Chicken Divan & Fried Rice

Of course the schedule was shot to crap right off the bat but oh well, it's still good to have a plan and hopefully as we go along it'll be easier to stick to it.  I didn't have time to post yesterday so I'll do two dishes in one entry: yesterday's and today's.  And...per usual, the schedule is off but the rest of the dishes should be making an appearance at some point this week, except one.

Chicken Divan

One of my favorite meals from Ohio.  I made it once before a few years ago but never on my own...and it's actually quite simple!  It uses a lot of ingredients but most of them are standard things you'd have laying around the house.  The only thing we needed to get to make this dish was cream of mushroom soup (which we found at the dollar store--yipee!!)


Ingredients
Serving size: 2

• 1 TBSP oil
• 2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
• 2 cups broccoli
• 1 can cream of mushroom soup
• 1/4 cup milk
• 1/4 cup mayonnaise 
• 1/8 tsp curry powder
• 2 tsp lemon juice
• 1/4 tsp black pepper
• 1/4 cup bread crumbs
• 1/2 cup cheddar

Instructions

1. Salt and pepper the chicken breasts and saute until done, turning in the pan to cook evenly. Cut each breast into half or thirds.

2. Cook the broccoli in boiling water for 2-3 minutes, then drain.

3. Spray or oil a 9x9 pan, add the broccoli, then add the cooked chicken pieces on top.

4. In a small bowl, mix together the soup, milk, mayonnaise, curry powder, lemon juice, and pepper. Spread over the chicken and broccoli. Sprinkle the cheese on top, then sprinkle the bread crumbs on top of that.

5. Bake at 350 for 20 minutes.

Super yummy and works well as comfort food!  Always a favorite at home

Fried Rice

An amazing meal when you're feeling lazy and want something yummy and easy to make.  However, I can't take credit for this, Garry did most of the work.  I was going to but he had to scramble the eggs and just kinda kept going from there.  Either way, it's an easy dish and wonderful when you have left overs/items you dunno what to do with.  Like us?  We had carrots for awhile and didn't know what to do with them...throw em in the fried rice!


I don't really have measurements for this one because we really just threw stuff together.  So...basically take the following ingredients and throw them together (or whatever else you'd like to add)


Ingredients
Serving size: 2-ish

• 1 1/2 cups rice
• green onion
• carrots
• soy sauce to taste
• scrambled eggs
• garlic powder to taste

Walla!  We would have added peas but we didn't have peas...and like I said, you can add whatever you want.  We would have added more but we didn't have anything more to add.  And it was surprisingly filling :)  Great vegetarian dish on a budget!

"Asian Sticky Wings"

"asian sticky wings": my version?  Not sticky and not wings...but still incredibly delicious!


It was an interesting cooking day today.  I'll first post my method of making these chicken breasts (since I have a peculiarity where I hate eating chicken on bones) and then talk about what exactly happened.  They turned out great and filled the house with an amazing smell...but it didn't come without it's problems.


Also, you can click on the link to go to the original recipe whenever you want...my way is almost nothing like her's...only because I hit a snag in the cooking process.


Ingredients
Serving size: 2

• Chicken Breast (1-2)
• Honey (1/8 cup)
• Soy Sauce (2 TBSP)
• Chili Powder & Garlic (1 TBSP)
• Oil (1 TBSP)
• Teriyaki Sauce (2 TBSP)
• Vinegar (1 TBSP)
• Ginger (1 TBSP)
• Green Onion (1 sliced)

Instructions

1. Mix the honey, soy sauce, chili powder/garlic, oil, teriyaki sauce, vinegar, and ginger together in a bowl using a whisk until they are all blended together in a sauce

2. Put the chicken and the sauce in a baking pan and cook at 450 for 20-25 minutes

3. Make another batch of sauce while the chicken cooks

4. After the chicken is cooked, put on a serving plate and pour the rest of the sauce over the chicken

5. Cut the green onion and sprinkle on top

Fair warning: you may end up with black tar crap on your baking dish.  I know I did...and that's where my problems happened.  Unfortunately our baking dish is much too big for the chicken.  To save on the chicken I only used one breast and cut it in half.  Putting that small breast into a large pan=sticky crap everywhere.

After 20 minutes in the oven I opened it up and smoke FILLED the kicthen, setting off the smoke detector (which was promptly turned off).  Thankfully the chicken was alright, but because the sauce spread all over the rest of the pan, it began to bake to a crisp.  Not good.

So in order to fix this, I took the chicken out of the pan (and quickly threw the pan in the sink and filled it with water...hopefully soaking for a few hours will make the cleaning process less awful) and created another batch of sauce to pour over the chicken.

While the sauce was runny, it made for an EXCELLENT decision.  I made my mashed potatoes and the sauce mixed with them, added flavor to the chicken, and was overall amazing to have laying all over the plate.  It would have been amazing over rice as well, for sure.

So while mine ended up nothing like the original recipe it still came out INCREDIBLE.  I'm honestly craving more now.  Though next time I think I'm going to cook the chicken in a sauce pan over the stove with the sauce and see what happens.  Hopefully it'll be more rich and thick like it was supposed to be in the first place.

Pepperoni Stuffed Chicken & Scalloped Potatoes

It's been a few days!  We went to eat at Garry's dad's house on Monday then yesterday we decided to go out to eat for our anniversary since Garry had the day off.  But now I'm back to cooking until the last week of October when I go out to eat with dad sometime.  So...as you can imagine the schedule's all out of whack but that's alright.  The food we got will last longer so we can really cut back on next week's spending to make up for eating out (and splurging $20 to get 5 DVDs from Blockbuster)

Anyway!  Today we had a feast and it was wonderful!  We had Cesar salad, garlic toast, (which Garry prepared), pepperoni stuffed chicken, and scalloped potatoes.  Yummmm.  Of all that I'm just going to feature the chicken and potatoes...because they were both super easy to make and super delicious


Pepperoni Stuffed Chicken
Serving size: 2
Ingredients

• Chicken breasts (1 breast)
• mozzarella cheese
• pepperoni (as many as you want)
• egg (1)
• Flour (1/4 cup)
• Bread Crumbs (1/4 cup)
• Oil (6 tbsp)
• Salt & Pepper

The directions are a bit difficult to follow (or they were for me) so I'm going to post the link to the recipe itself since the author was kind enough to post pictures underneath her explanations of how to make this.  Clickity click here to see!

Scalloped Potatoes

Serving size: 3

Ingredients

• Large potatoes (3)
• Chopped (or minced) onion (1/4 cup & 2 tbsp)
• Butter/Margarine (1 tbsp & 1 1/2 tsp)
• Flour (2 tbsp)
• Chicken broth (3/4 cup & 2 tbsp)
• Mayonnaise (1 tbsp)
• Salt & Pepper
• Paprika 

Directions
1. In a greased 2-1/2-qt. baking dish, layer potatoes and onion. 


2. In a saucepan, melt the butter; stir in flour until smooth. 


3. Gradually add broth, mayonnaise, salt and pepper; cook and stir for 2 minutes or until thick and bubbly. 


4. Pour over potatoes. Sprinkle with paprika. 


5. Cover and bake at 325 degrees F for 2 hours or until tender.


There you have it...easy peasy and delicious (not to mention filling)!  Let me know if you have any questions and I'll do my best to answer.

Chicken A La Fail

Well, day one is getting off on a really bad foot...I found this recipe for glaze on pork loins and wanted to try it on chicken because it looked good.  I guess that was my first mistake.  I should have done it with beef.  But my real mistake was letting the brown sugar cook too quickly.  So rather than having a spicy caramelized awesomeness I got...burnt...crap...


The picture, as unappetizing as it looks, makes it look 100 times better than it tasted.  I ate maybe 1/10th of it and had to stop...it just tasted like...burnt crap.


Needless to say I'm disappointed with myself right now...I know I can do better and I have...but I'm trying to remind myself that this is a learning experience.  I guess I'm just disappointed because my blog's first day didn't turn out glorious with a wonderful recipe or anything...but I guess that's pretty descriptive of life.


Garry ate it all though...but to save me from starvation he made me a tuna sandwich...I love that man so much


So I won't even bother putting the recipe for this...just a word of warning...make sure you pay attention when you're cooking brown sugar. 


In good news, I do have all next week's meals planned out!  To save money we're having beef one night and chicken one night...the rest is vegetarian dishes.  I'll post my week's dishes on Saturday then on Sunday we're going shopping (budget is MAX $50 but $20-30 would be superb) and I begin cooking and then real magic happens.


Tomorrow's dish is also a mystery to me...I know it will include beef and potatoes of some kind but that's it.  We'll see...hopefully it goes better than today's!