A busy week.

I feel bad for not posting anything last week, especially since it was a pretty busy and wonderful week food-wise for me. R. and I were packing up to leave and head back to my hometown for a few days before he left to go back to the golden coast of California to visit his family, and I'm preparing to move back home for the foreseeable future.  It was busy, hectic, but we finally made it, and now I can sit and recount the meals we shared that were memorable.

The week started out with our monthaversary, and R. decided he wanted to do something "special" for dinner, and that "special" turned out to be something that fit our personalities and relationship really well -- homemade BLT sandwiches and a Star Trek movie marathon.  The BLTs were made with Publix bakery italian bread (Thick, delicious, squishy slices of heaven), crispy oven baked bacon and nice in-season tomatoes sliced thick.  I put a little spicy mustard on mine, and R. ate his plain.  With a pasta salad, we had our meal that we enjoyed curled up on the couch, watching Picard and Kirk, debating the strengths and weaknesses of our favorite Captains.

A real challenge for us that week was eating everything we had in our fridge, and to cook without really making leftovers. Our solution was chicken sandwiches one night, with a side of the leftover pasta salad, and to make another pizza the next.  Between that and omelets galore, some pancakes and biscuits with chili, we managed to pretty much clear out both of our freezers and the perishables from our pantries.

My favorite way of making chicken breasts is a pretty simple one.  I hate, hate, hate, hate dry chicken breasts.  Even grilled chicken breasts lose their appeal to me when they're dry and chewy.  That's saying a lot, because chicken is one of my favorite proteins, serving as a lean source of protein that can be low in calories, and perfect served complexly or simply.  I love chicken (remember the Never Fail Chicken Chili?) and I've gotten pretty good at cooking it.

Here's what you need to make great moist chicken breasts (or strips, or tenderloins.  I haven't tried it with anything with the bone in, but consulting your handy-dandy cookbook like the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook for cooking times, you can use this technique as well):

• 1 deep baking dish, either metal or glass, line with aluminum foil for easier cleanup.
• 1 can (or more, depending on how much chicken you have) low sodium chicken broth
• Chicken!
• Spices such as salt, garlic, pepper, chili powder.  Whatever floats your chicken flavoring boat.

I place the chicken in the foil lined pan, and season well.  I rub the seasoning thickly on the chicken, because it's going to come off with the broth poured in, but still seasoned.  The seasoned broth leftover from this is pretty wonderful for uses in sauce as well.  I cover the chicken with another layer of foil, creating a type of packet that will keep the steam from the broth in.  Into the oven it goes, at about 450 degrees.  The time depends on how much chicken you have, but for three or four chicken breasts I have found that 35 minutes or so works well enough to cook the chicken through.

When the chicken is done, it's great for eating plain with a side of vegetables or starch, or using in sandwiches like R. and I did, or in chicken salads, on top of salads, etc.  Whatever your favorite use for chicken, this gives you good moist chicken to use.  R. and I topped the pizza we made with the leftover chicken, some mushrooms, and other vegetables and meats we had leftover, smothered it in cheese and called it good.  It went through basically the same process as our previous pizza adventure.

Now I have to come to terms with the fact that R. is three thousand miles away, and relearn how to cook for one person, and adapt my parents' style of eating to one that will help me stay on the healthy eating train.  Here's to steam pack vegetables and chicken breasts!

... putting that in writing just makes it seem worse, after all the culinary fun I've been having for the past few weeks. Sigh.

Still cookin',
-A

Hot like an oven!

I used to think that I wasn't very good at cooking, per se, at least the kind that came from the top of the stove.  I had experimented and had both successes and failures in my trial and error procedures, and done alright with a few tried and true recipes.  One thing I knew I could do, kick ass and take names at, however, was bake.

Baking is one of my favorite things in this entire world to do.  I love the science behind it -- you mix this amount of this, and that amount of this, add a certain degree of heat for a certain time, and you get an end product.  Baking is exact, not like cooking which you can admittedly wing at times.  I have gotten the hang of winging cooking (it frustrated R. to no end that it has become my main way of cooking, when he's a 'follow-the-recipe' kind of guy), and have improved on top of the stove. But the oven remains my true domain.  I will always succeed when there is an oven involved.

My roommate jokes that whenever I get sincerely bored, or have a really terrible day, she can tell my the smell of baked goods coming from the kitchen.  If it's something savory and healthy like whole wheat muffins, a quiche, or baked meats, then she would know I was bored. If it was chocolatey, or sugary, it was a very bad, terrible day.

Today, I'm bored.  It's entering the summer rainy season, and R. doesn't get home until later this evening from his conference, and I'm procrastinating on packing (again. It's going to be a theme through next week, trust me).  So I went to my pantry, realized I had some whole-wheat flour, the basics for say, muffins, and some frozen blueberries that needed to be used up.  And what better time than the present, yeah?

I google a lot of baking things, and compare and contrast recipes in order to find ones that I can usually mash together and get a good result. www.cooks.com is one of the main sources for my searches, or www.allrecipes.com.  I found a couple of recipes for whole-wheat blueberry muffins at their simplest, and decided on mainly this recipe as my basis for my muffin adventure.

The recipe calls for 1/2 cup of honey, and while I had honey on hand, I didn't have that much.  So I took my winging skills from cooking and went to work.  I've been baking long enough that I have been able to get a sense of what works and what doesn't, and finally feel confident enough to make substitutions.  If I had apple sauce, for instance, I would have substituted that for the oil in the recipe (but I didn't).

Here is the final version of the recipe that I used:

Ingredients:

• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup of milk (I splashed a little vanilla extract in, for an extra delicious flavor)
• 1/4 cup of oil
• 1 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/2 brown sugar (in place of honey)
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 cup (really, I just threw a whole bunch in. I love them!) of frozen blueberries

Heating the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit, I combined all the ingredients in the bowl, and gently folded in the blueberries.  I filled the cups to about 2/3 way full, and drizzled a small amount of honey on top, and baked them for 20 minutes.

They came out absolutely gorgeous golden brown, slightly crunchy on top from the honey, and super juice from the blueberries which had burst into deliciousness during baking. I think I'm in love with a new recipe, and it works wonderfully.  I'm happy. I have successfully staved off another boring afternoon by baking, and now, blogging.  Now, I'm off to hunt up some more recipes to try in the coming weeks.  I leave you with some pictures of the delicious muffins:

Happy Boredom-Baking!
-A