Dinner tonight

This blog entry is brought to you at the request of my husband, who wanted to make sure I recorded the recipes I used so he could eat it again in the future.  Isn't that sweet?

So the menu was:
*Oven-fried chicken
*Quinoa with apples and cranberries
*Leftover french bread (home made!)

Unfortunately this was all eaten before I thought to take pictures, so you will just have to imagine the delicious images in your mind.

The Quinoa is what knocked Andrew's socks off, so I will start with that.

• 1/2 c Quinoa (rinsed)
• 1 c chicken stock (home made in our case.  That makes me sound so much more gourmet than I probably really am!)
• 1/2 of a granny smith apple chopped into reasonable sized chunks
• A good handful of dried cranberries
• A shake of cinnamon (1 tsp if I had to guess)
• A dash of cayenne pepper
• A squirt of honey

All of this is brought to a boil and then allowed to simmer until the liquid is all absorbed and the grains are translucent and the outer shells have separated.

If I had to do it again, I may have given an extra dash of the cayenne and added some salt- it was just a bit too sweet I think.  But Andrew made numerous happy noises while eating it and insisted repeatedly that I write down how I did it.  Maybe I shouldn't show him this entry...I wouldn't want to become redundant!

Now for the chicken, which was MY favorite part of the meal.

• Two chicken breasts, pounded flat and cut in half to make 4 manageable chunks
• Salt
• Chile Cocoa (this was in Andrew's stocking and I was excited to try it out)
• Flour (I used whole wheat flour and threw in some flax seed meal)
• Bread crumbs (I made this with the heel of my first- very dense- loaf of wheat bread.  I filled it out a bit with commercial bread crumbs and also threw in some flax seed meal because we need more omega 3s in our life)
• Oil
• 1 egg, beaten with a small amount of water

The base of this recipe is from Cooking Light- it gives me my most consistently cooked chicken and is delicious.  I use it all the time- adding various flavorings to the flour and bread crumbs (I often put garam masala in the flour, or I put mustard in the egg wash and dried onion in the bread crumbs.  The possibilities are endless!  This is the first time I have pre-flavored the chicken with anything besides salt). Making sure the chicken is nice and thin means that it cooks quickly and evenly so you end up with perfectly done chicken that doesn't get all dried out in the process.

You pat the flattened chicken dry (actually, I patted it dry before taking the mallet to it since the bag I was defrosting it in had a leak and it was wetter than most chicken) and salt it a bit.  Then sprinkle the cocoa mix over the first side pretty thickly.  Dredge the cocoa'd side in the flour and cocoa the exposed side since it is staring up at you anyway.  Then finish coating the entire thing in the flour.  Shake off the excess flour and dip it in the egg wash.  Then dredge the chicken boobie in the bread crumbs.  Repeat for all of the chicken chunks.

Meanwhile, of course you've been heating some oil on the stove in an oven-safe pan and it is all hot and ready for your breaded chicken boobs.  You have also very cleverly pre-heated the oven to 425- good for you!  Fry the breasts until one side is brown and tasty- it doesn't take very long at all.  Then flip the chicken over (I sometimes have to add a bit more oil at this point because I never put in very much to begin with and it disappears fast) and pop the whole kit and kaboodle in the oven for 10 minutes.  Voila!

Andrew thought the chicken was just a bit dry (a result of the breading- the chicken itself was quite juicy and perfectly cooked.  Thank you Cooking Light!) so we had a spoonful of apple butter on the side to dip it in.  But I really enjoyed it just alone- you could really taste the cocoa and the subtle bite of the chile side of the mix.  

A good meal with friends- that was practically free!

Last night I made a free dinner!  Scrumptious split pea soup (it said scrumptious on the soup mix!) with a loaf of Parmesan peppercorn bread.  You may be wondering to yourself, "How was this delightful sounding meal free?"  Well I'll tell you.  The soup mix had been kicking around in our cupboard for, well, forever.  The ham we added to the soup was leftover from Thanksgiving- we had frozen it almost immediately (and, coincidentally, was free to begin with because it was from Andrew's work).  The bread was made with ingredients we either had on hand or (like the bread flour and yeast) were going to buy anyway to fuel my bread maker habit.

We invited the Ramseys and the Siders over to share in the feast since a) we like them all a lot and b) this was clearly going to be far too much food for two people to eat.

Let's start with the amazing bread.  And yes, it WAS amazing.

All the ingredients in the order I have to put them in the machine (water first, yeast last)

Here they all are!  You can't see half of them because they are layered carefully under the flour.

Here she is!  The machine herself!  ...the cats don't trust it...

Now let's look at how pretty the soup looks!  ...okay...it actually doesn't look that pretty.  Look beyond the fact that it is a hunk of meat sticking out of some murky looking water, and realize that it is a huge ham oozing non-stop flavor into the already flavorful broth of a split pea soup mix and understand that our house smelled amazing.

Not pretty to look at, but VERY pretty to eat.  In fact, there were no leftovers.

 Let's go back to the best part now: the bread.  Because I made it.  And that is pretty awesome.

Getting all puffy and sprinkled lovingly with asiago (which ended up smelling very odd as it cooked)

Even more puffy!

All golden-brown and delicious!  

Kinda sunk down in the middle...ah well

I won't lie, it was pretty popular.  Those last pieces were gone mere seconds after I took this picture.

Obligatory New Year's Post

New years.  That magical time of year where millions of people around the world vow to lose weight, work out more, work less, and make tons of money.

Last year, my goals were as follows:

• Don't be such a fatty-fat
• Be a better wife
• Continue to get through vet school without going crazy and running pedestrians down on campus.

I can safely say that I accomplished two of those goals.  Over the course of the past year I managed to lose almost 20 lbs (of course, thanks to the holidays and the orgy of over-eating I just engaged in, I am back to the "need to lose 5 lbs" point).  I also most certainly did NOT go crazy and run people over.  I have had some fairly spectacular breakdowns over the past year, but those happen.  Especially in the final year of vet school. Was I a better wife though?  I sort of think it is unlikely.  Sorry Andrew.  :(

Onto slightly less moody subjects, how about I think about some goals for THIS year?  This new year of 2011.  My year.  Here it goes...

Shiny new goals:

• Become a doctor (ZING!)
• Find a job in Kitsap County and have an income such that I can pay off my gargantuan student loans AND buy groceries with enough money left over to occasionally buy books without going into guilt seizures.
• Re-lose 5 lbs
• Never buy bread again.

Wiki-WHAT?  Never buy bread again???  That's right people.  I got a bread maker for Christmas.  Christmas afternoon while Andrew was cleaning the entire kitchen and house and talking loudly about how we needed to clean things, I nodded gravely and then proceeded to make a huge mess carefully measuring ingredients out for my first loaf of bread.  (Did I mention that I should try to be a better wife?)

I wish I could say that my first loaf was the pinnacle of human achievement in bready goodness, but it was actually pretty dumpy looking and quite dense.  I suspect that this was due to the fact that my yeast has been kicking around in the freezer for a year and may have finally given up the ghost (although up till this point it was doing fine in pizza and bao dough).  It may also be that I didn't use bread flour- just all purpose since that is what I had on hand.  

The bread tasted okay though.  I have had it as a grilled cheese sandwich as well as a pbj sandwich and they were both fine.  My next loaves will be better though.  Provided I remember to get some fresh yeast and bread flour!

**Edit: additional goal is to be more proactively involved with the household budget.  Also to agree with Andrew's goal: To not suck.