices would be smaller for the kids.

Spread them with the tomato sauce. It's good to be a little stingy here, because you're putting tomato sauce onto a very porous surface, and if your heavy-handed with the sauce, your pizza will be on the soggy end of things. Sprinkle the pizzas with mozzarella cheese and add whatever toppings you like.

Bake in preheated 400 degree oven for 10-15 minutes, or until the crust is crispy and the cheese is melted.

If you like a browner topping, you can put these under the broiler for an extra minute or two.

I hope you all enjoy it as much as we did!