Classic Lemon Pepper Chicken

Hey, a new post! It’s been a while. Sorry about that. It’s not that I never cook anymore, but rather that it’s pretty hard to find the time to cook and take pictures and then blog about the experience when you’ve got a baby. Normally, whenever I get a few free minutes, I spend them trying to frantically brush my teeth, clean the dishes, and do whatever else I can do around the house before Baby wakes up or needs my attention again.

But Baby is sleeping peacefully in her crib right now, and the dishes are done (because hubby picked up dinner on the way home), so I’ve got a little time. So I’ll share a super simple recipe that I found and tried out a few days ago.

When I’m strapped for time, baby or not, I look for recipes with few dishes to clean, few ingredients to use, and few steps to go through. This is one of those recipes.

First, start with a little bit of all-purpose flour.

Add a tablespoon of lemon-pepper seasoning, which you bought several years ago for a recipe and have barely touched since, and won’t toss out even though you’re not supposed to hold onto spices for long because hey, there’s nothing wrong with it.

Mix the flour and seasoning up.

Next, prepare some chicken breasts. Mine were big, so I used a big knife to cut them into thinner pieces. I failed at making them similar sizes. Oh well, you win some and you lose some.

Throw some butter in a skillet…

And then, one by one, dip pieces of chicken in the flour. Turn it so it’s coated on both sides.

And drop them in the pan. Don’t overcrowd the pan too much; do the chicken in shifts if you have to (and I had to).

After a few minutes of sizzling, turn the chicken over.

And that’s it! Take it out of the pan when it’s cooked through, and you’re done. Serve with some green beans and potatoes or something like that, and you’ve got a fairly healthy (except for the whole frying-in-butter part) and easy meal.

A nice way to use the chicken breasts that I always seem to have on hand and not know what to do with.

Source: Classic Lemon Pepper Chicken

Runner's Salas or Quick Hummus Salad

So Jolie hasn't posted in FOREVER, which must have something to do with having a baby or whatever ;) So I, Jacki, am taking over to share this awesome recipe I saw in Runner's World magazine which I changed a tiny bit.  It's a perfect balance for everyone's meal, especially athletes, vegetarian athletes (me!) even more so.  The gluten free folks can chow down too!

Here is the original recipe from my copy of Runner's World.

This is so easy that I feel no instruction is necessary except to chop the parsley as small as possible.  You'll see what I did differently.

First I chopped up some broccoli, carrots (yeah I bought them that way), red bell pepper and I used a whole jar of feta, which was at least 1 1/2 cups.

Next step was to chop parsley, halve Cherry tomatoes (it was way better the first time when I bought a variety of small tomatoes, lots more flavor), add chopped walnuts and golden rasins.

Finally, add a can of chick peas and one can of black beans. 

Now mix it all up.  Warning: it makes a ton of food!

I put this on spinach and used a balsamic vinegar dressing and it was delicious.  But, I also eat it right from yhe bowl plain and it's so good!  Josh used his on top of tacos, on his meat, and basically on everything he are until it was gone.  This huge bowl lasted 2 days at our house.  That's how good it is!  

Happy eating!

Pesto Grilled Cheese Sandwich

Just about my favorite thing to eat during my first trimester was grilled cheese. I’m not talking anything fancy or sophisticated, simply white bread and American cheese, like this stock photo from somewhere on the Internet:

I just couldn’t get enough of them. I’ve never bought so much American cheese in my life.

During the second trimester, I was more open to changing things up a bit. I guess I was feeling a bit more energetic and a little less picky about food. I remembered that my amazing sister-in-law had once made me a pretty incredible pesto grilled cheese sandwich, so I set out to make something similar, based on a recipe that I’d found.

First, I started out with some bread. The recipe said Italian bread, but I liked the looks of this beauty from the Wegman’s bakery.

Butter one slice…

Then put it facedown on the grill or skillet, or whatever you’re using. Add a coat of prepared pesto sauce to the other side.

Then add a slice (or two, if you’re pregnant) of provolone cheese.

Then some tomato slices,

And some American cheese (I overdid the cheese a bit, I think).

Take another slice of bread and put pesto on one side,

Put it facedown on the sandwich, and then butter the other side.

Voila! Now just cook the sandwich as you would any other grilled cheese sandwich. Flip it once if you have it in a frying pan, or just close the lid if you’re using a George Foreman grill.

And there you have it!

Delicious. Simple. Quick. Easy clean up. Cheese.

Can’t ask for much more than that.

DIY Oatmeal Bath

Hello, everyone! It has been some time since my last post, mainly because I really haven’t had the energy or desire to cook much of anything, much less document and share. But the good news is that I’m near the end of pregnancy (28 days to go, according to the countdown widget on my phone!) and cooking may regain prominence. But then again, new moms aren’t known for having time or energy, either, so maybe not for a while.

That being said, I’m officially on maternity leave as of today. This means that you may get some more frequent posts out of me in the near future. I’m not doing any cooking to speak of, especially since I’m on modified bed rest, but I have plenty of pictures waiting to be posted about, so you may get lucky.

For me, one of the distinguishing features of being this late in the third trimester has been itching. It seems that no matter how much lotion I slather on and no matter how often, I still find myself itchy all over. I’ve taken to wearing hubby’s t-shirts and sweatshirts when I can because the restrictiveness of my own clothes seems to make it worse, especially since the temperature outside dropped and the heat came on.

Enter the oatmeal bath.

I read online that oatmeal baths are a great way to soothe itchiness that lotion doesn’t really take care of. I initially picked out an Aveeno product on Amazon, but then I rethought it based on the price. Next, I found myself googling homemade versions, and it turns out that they’re all over the internet. Even better, almost all of them seemed simple enough that a girl on modified bed rest could make them.

Of the recipes I looked at, one of my favorites was in this post by Alejandra on her blog, Always Order Dessert. I decided to copy it. I modified it a little bit, though.

First, start out by grinding up 4 cups of old fashioned oats. Most recipes specifically said to avoid quick or instant oats. Since my food processor is small, I ground up a cup at a time.

I dumped all of the ground oats into a big plastic container.

Next, measure out a cup of baking soda. According to Alejandra, this just acts as a natural, delicate cleanser in place of soap.

I just dumped it in my container with the ground oatmeal. If I had a bigger food processor, I would have mixed them together with that, but I settled for mixing by hand with a spoon.

But first, I added another ingredient. In the comments, someone had sworn by adding powdered milk to baths to increase their luxuriousness. So I did the same! I just added a full cup of it.

Here’s everything together!

Now, Alejandra had suggested adding dried lavender buds (also ground up). I couldn’t find any at the store, though I can’t say I tried too hard because I just wanted to be in and out. Regardless, I found lavender essential oil and decided to use that in conjunction with the oatmeal mixture.

I didn’t put the lavender essential oils in the container with the oatmeal mixture because I figured it’d clump. Maybe if I had a bigger food processor and could have spent some time getting it to distribute evenly, but I don’t. So I put a few drops straight into the warm bathwater. Not hot, because hot water dries out your skin (increasing itchiness), plus it’s not good for pregnant ladies, anyway.

And then I added a cupful of my oatmeal mixture.

Then I stopped taking pictures. Sorry.

First observation:

The lavender smells like heaven. I’ve always loved that scent.

Second observation:

The oatmeal, when first added to the water, looked a tiny bit like vomit. Then it dissolved, making the water milky and creamy.

Third observation:

MY SKIN IS SO SOFT!

It made for a really pleasant, luxurious bath. Really. I just soaked in it for 30 minutes, and the only thing that could have really made it better is if my bathtub was big enough for me actually submerge my big belly in it. And if I’d dimmed the lights and lit a bunch of candles. And added music. But I did read a book on my kindle and that was nice.

Final thought:

I didn’t grind the oatmeal as finely as I thought I had. Some of the courser bits ended up on the bottom of the bathtub, but they were easy to wipe up with a paper towel after I drained the water. Regardless, I’ll probably regrind everything before the next bath.

So, anyone who has been having any itchiness issues or just wants to paper themselves without spending much money, I recommend giving this a shot.

4 Ingredient Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

A few months ago, hubby facebook-shared with me a photo of a stack of chocolate chip cookies accompanied by the simplest cookie recipe I’ve ever seen. I just did a little googling and I think that random unknown original facebook-poster stole the recipe from this blog, which shared it back in January.

Hubby was seriously jonesing for this cookies, and because they were so simple and probably delicious, I was willing to give them a try.

Ingredient #1: Creamy peanut butter

Ingredient #2: Granulated sugar

Ingredient #3: Eggs (forgot to take the picture before they were beaten in, sorry!)

Ingredient #4: Chocolate chips.

I didn’t have enough chocolate chips, so I compensated by adding peanut butter chips, too.

It makes a goopy cookie dough. Do yourself a favor and bake it on parchment paper to avoid making a sticky, baked-on mess.

After baking, just move them to a wire rack, just like any other cookie.

Mmmm, they taste delicious!