Roasted and Stuffed Chicken

This meal is doubly good.  Make sure to get boneless chicken breasts that still have the skin so you can create this meal properly.  Instead of stuffing the meat, which would require slitting the chicken breasts, this time around I stuffed all the goodies in between the skin and the chicken.  As it all roasted in the oven the juices from the cheese, tomatoes, and bacon ran down and soaked through the meat, making it completely moist and flavorful.  My husband loves crispy roasted chicken skin, so cutting open his meal and finding all the fun, baconful surprises inside was an extra win for him. :)

The Meat

- 2 boneless, skin-on chicken breasts

- 1 1/2 cups cherry tomatoes, sliced in half

- 2 slices of bacon, cooked and crumbled

- 2 tablespoons of olive oil

- parmesan cheese, dill, basil, garlic salt, pepper, marjoram to taste

The Veggies

- 1 large zucchini squash, cut into large pieces

- 1 cup green beans, trimmed and cut

- 1 cup broccoli

- 1 cup water

- 1 tablespoon of olive oil

- salt, pepper to taste

Preheat your oven to 385 degrees.

Fry up your bacon in a griddle pan using high heat, and turn them once after 2-3 minutes.  While the bacon cooks and then cools, chop your veggies and set them aside to cook later.  Once the bacon is cool enough to touch, crumble it into bits.  Take the bacon, parmesan cheese, and the sliced cherry tomatoes over to your chicken, and make little piles of each.  Setting up your station like this will make it easier to contain your mess, and keep you from spreading too many germs from touching the raw chicken.

Gently separate the chicken skin from the center of the chicken breast with your fingers.  You wan to have a little flap so you can stick stuff in it.  Put in equal amounts of the tomatoes, bacon, and cheese.  I did the cheese first, laying it flat against the meat, and then mixed in the bacon and tomatoes.  Take the extra cherry tomatoes and sprinkle them all around the chicken in your baking dish.  Drizzle the olive oil over everything and season liberally.   Pop the dish into the oven and bake it for 40 minutes or until the juices run clear when you cut into the meat.  

When the chicken is around halfway cooked, dump the veggies in the water and olive oil in a medium sized pan and cook them with high heat, around 20 minutes.  When they are done, season them with some salt and pepper.

Put the veggies on the plate first, and then layer the chicken on top.  Drizzle any pan drippings and the baked tomatoes over the top of everything.  Enjoy. 

Lunch To Go

I send my husband to work with a home packed lunch every day.  Usually he gets a salad loaded with goodies, and he loves it!  He also gets some mixed nuts and fruit to round out his meal, or save them for snacks throughout the day.  This is a pretty typical salad that he gets, and it goes in our awesome Klip-it containers that we got at the Container Store.  

The Meat

- 1 spicy turkey potato sausage

The Veggies

 - 1/2 cup shredded romain lettuce

- 1/2 cup raw spinach, shredded

- 1 heirloom carrot, sliced

- 6-8 cherry tomatoes

- 1 mushroom, sliced

- 1/2 green onion, sliced

- 1/2 slicing tomato, sliced

- 5 slices cucumber

- 1/3 cup broccoli

- parmesan to taste 

- 2 tablespoons Caesar dressing 

The Fruits

- 3-5 strawberries

- 1 handful red grapes

- 1 handful blueberries

The Nuts

- 1/2 cup salted almonds

- 1/2 cup cashews

- 1/4 cup hazelnuts

- 1/4 cup pecans

- 3 dried apricots, chopped

I cut up the sausage first and put in on the griddle pan while making breakfast's bacon.  By precutting the sausage it cooks quicker, which means I get to make breakfast, lunch, and hang out with my husband before he leaves for work.  I'm big on multi-tasking.

I put the romaine and spinach in the bottom of the salad container and layer the carrot, sausage, and parmesan on top.  The upper level of the salad container gets the other goodies, and the dressing goes in the sweet little dressing pot (in the middle).  When it is time for lunch, my husband will toss the salad with the dressing so everything will still be fresh and crispy, versus wilted and slimy from sitting in the dressing for hours.

I cut the tops off the strawberries and mix together the grapes and blueberries, and toss the nuts into the second half of the split container.  I make sure to include a napkin for him and that's it.  It only takes around 10 minutes to pack this lunch and everything in it is healthy and delicious.  It's perfectly portioned out thanks to the cool containers, and it's so good for you to eat raw veggies like this.  

TomMmmato Appetizer

As I mentioned in the last post, I have tomatoes coming out of my ears.  Our Farm Fresh box was full of slicing tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, and heirloom tomatoes this weekend.  Tonight we were going to dinner at our momma's house, so I only needed to prepare an appetizer.  This is a great summer dish that can also be eaten as a lunch (or add some chicken and you have a whole meal, honestly).  I, of course, add bacon to everything, but it can be omitted for a vegetarian version. 

The Meat

- 4 pieces bacon, crispy and crumbled

The Veggies

- 2 summer squashes, sliced

- 1/4 eggplant, diced

- 1/4 cup water

- 1 teaspoon olive oil

- pan drippings 

- salt, pepper, basil, oregano, dill to taste

- 1 large slicing tomato, chopped

- 12-15 cherry tomatoes, sliced in half

- 2 tablespoons olive oil

- 1/3 cup fresh mozzarella balls

- 1/2 pack soft cheese (read below)

- salt, pepper, basil, oregano, marjoram, onion powder to taste

- green onion, sliced

- 1/4 cup raw spinach, sliced

This dish has two stages of prep - hot prep and cold prep.  While the squash/bacon/eggplant part should be served warm, I intentionally keep the rest of the appetizer chilled, so that way the tomatoes stay fresh and don't get mushy, and the cheese also stays solid instead of getting gooey.  

First I fried up the bacon in my griddle pan and then crumbled it and set it aside.  I simmered the spiced eggplant and squash with the water, olive oil, and leftover bacon grease for around 20 minutes until everything is soft and cooked through.  Then I mixed in the warm bacon.

In my large bowl I mixed together the tomatoes, spices, and oil, making a nice tomato salad. I added the mozzarella and this AMAZING Foggy Morning Cheese that we picked up at our farmers' market.  It is soft and mild, creamy like goat's cheese but made from cow's milk.  It's fantastic and pairs with the fresh mozzarella awesomely.  

When it is time to serve, toss the warm ingredients (including pan drippings) with the chilled tomato mixture.  Sprinkle the sliced raw spinach and green onion on top to make it look pretty and add a bit of freshness and crispness to your dish.  Whomever you serve this to will love the soft cheeses, the bursts of fresh tomato, the crunch of the bacon, and the savory soft squash.  It's a winner.

A Dinner Party Done Easy!

We had a friend for dinner tonight, so I made us something extra tasty!  This meal is not difficult to prepare and full of flavor.  It's really colorful, too, which is a fun and awesome way to bring a little extra excitement to your dinner.

The Meat

 - 1 1/2 pound flank steak

- 1/2 cup port wine

- 1 teaspoon butter, divided into dots

- salt, pepper, marjoram, dill to taste

The Veggies

- 2 small red potatoes, peeled and cubed

- 2 small purple potatoes, peeled and cubed

- 1 small yellow potato, peeled and cubed

- 1 turnip, cubed

- 2 tablespoons olive oil

- 1/2 cup water

- salt, pepper, dill, chipotle pepper to taste

- 1 pound spinach

- 1/2 cup water

- 1 teaspoon lemon juice

- 4-5 cloves garlic, chopped

- 3 tablespoons butter

- salt, dill to taste

The Garnishes

- 3 slices bacon

- gorgonzola cheese

- 1 green onion, sliced

- 3 mushrooms, sliced

- 7-8 small cherry tomatoes, chopped

- 1/3 cup pecan pieces

Preheat your oven to 380 degrees.

Marinade your flank steak at least 1 hour before cooking.  Simply place the meat in a 2" baking dish and pour the port over the meat.  Spice and let it sit.  I love using port as a marinade because it makes the meat a little sweet without making the meat taste too much like it's been soaking in wine.   I used Prager port, which is not a very sweet port, but full of body and flavor. 

I chopped up my garlic and threw it into an aluminum foil cup I crafted.  I added the 3 tablespoons of butter and the salt and dill, crumpled it up into a very snazzy looking ball, and stuck it in the oven for around an hour.  I love making this infused garlic butter, and this is the third time this week we've had it.  It instantly makes all of my veggies taste SO much better, and is really easy to make.  Also, have I mentioned we are known garlic fiends?

I put my medley of potatoes and turnip into a baking dish with 1/2 a cup of water and the olive oil (I used Spanish olive oil this time, it tastes a little more olive-y than Italian extra virgin olive oil) and the spices.   I baked that uncovered, next to the garlic, for an hour.  

I sauteed up the spinach with the water and lemon juice on low heat for around 8 minutes, then drained it.  Later, when the garlic butter was finished, I tossed it in and made sure to toss it all well so the spinach was evenly coated with wonderful butter. 

With my oven doing its thing, I turned my attention to my garnishes.  I chopped all my ingredients and fried up the bacon.  After the bacon was done, I let it cool and crumbled it.  With the leftover bacon grease, I cooked up the mushrooms on medium heat for a few minutes and then added the tomatoes and pecans. 

I cooked the flank steak on the griddler, similar to last week's big hunk of meat.  This time my flank steak wasn't quite as thick, and only took around 10 minutes to cook until it was medium-done.  

When the steak was finished I sliced it, placed in on the serving tray, and smothered it to heck with my bacon-mushroom-tomato garnish.  I dotted gorgonzola on top and added the green onion.  I served up the spinach and potato/turnip medley in similar dishes and uncorked a bottle of cabernet sauvignon and BOOM.  Dinner party time!

This meal was delicious and everyone was excited to chow down!  I hope you enjoy making this meal for your friends and family - they will certainly love eating it!