dinner ideas

I made the most amazing chicken parmesan the other night! I mean, it was ah-may-zing and I'm the girl that never thinks to make chicken parmesan. I won't even order it in a restaurant. Breaded, fried chicken, on top of pasta, smothered in cheese...gah! It's never a meal I would even consider eating. But I took out two chicken breasts in the morning and realized I didn't know what to do with them. I didn't feel like making baked chicken fingers (my usual go-to) and I didn't feel like doing souvlaki. I had no ideas (what else is new lately?). The only other thought I had was chicken parmesan, so I went looking for an easy (marginally healthy) recipe.

I found it on the Food Network, and it is supposed to be a healthier version of chicken parmesan. There's no frying involved! Perfect! I halved the recipe for two chicken breasts because four would have been overkill. I also used whole wheat flour instead of all purpose; I used light cheddar cheese cuz wouldn't you know it, we didn't have any mozzarella; and I used about 3/4 of a jar of homemade tomato sauce (also easy and fantastic). You definitely can't tell this is [slightly] healthier!

So anyway, back to our fantastic this'll-go-down-in-history meal, the chicken breasts were entirely too large for us -- and by 'us' I mean Idle Husband (but I always give him the biggest portion). So there was just a tiny bit leftover for a sandwich in his lunch (which he says was pretty delicious). Unfortunately, like all super good things, I don't have a picture of it. That's cool, though, cuz you can pretty much imagine how that'd turn out. Just a weird breaded something smothered in tomato sauce. It's not very photogenic. Next time, I'm definitely going to use one chicken breast and slice it in half for both of us, but that's the only other modification the recipe needs.

Here are some other great meals we had last week:

I've had a craving for carrot soup for a while. Well, actually, ever since I realized my carrots were slowly getting soft and wrinkly in the fridge. No one needs to know! Blend them into a soup. I made my own chicken stock which worked out to maybe 7 1/2 - 8 cups of stock. To that I added an onion, 4 cloves of garlic, about 10 carrots, and some seasonings (I go with the usual ones: salt, pepper, oregano, some more garlic and onion powder, veggie spice, nutmeg, and I added some pepper flakes this time -- actually I have some rock salt mixed with pepper flakes, so I just dumped some of that in). Then all you have to do is cook until the carrots and onions are fork tender, blend it, and you're done! It was super good! I also whipped up some herbed cornbread to go with it. I love the texture of cornbread, and it's got that slightly sweet flavour which goes really nicely with carrot  soup (which is also good with a little honey drizzled in).

We finally cleaned the grill and fired it up! I'm excited to have more BBQ'd meals (mostly to keep the house cooler), but we totally forgot how to cook on that stupid thing. Everything looks really good here, but when we cut into it, the meat was too bloody for our tastes and the corn wasn't quite done (raw corn is not good in case you're wondering). We need more grill practice, so I'm going to try to work all our weekend meals around it. Wish us luck! (Actually, Idle Husband needs the luck. I think it's completely unsafe, and I'm even more convinced of this fact after the time IH scorched his eyebrow and half his beard turning the damn thing on. Therefore, I've decided I don't do BBQing.)