Tuscan Chicken...

As some of you know I like to plan my meals out for the entire month. It seems crazy and daunting but honestly it is easy, I promise. One of these days I will share how I do this. Planning for the whole month seemed ridiculous at first but it honestly makes my life easier. And this way, in the morning I can look and see what we're having that night and 

1. know when I need to start dinner by and 

2. what, if anything, needs to be taken out of the freezer to thaw out during the day
3. helps me plan and make my list for the grocery shopping (keeps our grocery bill to somewhere in the $40-$50 range each week)

Monday night was originally "Tuscan Chicken" night but with all of the leftovers from Aaron's birthday soiree I decided to bump it to Tuesday. The plan is a convenience tool... and by no means set in stone! :o) So last night was just going to be Tuscan Chicken night but it also turned into Tuscan Pork Chop night too. My mom was over in my end of the county at my sister's softball game and was going to stop by afterward (about the time Aaron would be home and we'd be having dinner). Chicken and my mom have a very adverse relationship...so I decided to do a couple pork chops for her and my sister. 

Here is the recipe: 

It is from 

Tuscan Chicken

1.5 lbs chicken breast, cut into quarters

1/2 cup of milk

1/4 c flour

1 1/2 tsp seasoning salt

1 tsp oregano

1/2 tsp of black pepper

1 Tbsp butter, melted

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Prepare baking pan, spray with nonstick spray.

2. Mix flour and seasonings together in a Ziploc bag. 

3. Moisten chicken with the milk and then toss in the Ziploc bag to cover with flour mixture.

4. Bake in prepared dish for 15-20 min.

Alterations: 

Obviously I did both chicken and pork chops, like I said before. I did not cut the chicken or the pork chops up...I just wanted to leave them whole. I also sort of doubled the recipe just because I was doing more than 1.5 lbs of chicken. We were out of oregano...(I KNOW! weird, I've never been OUT of oregano). I used Italian Seasoning instead. I also cooked them at a lower temperature just so they were not done too fast. 

We had pasta with a pesto sauce and a small salad with the Tuscan Chicken and overall I was pretty pleased with the meal. All three of us, Aaron, my mom and I, decided that "Tuscan Chicken" tasted very close to "Shake and Bake". 

One more successful dinner down :o)

Tonight...a NEW breakfast casserole recipe...courtesy of the same cookbook! 

My attempt at "Going Green"

Coffee anyone?

So, remember this picture from a few days ago??

I recently saw a pattern for a little cozy fabric wrap for around a coffee cup and it was in fabric that was way cute!

And then I thought to myself, well I could do that...its just a matter of figuring out how much fabric to use to wrap around the cup. Then I had the brilliant idea--use the cardboard ones they give you as a pattern/template. The pattern I saw looked like they used a piece of Velcro to hold it together...I wanted a sort of "hook" so I used a hair tie and a button (and I also have this odd distaste for Velcro, it just looks cheap to me and sometimes gunk and little fuzzies get stuck in it and it ends up looking gross--sorry for that rant). I also didn't use cotton batting like the pattern recommended, but some leftover quilt batting I had.


And so all of that fabric above is for making these:

 

What do you think? :o)

what started out as Veggie Pizza...

and then turned into BBQ chicken pizza with some veggies...only to then become chicken pizza sans the BBQ

I had originally planned to make a regular pizza with just veggies, no meat. But if you know my husband you can guess why it is no longer just a veggie pizza...not that he doesn't like veggie pizza, he just would rather have some sort of meat on it. This is fine...I had time to cook some chicken up, and I THOUGHT we had enough BBQ sauce (rather than pizza sauce), but no dice, so I'm now calling it Veggie Chicken Pizza. :o)

I use the whole wheat crust they have at Wegmans (my happy place) and this time, trying to be frugal and all, I bought a bag of frozen onions, red peppers, green peppers, and yellow peppers--the fresh peppers are just far too expensive right now. Then I spread the pizza sauce on the crust, threw the shredded chicken on \, some veggies, some mozzarella cheese, some more veggies (so they crisp up in the oven) and Voila!

Here she is pre-quality time with the oven...

And here she is after...yummo

I cut out some more pieces of my new project while the pizza was cooking...but tonight is the one night I spend the evening watching TV...Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice--hopefully they're not reruns!

not so grilled hamburgers...

We were supposed to have hamburgers on the grill last night...and we did end up having hamburgers just not from the grill. I knew we were out of propane for the grill so on my way home I stopped at Walmart to get a new tank. Now, our little Weber "Baby Q" will only take the tall, blue, used for blow torches propane tank...it will not take the little squatty Coleman type, which was unfortunate last night because yes, Walmart was out.  :(
The nice older gentleman was very grandfather-ly and was trying to help me out by giving me a bunch of placed I could go to get one...but this was after work, after I had already spent time in Walmart getting a few other things I needed...so I did not want to go anywhere else but home. So... Mr. George Foreman to the rescue. It seems sort of silly to put a "recipe" because anyone can mush some hamburger into a patty and grill it...but here is what I mixed in with the burger:  garlic powder, onion salt, Worcestershire sauce, parmesan cheese, and a small amount of breadcrumbs. We had them on whole wheat rolls with salad and corn. And they were YUMMY! :)

Tonight I'm flyin solo for dinner...Aaron will be at work sort of late tonight so I will most likely have some gourmet eggs and toast since Wednesdays are typically "Breakfast Night". Since this type of dinner will take no time at all it will give me time to get back to my current "new projects" that I am working on...here is a glimpse of the fun fabric I am using.