Rosemary Chicken

Behold! The only non-peanut-butter-sandwich meal we had at my house last week. I know Will has already tried and rejected the "grass" in this recipe, but dude. Will is five years old. This stuff is delicious. Uh...SO THERE.

Actually, this is not my boys' favorite thing to eat, either. But who's doing the cooking here? That's what I thought. Y'all know where we keep the peanut butter. Knock yourselves out. Mama needs her vegetables.
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Rosemary Chicken

• 1 lb. (or so) boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into chunks - or any kind of chicken will do here, honestly
• 1 small package baby carrots - or large carrots chopped into chunks, whatever
• 2-4 small potatoes, chopped into chunks (optional, if you're watching starches)
• Olive oil
• Rosemary, thyme and oregano
• Salt, white and black pepper
• 1 large oven bag (these are in the Ziploc/tin foil aisle)
• 1 tbs flour

Just a note: It's probably fine if you don't have an oven bag, just seal everything up in tin foil and bake it like that. I always use an oven bag, because it's neat and tidy and easy. Oven bags! Yay! But whatever works for you, man.

Shake 1 tbs of flour around in a large oven bag. It says to do this on the oven bag instructions. It's weird, but it helps it...not...explode? I honestly don't even know. Just go with it. Discard the excess flour. Lay the bag out flat in a large roasting pan. You're going to fill it with awesome in just a minute.

In a large Ziploc bag, toss the carrot and potato chunks with a little olive oil to coat them - about 1 tbs should do. Shake in some rosemary, thyme, oregano, and white pepper. The amounts are up to you - this recipe can use up a lot of your precious herbs (which aren't the cheapest thing in the world, I know) so use your own judgment. As long as all the veggies are sprinkled with disgusting grass evenly, you're doing fine. (Tell Will I said hi!)

Transfer the veggies from the Ziploc bag to the oven bag, and spread them evenly out in the pan. Save that Ziploc bag.

Thaw and cut up the chicken into cubes or chunks, and add that to the Ziploc bag. Shake in the same herbs you used before, plus a little salt and black pepper. Honestly, this could just as easily be called Thyme Chicken or Oregano Chicken or just Herb Chicken, because you're not putting any more rosemary than anything else, you know? Or maybe you are. I'm not judging, just making an observation. You do what you want. Carry on.

Add the chicken to the oven bag with the vegetables, spreading everything around in the bottom of the pan evenly. Seal the oven bag with a twist-tie (they come in the oven bag box). Cut a few slits in the bag to allow steam to escape.

Bake at 350 for about 1 hour, or until the veggies are tender and the chicken is cooked through.
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This has become one of my favorite, healthiest, easiest, relatively cheapest, go-to weeknight recipes. I make it at least once every couple of months. I believe I got it from Carla. We were on one of our walks around the parade ground and she was telling me about a dish they cooked at her house, and this was (more or less) it. Hey, Carla, did I get it right??

I served this with sauteed spinach, because I thought it complimented the chicken and veggies really well. I have already posted (at ridiculous length) about the spinach, here: http://sistersupper.blogspot.com/2010/06/spinach-101.html

BUT I WILL POST IT AGAIN. And clean it up a little.
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Roasted Garlic Spinach

• 1 bag baby spinach leaves (or about 1 - 1 1/2 lbs)
• 1-2 tbs olive oil
• Small diced onion
• 4-6 cloves garlic
• Salt and pepper, to taste

Lop the ends off the garlic cloves. Coat them in olive oil, wrap them in foil, and bake at 425 for about 20-25 minutes, or until they're tender. Unwrap them and let them cool a little bit, then you can POP them out of their skins and mash them. They should pop out very easily.

In a skillet or large-ish saucepan, heat the olive oil and add the onion and roasted garlic. Sautee until the onion softens. Start adding in spinach by handfuls, stirring each handful until it's wilted enough to make room to add more. Keep adding spinach until you're happy with the spinach/onion/garlic ratio. Salt and pepper it. Stir it around. Taste it. Salt and pepper it some more if it needs it.

The end.



A BOWL OF LAWN TRIMMINGS

Cilantro and Lime Chicken Fajitas (also Bacon Jalepeno Poppers)

This dinner was great. Like, I sighed a heavy sigh of relief and contentment that all was well with the direction of my life.

But, it took me a day beforehand to prep for it all. The night before, I made some pico de gallo (just enough to mix into the guacamole), some salsa, and the marinade. All inspired - duh - by the Pioneer Woman's stuff. (She is my first and only home cooking idol, y'all. I can't relate to most food blogs, but she's an exception for some reason. I just roll with it). When I read her tequila lime marinade recipe I knew I had to try something like this, if only to get rid of all the extra cilantro I ALWAYS have left over when I make salsa. And I'm kind of sick of my usual taco seasoning mix.

ANYWAY. My marinade consisted of whatever spare cilantro I had (including a hefty dose of the stalks, because I don't like to be wasteful), the juice of 2 limes, some salt, and 3 fresh cloves of garlic. I blended all that up with some olive oil and - because I don't have tequila *sadface* - I just thew in a little water (like, 1/4 cup) to help the blades turn. Oh, and because I'm me, I threw in lots of black pepper and some Tony's seasoning mix. Must make spicy.

I did a LOT of blending in my new blender that night, to the point where Curt ran over to me and hugged my legs and cried, because either he thought I was being hurt or he was really sick of the noise. Or both.

So yeah, I cut a few chicken breasts into fajita strips and marinaded them all night and all of yesterday while I was at work.

As you know, I do not have a grill. To cook this stuff, I heated up a skillet on medium-high, and tossed the chicken in. I sprayed the pan with some cooking spray, but the marinade probably was oily enough to keep things from sticking on its own. I cooked each side of the strips until they were nice and browned. I had to work in batches, because I made a lot of chicken, and I didn't want to crowd the pan for this. I was worried, because a grill would be ideal to catch all the marinade drippings and keep everything clean. In the skillet, the marinade was pooling all over the place, and browning, and I was afraid it would burn. BUT, it didn't! After the chicken was done, I added in some thinly sliced green pepper and onion to soak some of it up and kind of deglaze the skillet a little.

I tossed all the chicken back in the skillet with the veggies and there you go. A fajita type situation.

While all that was going on, I cut up some avocados and mixed the guacamole together (I think you have already posted that recipe). I got out the (store-bought, come on now) flour tortillas, cheese, sour cream, and black olives for trimmings.

OH AND I MADE CREAM CHEESE BACON JALEPENO POPPERS.

My neighbor has a garden (maybe you heard), and he's been growing a ton of jalepenos. I probably had 20 jalepenos sitting in my fridge about to go bad. So I sliced them in half, scooped out the seeds (DO NOT RUB YOUR EYES OR YOUR MOUTH OR ANYWHERE ON YOUR BODY WHILE HANDLING PEPPERS), and stuffed them with cream cheese. Then I wrapped them in bacon. The peppers were small, so I cut the bacon in half both ways. I basically quartered the strips of bacon. It was fine.

You can bake those on a foil-lined cookie sheet at 400 degrees until the bacon crisps up and the edges of the cream cheese brown. SO GOOD.

I got that recipe from Kelley years ago. She called them "Armadillo Eggs" but a little research shows me that what most people call armadillo eggs are the breaded and fried jalepeno poppers stuffed with cheese - wrapped in bacon. So I don't know what to actually call these (neither does the PW, apparently!), but they're crazy awesome.

I brought some of this mighty bounty over to my neighbors, to thank them for the peppers, and was rewarded with a huge hunk of chocolate cherry cake.

I hope they never move.

Green Rice and Chicken

Shayne's initial reaction to this meal: "GAH! I do not like green eggs and ham."



LIES. He ate two plates. Try them and you may, I say.

(Not the most appetizing photo quality, but I thought a rough visual aid might be good here.)

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GREEN RICE

1/2 cup tightly packed fresh cilantro
1 cup tightly packed fresh spinach leaves (stems trimmed)
1 can (1 1/3 cup) chicken broth
1 1/4 cups milk
1 tsp salt
1 tbs olive oil
3 tbs butter
1 1/2 cups long grain rice
1/4 cup finely minced onion
1 clove garlic, minced

Put the cilantro, spinach, and broth in a blender or food processor, and blend until the vegetables are puréed. Add the milk and salt and blend a bit more until well combined.

In a medium heavy-bottomed saucepan (with a good lid) over medium heat, heat the olive oil and butter. When the butter is melted, add the rice and sauté, stirring frequently, 3 to 4 minutes. Add the onion and garlic, cook and stir 1 minute more. Add the contents of the blender, and stir well to mix. Turn the heat on high, and bring to a boil. When it just boils, cover the pan, turn the heat down low, and simmer 20 minutes.

After 20 minutes, carefully stir the rice and check it. Mine was done at this point, but the recipe said to cover it again, and cook another 5 minutes, then take the pan off the heat and let it finish steaming in the covered pot for 10 more minutes. All I did was stir it, taste it, and add more salt.

The flavor of this is very mild, so even Will should be able to handle it. And it's so pretty! And it has green stuff. Curt ate a huge plate of it. *High five*



(I swear he actually ate most of it. Eventually.)

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SPINACH SMOTHERED CHICKEN

3-4 chicken breasts, cooked however you like. You can grill them, pan sear them, whatever. I baked mine in foil, with a little salt and pepper.

While the chicken is cooking, saute the spinach. Here's that recipe again, adjusted to include more garlic, because I don't think you can have enough garlic:

1 1/2 lbs (give or take) spinach leaves, washed and drained
2 tbs olive oil
1 cup (more or less) chopped onion
4-6 cloves garlic, left in the skins with the ends lopped off
Salt and pepper to taste
Mozzarella and Parmesan (or Montery Jack and Asadero) cheese

Heat the oven to 425. Coat the garlic cloves in oil oil, wrap tightly in foil, and bake 20 minutes until tender. When the garlic is done, remove from skins and mash.

In a deep skillet, heat the oil and add the onion. Saute until it just softens, then add in the garlic, and mash it around. Add more oil if you need (I used a dark skillet, so it drank up a lot of oil). After a few minutes, start adding in spinach by handfuls. Stir everything around until the spinach wilts, then add more. Salt and pepper to taste, and add as much as you think you'll need to cover the amount of chicken you're making. When the last of the spinach is wilted, remove from heat.

When the chicken is ready, sprinkle with cheeses, and broil in the oven until cheese melts. Take the pan back out of the oven, top the whole thing with spinach and a little more cheese. Broil some more until the cheese melts and everything is nice and hot.

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I also made some salsa for this meal, because I like it mixed in with the rice. I was going to try for refried black beans, too, but the can of beans I could have sworn was in my pantry was not there. So I made corn.

Woop.

Our Lady of Perpetual Salsa

Tonight, I will be making my fourth batch of salsa. I have not been allowed to stop making it. This morning, I brought in a big bowl of it for Shayne's student appreciation party (it is Student Worker Appreciation Week, did you know?) and Shayne was very sad he could not have any.

The thing is, I bought a lot of cilantro. I had no idea how far fresh cilantro goes, but man. I have a lot left. We used some on our tacos Saturday night (awwwwesome), and tonight I'm going to heat up some of that shredded chicken I made and froze a few weeks ago, and we are going to have chicken nachos (with salsa, and extra cilantro on top. And green onions. And sour cream. And black olives, probably. And cilantro.)

What are other things one can do with cilantro? I need about...let's say 25 ideas?

Oh, and my food processor leaks. NOW I remember why I hadn't used it in years. So I lay out a towel on the counter to catch all the drips (more like a gush, really), then hose everything down afterwards. I kind of think the salsa making process would be a snap if I didn't have to do that, you know? Do you use a blender? I might try that instead, and donate my old food processor to the local dump.

Patience is a Virtue

All day Monday, I thought of salsa. After work, I was determined to have some. Nothing was going to stop me, you know? There was no time for Wal-Mart (hot, tired and cranky in the afternoons, we are), so I did a quick Winn Dixie run-through. They had everything! Except fresh cilantro. Shit.

I washed out my food processor (that I hadn't used in two years, oh my) and had to learn how to use it all over again, but I made the salsa. With dried cilantro I had in my spice cabinet. Fresh would have been better. You can certainly use dried, but be warned that it's merely delicious. Fresh cilantro throws it over the top to super by-God delicious, as illustrated by your batch.

Next time I make salsa (soon), when I'm not so desperate to shovel it into my mouth, I will wait until I have time to go to a store that carries fresh cilantro.

Maybe.