Day Fifty-seven--Chicken Taco Chili

Hello all. Whew, I had a busy day yesterday. It felt good though. I got a lot done. I have now preserved all of the strawberries we picked into luscious jams. That will give us a taste of spring/summer in the middle of the horrid winter. I also made a loaf of my favorite Maple Oatmeal bread for us to have for yummy sammies.

Dinner was the least of my work yesterday because I threw it all in the crockpot yesterday morning. This is one of Tim's favorite chilies and through the winter I make it every couple of weeks.

Chicken Taco Chili

It's really easy to do. Everything that went into it was organic. It had the house smelling like chili around 11 am and it made me hungry all day. Right before Tim got home I also made some cornbread. I used a different recipe this time and he liked it much better. The last one I made was delicious but he wanted one that had a little bit of sweetness to it. This one was perfect! The dinner came together nicely before Tim had to go to his aikido class. We shredded some Cuba cheddar cheese on top. I had a little butter and honey on my cornbread. The kids loved the cornbread...the chili, not so much. They like it sometimes, and sometimes not. Last nights, not. Oh well, there is a ton of it left to eat for lunches over the next couple of days.

Day Fifty-five--Chicken Tostadas

I had my act together a little better today. It was a busy day. I made some jam with the strawberries we picked a couple of days ago. I cleaned out the basement a bit. I took the boys out for some fun. I made dinner.

Dinner was a little later than usual. I kept the car today so I had to pick Tim up from work. He worked late tonight so that we can hopefully leave early tomorrow. He came home, changed and then left for his Aikido. Before I left to pick him up, I threw some chicken in a pot to slow cook while we were gone for ten minutes. It finished cooking when we got home and then I shredded it up. I picked up a packed of Simply Organic Fajita mix and threw that in with the shredded chicken. While that worked together I fried up a bunch of corn tortillas. I cut up some romaine lettuce I had in the fridge and shredded some of the local jack cheese I got the other day. Throw it all together and you get this:


Chicken tostadas

The kids and I loved them. I put a little salsa on top of Connor's and mine. Aidan just had chicken, lettuce and cheese on his. Aidan actually asked for seconds on this one. The chicken wasn't organic. It was chicken that had been buried in the freezer from before I started buying organic meats. I couldn't waste it and I couldn't eat oatmeal another night so we ate it and cleared out room in the freezer for good for us food.

That is about all I have for you now. I am going to go read the rest of my Animal, Vegetable, Mineral and bemoan the fact that it's done. And then I might read it over again. Yes, I loved it that much! Have a good night!

Day Forty-seven--Chicken Enchiladas

Hello everyone. What a fine day it is today! School is done. Bread is baking. All is right in our little world. Last night's dinner was a success. What else could I ask for? Well, I'm sure I can come up with a couple of things.

Last night dinner was fun to make. It took me the entire hour that Connor was at karate. Part of that was the chicken needing to be cooked. I bought a beautiful chicken from the farm. I have been buying organic roasting chickens or breasts at Wegmans. I got to thinking though that I can't really know how these chickens were raised. When I was at the dairy last week, I ventured over to the section in their little freezer that had chicken in it. I picked up a near 4 pound chicken. I'm not going to lie. It was expensive. It was $17. BUT, it's from a local farm, it was a pastured chicken and it was organic. I swooped it up and took him home.

The bird was a whole roasting bird so I had to chop him up and boil him. I had Tim help me chop the chicken up a bit. Big knives tend to scare me sometimes because I'm not the most graceful person. Sadly, Aidan seems to have inherited this trait from me too. We are both accident prone. Tim did most of the chopping but then he had to leave to take Connor to karate, or else Connor would be late. I was kind of grossed out hearing the bones crack and feeling the raw chicken flesh in my hands. Tim then, ever so kindly, reminded me that when we get to the point of having some land and raising animals that I better get used to it. I think I'll let him do it. =)

Once the chicken was all chopped up it went into a big stock pot and boiled for about 30 minutes. While it was cooking, I prepped everything else for the dinner. I chopped onions, opened cans of diced chillies, grated cheese and got tortillas ready (as in nuked them because I didn't want to fry them again). After the chicken was done, I shredded the meat off of the bones. I started frying the onions and then added the shredded chicken to the pan. Then I threw in half of the chillies. After than cooked for a bit, I added a half cup of the chicken broth and a half cup of cream. A dash of paprika was added to the mix and this pan was done and set aside while I started on the next part.

The next part of the meal was the cheesy part. Yum. I melted a couple of tablespoons of butter and then whisked in a couple of tablespoons of flour. I then added a cup and a half of chicken stock, a half cup of sour cream, and about a cup and a half freshly shredded Monterrey Jack cheese. Oh, and I threw in the rest of the green chillies. This all melted together into a glorious cheesy gravy.

Then came the fun part. Putting it all together. I took the corn tortillas out of the microwave, slapped a bit of the chicken/onion mixture into it, topped it with a sprinkle of cheese, wrapped it up and plopped into a baking dish. I ended up with a 13x9 pan full and a 9 inch cake pan filled. Over the top of the rolled up little enchiladas, I poured the cheesy sauce. It went in the oven for 30 minutes. That's it.

White Chicken Enchiladas

I topped the enchiladas with my favorite salsa. I usually make my own salsa, but when I can't get to it, I always get Frontera salsa. I love the chipolte one, the tomatillo one and the jalapeno cilantro one. Yum! All natural goodness.

Three out of four of us liked this dinner. Aidan said he didn't really like it, but he ate a few bites. I think I like the other enchiladas I made a couple of weeks ago because they were more flavorful to me. Although, these were really good too. I guess it is a milder flavor on this one. Tim and Connor loved them. Thankfully we had a ton of leftovers, so I know what lunch is going to be today!

I think that is all I have for now. I am going to run out to the dairy today. I have to get into the habit of Thursday shopping. Our farmers market starts in three weeks and it's on Thursday. I am going to make Thursday my market day. That means I better get into the habit of doing my menus and shopping lists on Tuesday and Wednesday. Until later, happy cooking!

Day Thirty-three--Chicken Caesar Salad

Ahhh, what a great day today. It was beautiful out. I had the food shopping done before noon. I got all healthy foods with nothing on the ingredient lists that I couldn't pronounce. I also got a weeks worth of good food for $126 dollars. Well, that was from Wegmans. I did spend $35 last night at the dairy for eggs, butter, ham steaks, ice cream and yogurt. Still, that's way better than the $200+ I was spending. It's amazing what buying in season does to one's grocery bill.

Tonight's dinner was a Jamie Oliver recipe. I've missed Jamie and wandered through my app and found this recipe. It was easy to fix. I had to change up the recipe a bit because it was supposed to have bacon and there wasn't any bacon at the farm last night so I had to get a ham steak. The recipe calls for you to slice up chicken breasts into strips and to put them in a bowl with a bit of olive oil, salt and pepper. Then you are supposed to cook the chicken and bacon together. Then you cube up a loaf of ciabatta bread and toss those in when the chicken is cooked. The bread is supposed to cook in the bacon fat and get crispy and yummy. I took a tiny bit of bacon grease out of a jar in my fridge (my grandmother always had a jar of bacon fat in her fridge) and put it in my hot pan and then threw the chicken and sliced ham steak in. They cooked slowly for about ten minutes. While the chicken was cooking I cubed up the bread. Then came the hard part, and thankfully Tim took over and helped. I had to put two cloves of garlic along with anchovies into my mortar and pestle with some lemon zest. You have to make it into a paste. Here is where I was wishing that I had replaced my food processor. I couldn't get it to mash into a paste and Tim helped. It took a lot of work and it makes me wonder if my mortar and pestle is more for decoration than use. Anywhoooo, while Tim was working on that I threw the cubed ciabatta bread into the pan of chicken and ham so that they could start getting crispy and then I started the dressing. The dressing was made with the juice of two lemons and then olive oil mixed together. Then I added some creme fraiche. I have never used creme fraiche before and I was thrilled that I was able to find it at the grocery store. I didn't need very much so now I need to figure out what to do with the rest of it. Once that was all mixed together, I added the anchovy paste to the olive oil dressing. By the time the dressing was done, the bread was a beautiful brown crispy color and it was ready to go. I had a big bowl of organic romaine lettuce all cut up in small pieces all ready and I dumped the chicken, ham and croutons into the salad. Then I tossed it all together with the dressing. It is topped with some finely grated Parmesan cheese.

Chicken Caesar Salad

I was a bit skeptical when I was putting this together. I wasn't sure about the whole anchovy thing and again I was worried about the lemon juice/olive oil combo. There was no need for skepticism. Jamie came through again with an amazing recipe. Sadly, the boys didn't like it. Connor took one bite and said he didn't like it. Aidan took a few bites. He wasn't too sure. He said he liked the chicken and he liked the lettuce. Then I think he realized he was eating salad and decided he didn't really like it. Tim and I loved it. We both washed it down with a beer and we both have a container of left over salad for lunch tomorrow. It was a perfect light dinner for and the perfect end to a great day.

Day Twenty-two--Fajitas!

I'm a dork. I had to have Mexican today in honor of Cinco de Mayo. Not that I really need an excuse to eat Mexican food. It's one of my favorites!

Of course, dinner had to start out with one of these:

Good 'ol Corona.

I had pondered drinking one while I was cooking up our dinner, but then thought better of it. I just can't drink like I used to. That is probably a good thing.

Chicken Fajitas with roasted peppers and onions

Dinner tonight was delicious. I just chopped up 3 organic chicken breasts and cooked them with a Simply Organic Fajita flavor packet. I also had a pan with onions, green peppers and red peppers frying up along side the chicken. Connor came home from karate and helped me stir the veggies and chicken while I made the guacamole. Connor also shredded some cheddar cheese for me too. He's quite the helper in the kitchen. It's interesting because Connor likes to do cooking on the stove and preparing meals and Aidan loves the baking side of the cooking. He's always helping with the breads, cakes and cookies. I'm very lucky to have two little helpers who enjoy playing in the kitchen.

Dinner was a great success. We each had two fajitas and then we were stuffed. It was thumbs up all around. I have to say that it's been pretty easy to keep up with the cooking so far. I'm happy because I know we are all eating real food and that is going to keep us healthy. I hope everyone has had a great day. Until tomorrow, happy cooking!

Day Fourteen--Chicken Parmigiana

Well lookie here. I'm actually posting tonight after dinner. What a fine dinner it was too. Are you sitting down? It wasn't a Jamie Oliver recipe tonight. I know, I know, I felt like I needed to branch out a bit. I turned to dear old Martha tonight. I used to get her Everyday Food magazine and it had a lot of good recipes in it. This came from the Everyday Food website.

Chicken Parmigiana over a bed of mixed lettuce.

I made her tomato sauce instead of just buying a jar of sauce. It wasn't as tasty as Jamie's sauce last week, but it did make a LOT. I am not sure what I'm going to with it all. I suppose I will put some in the fridge for pizza and then freeze the rest.

This was a really easy dinner to do. I had it all put together from scratch in about 25 minutes. I made the sauce first and then started on the chicken. I got three organic chicken breasts and I split them in half so it made six cutlets. I browned them in a pan for a couple of minutes and then broiled it with mozzarella on top. Mozzarella. I'm spoiled now by the balls of cheese. I will not buy pre-shredded cheese again. In fact, as soon as I can get my hands on some citric acid I'm going to try to make my own.

The good news about this meal is that Aidan loved it. He even ate the salad and said he liked lettuce. Breakthrough! Everyone loved this meal. I was going to do some writing about eating locally but I don't really have the energy to do it tonight. I'm doing a lot of reading and trying to figure some stuff out. I will write about it soon though. I promise. I think that is all I have now. Until tomorrow, happy cooking. =)

Day Ten--Roasted Chicken and Potatoes

This will be a short post tonight. Partly because I'm tired and partly because this meal was only meh. Tonight's dinner was poorly planned out. I didn't realize how long it would take to finish and we ended up eating dinner at 8 o'clock. Now, we've been eating later lately but this is too late.

Here's what we had:

Roasted Chicken with potatoes. Sorry the picture is kind of boring but my creativity was tapped out today. I should have taken a picture of the chicken before Tim cut it up, but I didn't do it fast enough.

The chicken. I spent the big bucks on this chicken. It was organic. It was delicious. It had great taste. I put olive oil on the outside and then salted and peppered it. Inside the bird I stuffed a lemon, garlic cloves and thyme. The lemon and garlic were already warm and juicy because I boiled them with the potatoes.

Lemon and garlic boiling with the potatoes.

I've never boiled potatoes with a lemon and garlic before. After the lemon boiled, I stabbed (fun) it several times and then put it inside the bird. It smelled really good and it really put some lemon flavor into the chicken. I guess my issue with this meal were the actual potatoes. First of all the recipe called for way too many. Second of all, even after being cut up and boiled and then roasted for 45 minutes with the chicken they weren't really cooked all the way through. I have a lot of them left over that will be turned into hash browns over the weekend.

On a good note, Aidan loved tonight's dinner. He ate it all up and said he loved it. Connor didn't eat any of the chicken (too bland for him) but had a couple of potatoes. I think next time I attempt roasted chicken and potatoes I'll just do it the way I usually do.

Day Two--Herby Grilled Chicken Kabobs

Tonight's dinner almost didn't happen. I got started late making it and then catastrophe struck. My food processor broke. Granted, it's been broken for a while and I've been able to manage to use it. Not anymore. Of course, I didn't know that until after I had the bowl full of a lot of stuff. I ended up throwing it all into my blender and using that. It didn't work as well, but it was good enough for what I needed it to do. I guess I'll be shopping for a food processor this weekend. So here is what we dined on tonight:




Herby Grilled Chicken Kabobs

This is another recipe off my Jamie Oliver app. It was easy to put together, minus the malfunction of my machinery. The chicken is organic free range chicken breasts. These little babies are expensive. Around 12 dollars for three breasts. I freaked out the first time, but then I thought that it's not that bad because it feeds four people and if we were to eat at a fast food place, we invariably spend more. The cost doesn't bother me that much.

The chicken is marinated in a mixture of cilantro, mint, garlic, a chili pepper, green onions, lemon zest and juice. The skewer consisted of the chicken and zucchini. Tim was kind enough to grill it for me. While he was grilling the kabobs I made the salad. The salad was easy. Romaine lettuce, a half of a cucumber, an avocado, green onions and basil. It is dressed with English mustard, olive oil and red wine vinegar. I had never had English Mustard before. It is so good. It is a little spicy, but I like spicy things so it's all good. We had this all with whole wheat pitas from a local bakery.

Tim and I loved it. Connor enjoyed the pita and the kabobs but didn't like the salad. He didn't like the avocado in it. Aidan ate a pita and a bite of chicken and a bite of lettuce. In the past we've allowed him to eat something else if he didn't like dinner. We are putting an end to that. If he doesn't eat what we are having for dinner then he will go hungry. I will worry if he starts to lose weight but until then I think he'll get the hang of eating what we are eating.

I had my first freak out today about this whole "eating real food" thing. It was when I was trying to plan next weeks menus. Part of the problem is that we are going out of town this weekend. We are lucky enough to have a home to stay in and I'll be able to cook while I'm there, but I always feel weird working in someone's kitchen. Add to that the fact that I will have to do the grocery shopping in a store that I'm not used to. I don't know how their supply of organic food is. I don't know if I'll be able to get the grade of meat that I want. We'll make due. We always do, but it just adds a little stress.

Speaking of menus. I hate doing them. I know they are a necessity. It makes it much easier at dinner time if I have an idea of what I'm making and have everything I need for it. My problem is that we are boring eaters most of the time. We find certain things that we like and then we tend to repeat them. I worry that this could make for a boring blog. I had five different cookbooks out today pouring over them trying to figure out what to do and ultimately ended up getting most of my ideas and recipes online. I'll post links to them when I can.

Well, my kitchen is closed for the night. Time to put the wee ones to bed and then I can relax. Happy cooking.