Healthier Sesame Chicken

Chinese food just doesn’t taste as good if you cook it at home.  Plus it makes your house smell like sesame oil for awhile.  Those are the two facts that I had stuck in my head when I attempted to make a healthier version of sesame chicken that I found in Food Network Magazine.  So going into this I knew this wasn’t going to be the fried, breaded, so yummy sesame chicken that I order from New Fong Kitchen (our local Chinese takeout). 

The first bit of confusion came into play when I noticed that the recipe asked for the snow peas to be trimmed.   I had to Google trimming snow peas, having never done that before.  What I learned was there is some sort of string like bit that is holding the pea together and people said you should remove them on both sides.  There is debate about whether both sides are necessary.  I did my best but it was hard to get that little stringy bit off.  Sometimes it would break and I would just leave it half there half not there.  My thought was as long as these peas are cooked well you can probably just eat the whole thing.  Peeling both sides off seems silly because the whole thing will fall apart.  This is still a mystery to me; if anyone knows anything about trimming snow peas please give me some pointers!  

Now that the snow pea trimming hurdle had been tackled (albeit not very gracefully) lets move on to the rest of the recipe.  First step (this happens before the snow pea trimming, but is not nearly as interesting) is marinating the chicken for about 20 minutes in a mixture of sesame oil, soy sauce and honey.  

 

Once your chicken is marinated you sauté it (do it in two batches so there is enough room in the pain for the chicken to cook properly) until it’s cooked.  The recipe says until it’s browned but you can’t see the color on the chicken underneath all that brown sauce, so just cut a few pieces open to see if it’s done.  Another thing about this recipe that I didn’t like was once the chicken is cooked you transfer it to a plate and then you are supposed to wipe out the pan.  The pan was covered in sauce and super hot so I got Anthony to help me.  This part is ridiculous though.  If I were you I would just use a new pan, you shouldn’t have to wipe pans out while you are cooking.  

The next step is heating up the scallions, ginger, and garlic and then while you are doing that you are supposed to whisk up a sauce containing chicken broth, cornstarch, sugar, rice vinegar, chili paste, and soy sauce.   I read ahead in the recipe and decided to make this sauce while the chicken was cooking.  I don’t like to leave garlic unattended over heat because it tends to burn.  You add the sauce to the pan and stir until it’s thickened.  Meanwhile you can steam the snow peas as you stir the sauce for a few minutes.   Once the sauce has thickened stir in the chicken until heated. 

             

I made basmati rice to go with this because it’s the only rice besides instant that I had.  Cooking rice is the pits.  I just can’t get it right at all.  It was mushy and not very appealing.  When will I ever understand how to cook rice correctly?!  

Final Product:  

This was a flavorful (I might use a little less sesame oil next time) dish.  The rice was a disaster and the snow pea trimming was a pain in the butt, but other than those things this dish was easy to make.  Make this if you have a craving for Chinese, but don’t want all the calories. 

There has been a ton of life going on over here.  I haven’t had any time to cook, which means no material to blog about.  But…there is a challenge ahead of me.  My husband has gone off to Peru (for 20 days) and left me to fend for myself and I can’t afford to eat take-out every night.  So can I come up with meals for one person or will I just give up and eat frozen meals?  The challenge is on!

2 Easy Lazy Meals

A Facebook page?! Really?!  Who do you think you are?! This is what I was thinking while creating the Facebook page for The Hesitant Cook. I shook off my doubt and my feelings of being an egotistical maniac. Everyone has a Facebook page especially if they have something they are trying to promote or share with a ton of people. And we all know everyone has a Facebook profile. If you want people to do something you put it on Facebook. Facebook is the new way to do EVERYTHING! Okay now I truly feel better about myself and my Facebook page.



I haven’t been overly adventurous in the kitchen this week. The phrase “back to the basics” keeps popping up in my head. That’s probably due to the fact that my last few meals haven’t turned out very good. So this week I made a Curried Lentil Soup in the Crockpot and Pulled Chicken Sliders with Coleslaw. When you see what these recipes consist of you are going to think I’m being very lazy, but they actually both turned out really good! I don’t feel bad about my laziness at all. Except I was so lazy I forgot to take pictures!! I’m so sad about this.


I used a good old trusty Betty Crocker recipe for the Curried Lentil Soup. Before you tell me that this is more of a wintery dish, let me remind everyone that I live in Rochester, NY! Enough said. I love the Crockpot, it feels like a cooking vacation. For the soup, you combine a bag of lentils, water, carrots, celery, onion, garlic, 2 veggie bouillon cubes, curry powder, salt and 2 bay leaves. That’s it for the next 8-9 hours. I added 2 tablespoons of curry for a stronger flavor; you all know I love me some curry! About 5 minutes before you are going to serve this you mix in a can of diced tomatoes. Take the bay leaves out and serve the soup with ¼ cup of chopped spinach. The recipe also calls for some yogurt, but I didn’t bother with that. I’m not a fan of yogurt.


Thoughts…it tasted like lentils.  I know that's not a very enthralling description, but I didn’t feel like the curry was very prominent. Anthony thought there was nutmeg in it, which is strange since there wasn’t. Would I make this again? Of course, it’s a comforting soup and it seems pretty healthy.  I would just add more curry or maybe some other Indian spices. There were also leftovers which is always a good thing in a house where people don’t want to cook every night!


Next up, Pulled Chicken Sliders with Coleslaw. My mother-in-law actually sent me this recipe and I figured it was time to give it a try. I’m very glad I did. It’s super easy and fast. This meal is perfect for a weeknight or if you want to be lazy. All I had to buy was a rotisserie chicken (I love those!), a bag of coleslaw mix, and green onions. First, mix 1 cup of bbq sauce with 3 tablespoons of cider vinegar. Shred/Pull the chicken, I used the breasts and the thighs since those are the easier parts to shred. Add that to the bbq sauce mix. To prepare the coleslaw, combine mayo, green onion, dill pickle juice, cider vinegar, sugar, salt, and pepper. Add the coleslaw mix and toss. We toasted the slider buns (Thank You Wegmans, for the slider buns!) and heated the chicken in the microwave. Then we put the chicken on the bottom buns, topped that with the coleslaw and put the roof on (the top bun). We heated up a can of baked beans to go with it (love, love, love Bush’s Grillin’ Beans) and BOOM you have dinner!


Thoughts…super yummy and super easy! I even really liked the coleslaw and I thought I didn’t like coleslaw because of the mayo, but this one was good. We had the leftovers the next day and the sliders were still great! Everyone who eats chicken should use this recipe. I know I will be making this often!


Sorry about the lack of pictures today. I promise this won’t happen again. To make up for the lack of pictures, here is a picture of the stuffed cabbage we made a few weeks ago. Delish!

Some Meals I Thought Were Worth It

Getting into the kitchen doesn’t scare me very much anymore, but it does still annoy me. I can’t be the only one out there who just doesn’t have any desire to spend every night after work in the kitchen. Sometimes I really can’t get up the energy to cook, like Sunday night when we ordered sushi. Of course I had been in the kitchen for awhile at that point. I FINALLY bottled my beer Sunday. It’s a Nut Brown Ale and it smells really good. Lately I haven’t really cooked anything that felt blog worthy. I’m waiting for the next great idea. In the meantime I did manage to cook three meals that I would like to share with everyone.

The first meal is Arroz Con Pollo (Rice with Chicken). Awhile ago we watched Throwdown with Bobby Flay featuring Arroz Con Pollo and we both really wanted it. I finally decided to make it and I figured why not use the recipe that Bobby Flay used on this show, Adobo Seasoned Chicken and Rice. It looked tasty on the show, but sadly he didn’t win. I had to cut the recipe a lot, but in the end it worked out quite well. Season the chicken and then sauté the chicken until both sides are browned. Put the chicken in another pan, cover and let it cook through over medium heat. Meanwhile you cook the onions and peppers until they are tender, and add tomato and garlic and cook for another minute. Next up the rice has to cook with chicken broth and salt and pepper for about 10 minutes, then add the peas and cook for another 10 minutes. To finish it off you can stir in green olives, cilantro (parsley for us), oregano, and lime juice.

Final Product:

It was a nice meal, very filling. I just used chicken thighs, bone in and with skin, which gives the meat more flavor. I was scared that I would over season the chicken and I ended up not seasoning it enough, so I will season the thighs a bit more next time. Both of us really enjoyed this and we will be having this again soon. I loved the salt of the olives in the rice. Yum!

The next recipe was for an Italian meatloaf. This recipe was created by Giada de Laurentiis, Turkey Meatloaf with Feta and Sun-Dried Tomatoes. I absolutely loved this! It was the moistest meatloaf I have had in a long time. Everyone should try this recipe! I’m not going to bore you with the details of how to make it since I’ve previously blogged about making meat loaf before, just get these ingredients and cook! Yes, I'm talking to you! Do it.

Final Product:
The final meal I’m going to share with you today is Stewed White Beans with Spinach and Bacon. I know it doesn’t sound very appealing. I’ve been on a bit of a health kick lately and I love to try any recipes with beans as they are so good for all of us. Cook up some bacon, I used 5 slices chopped and I think that was enough, the recipe calls for 8 that might be overkill. Keep two tablespoons of the bacon grease in the pan and add the potatoes and cook them until brown. Add the onion and cook until soft. Next the beans, chicken broth, and lemon juice is added and you let that sit until almost all the liquid is gone. Stir in the spinach and cook for about a minute. Add bacon on top and some scallions and parmesan cheese. And YUM!! It really was good. I swear to it. The bacon helped give it a little more flavor then it would have had without it, so if you are going meatless I would add some more spices or some hot sauce to this. This is also super easy and perfect for a weeknight meal.

Final Product:

Overall I’ve been having some pretty good luck with my cooking lately. Or maybe I really am learning. (I said MAYBE.) I’m looking around to try some new things that I can share with everyone. I finally have come up with one idea. I’m going to have another battle of the meatless vs. meatfull. This battle will be between a vegetable meatloaf and a regular old meatloaf. I might have to cook the meaty meatloaf with some sort of addition, because I can’t see it even coming close to this veggie meatloaf recipe that I found. So if you have any spectacular meatfull meatloaf recipes that you want to see pitted against the meatless meatloaf send them my way. (Comment below and I'll send you my email address)

Another item I need to discuss with everyone. MY MOM DID NOT USE MANWICH. I repeat my mom has never used Manwich, she was a bit offended that I even considered that possibility. So I asked her for the recipe for the Sloopy Joe’s she used to cook up when I was little and of course she no longer has it. She did tell me the secret ingredient might have been A1 sauce. A1 sauce? I was a bit dumbfounded as I’ve NEVER (apparently to my knowledge) liked A1 sauce! The quest is on to find a Sloppy Joe recipe that includes A1 sauce and is still a little sweet. Once I have found the right recipe I will be cooking up some more Sloppy Joe’s and hopefully finding a match for what my taste buds are craving.

Chicken Tikka Masala and Minestrone Soup...Not on the Same Day!

I'm positive I've mentioned my love of Indian food numerous times now. Nothing I make at home ever tastes as good as what I get here. Of course I can't always afford to eat out every time I'm craving some Indian flavors. Chicken Tikka Masala is one of the ways that I appease my craving. It's a simple dish to make and if you are not sure about Indian food this is probably one of the more tame dishes to try.

I'm getting much better when prepping my food. I've found a comfortable way to chop onions and you will need one onion chopped for this recipe. For the rest of the prep you will need to crush 1 clove of garlic, grate 2 teaspoons of ginger, and cut 1 1/4 lbs of chicken breast into 1 inch chunks. Nothing too difficult or time consuming.

Your first cooking step is to get your basmati rice started. You have to use basmati rice when making Indian food it's so much better then the normal white rice. If you don't have a cinnamon stick to add to the water, you can add some ground cinnamon like we did this night. Heat oil in a skillet and add the onion and cook for about 6 minutes. Next add the ginger, garlic, and curry paste (I also added a little Tikka Masala Paste too; not necessary I just wanted to finish the jar), cook for 3 minutes. Add the chicken, some salt, and black pepper and cook until chicken in not pink on the outside. Then add 1 can of crushed tomatoes, cover the skillet and cook for 5-6 minutes more. Once the chicken is cooked uncover the skillet and stir in 1/2 cup of half-and-half and the cilantro if you can eat it. That's it. Simple, easy, tasty and cheaper then take out!

Tasty, tasty!! We enjoy this dish a lot. I recommend it to any of you!

On to the Minestrone Soup. I'm constantly looking for ways to exclude meat from our diet. It much healthier to eat meatless a few times a week. I'm not saying you should cut out meat from your diet every day, but a couple times a week is definitely heart healthy! Soup is also something I'm a big believer in making because it's normally quite easy to make and you usually have leftovers for lunch the next day.

This soup was great. I'm really glad I found this recipe in Food Network Magazine. So as not to bore you with all the details of how to make this recipe I'll just let you know what's in it. The main ingredients are onion, garlic, celery, carrot, green beans, diced tomatoes, crushed tomatoes, kidney beans, elbow pasta, and parmesan cheese. There are a few other basic ingredients, but if you like all of the items I just listed you will like this soup. Now start cooking! This will be great leftover! Next time I make it I'm going to double the recipe and freeze what we don't eat. Super yummy and basically healthy. I love soup! Have I told you guys that yet! Delicious!

Final Product:

My next two posts will be the beer brewing process and the results of the tuna noodle casserole. Let's just say I didn't hate it.

I Did Cook, I Have Proof!

Finally I have a chance to let you know how my week of cooking has been going. I cooked dinner Monday (with help from Anthony) and Tuesday. Wednesday night I had a headache and was not in the mood to cook so we ordered take-out sushi. Call me crazy, but I had a feeling I wouldn’t be cooking every single night this week. Turns out I also won’t be cooking dinner Friday since Anthony is working that night. The two meals that were cooked this week turned out to be pretty bland.

Monday night I decided to make Anthony’s father’s pasta e fagiloi. The recipe we had for it didn’t seem very complete so we improvised parts of it. Anthony seemed interested in helping me make this, I think partly because the recipe wasn’t complete and partly because it’s his father’s recipe. We sautéed chopped onion, celery (with the celery leaves), and garlic. Then we added chicken broth about 2 cups and brought it to a boil and added a cup of ditalini pasta. You have to keep stirring it because the pasta will stick otherwise. Once the pasta is cooked you add cannellini beans. Let them heat through and then stir in some grated parmesan, salt, and pepper. That’s it; it’s a very simple easy and delicious recipe. Ours turned out a bit bland. It needed more salt and pepper. Everything always tastes better when someone else cooks it, so hopefully next time when his parents visit his dad can make some!

Final Product:

Tuesday night I was supposed to make Chicken Vindaloo. I don’t have all the spices that you need to make an Indian recipe from scratch so normally I will buy the already made pastes that you can buy at Wegmans. They did not have the Vindaloo paste when I went shopping this weekend. Instead I bought a Hot Curry Paste. Any Vindaloo dish I have had has been really spicy and I wanted to get something that would compare to that. So I made the Hot Curry Chicken the same way I make Chicken Vindaloo. I sautéed a cup of chopped onion, then added 1 pound of chopped chicken breast and cooked it until it was white. Then I added 3 medium cubed red potatoes, 4 tablespoons of the Hot Curry Paste, and enough water so that everything was almost covered (that’s what the recipe says to do) and simmered it for about 20 minutes until the potatoes were tender. The end result was pretty watery, I’m not sure if it’s supposed to be. I served it over Basmati Rice and the rice just sucked up all the sauce, the chicken was also a bit over cooked. It just wasn’t Chicken Vindaloo and we found it a little bit bland (that’s becoming a theme with my cooking). A little odd that it was bland considering I put 4 tablespoons of the curry paste in. Guess I won’t be making that again, unless I can find the Vindaloo paste or can make it from scratch. I also served it with Naan Bread and Daal (Indian Lentils). The already cooked lentils was a great idea, they were nice and spicy. If you mixed them into the chicken and rice you got some more flavor out of the meal.

Final Product:

Chicken, Biscuits, and Gravy Casserole

I stopped numbering my days. It didn’t really make sense anymore since I’ve been cooking some days and then have 3-4 days of no cooking. I’m up to 47 posts though which I found pretty impressive. I’ve been eating out and not cooking this last week. We went to Jasmine’s Asian Fusion one night. They have food from various Asian area’s of the world. I had a $25 gift certificate from Restaurants .com. I love this site. It’s really good when you can get the gift certificates at 80-90% off. I bought 3 more the other day because they we 90% off. Give it a try. It’s pretty cool.

We had the fresh spring rolls to start off with. Unfortunately in the description it didn’t say that they had cilantro in them. Anthony ate one and discovered that and I had to eat the rest. Luckily it also came with a carrot salad, so he ate that. Then we both ordered the Red Curry Chicken with Jasmine and Sticky Rice. Very good and pretty darn spicy! We also ordered the Black Rice Pudding. It had a good texture and a delicious coconut flavor. I love coconut! You should definitely give Restaurants.com a try, it’s made me try different places and most of them we have really liked.

I wanted to make something easy Sunday after the Hilton Apple Festival. We had some amazing apple crisp, apple sausage and hot mulled apple cider at the festival.for lunch and then had pumpkin custard from Abbot’s for dessert. Yum. It was a brisk Fall day so I thought a casserole would be perfect for dinner. So Chicken, Biscuits ‘n’ Gravy Casserole was on the menu. This is from a really old issue of Everyday with Rachel Ray. It’s a very simple recipe. The thing I love about this is you use a rotisserie chicken. I love rotisserie chickens from Wegmans. They make the car smell so amazing! I get hungry just being around rotisserie chicken.

You pull the chicken off the bone and shred it either with a knife or your fingers. In a skillet you melt some butter and add mushrooms, onion, and celery. Cook until the mushrooms are browned; lower the heat, add flour and cook for a minute.

Then stir in the chicken broth, bring it to a simmer and cook until thickened. Next you add some milk and simmer for another minute. You remove it from the heat and finish off the gravy with some lemon juice, salt, and pepper. Pour the gravy over the chicken, which should be in a butter greased casserole dish.

Then you make some garlic butter for the biscuits. Your biscuits consist of baking mix (Bisquick), milk, and shredded cheddar cheese. Drop tablespoonfuls of the mixture on top of the casserole and brush them with the garlic butter. Put the casserole in the oven at 425 degrees and bake for about 25 minutes. You can brush the biscuits with the garlic butter again about halfway though.

Final Product:

Anthony swears this came out differently than it has in the past. He thought it should have been made in a small dish with less biscuits. I think he is thinking of a different casserole. It tasted good regardless and it’s one of those quick and easy meals that everyone likes to make! Plus it’s comfort food, which makes everyone happy and comforted.

Next up is Salmon Cakes and boy was I in for a shock!!

Braised Chicken with Coconut Milk and Curry

Day 20-Something really is wrong with me, somebody should research me. Cooking and I are just not meshing. The basics are not even possible for me. I should just stick to easy recipes with few ingredients. Once I do those well for awhile, I should then move on to more complicated recipes. After last night I’ve completely lost all confidence in myself. If I felt it was okay to just give up and move on I would, but I don’t feel comfortable giving up. Being someone who gets bored easily I give up more often then not. The minute a task gets just a bit too hard and I can’t really grasp the concept, I quit.

Now this doesn’t apply to my entire life, just to hobbies that I’ve tried out. A perfect example is knitting. I knitted a few scarves and could never master finishing them off. Someone else always had to do it for me. Since it seemed impossible, I gave up on it. Last year I decided to start a walking/jogging/running program, it worked out for a couple of weeks, but then my knees started hurting and I couldn’t run for long, so I quit. When the going gets tough, I get out. It’s not that I don’t like to work at things, I really do. But if I believe I just can’t quite reach the skill level to really do something well, then what’s the point of continuing with it. Folks, my brain is starting to feel this way about cooking.

Last night started off badly. I left work and got caught behind an accident and didn’t get home until an hour later. (My drive is normally about 10-15 minutes.) So I was in a great mood once I got home. Then I was going to cook something completely different, until I realized that one of my ingredients had gone bad. So that was out. Switching my brain over to another recipe is not the easiest thing for me. I get so focused on what I was supposed to cook, that what I end up cooking suffers for it.

Finally I decided to make Braised Chicken with Coconut Milk and Curry and serve it with Spinach Rice. I found this recipe in Reader’s Digest and the picture of the chicken with the rice looked really appetizing. I had to do some digging to find the rice recipe since it wasn’t included in the magazine. The one good thing about this recipe is I discovered a new ingredient I’ve never used it before, Sofrito. The taste was good, kind of like a tomato sauce. So I’m assuming that if you want the flavors of onion, garlic, pepper and tomato in a Latin style dish you can add this. I bet it would be a good addition to ground beef for tacos. I could use it in place of the salsa I normally mix my beef with.

The chicken dish was actually fairly easy to make. It calls for a whole chicken broken down, but obviously I wasn’t going to do that, so I bought chicken thighs. Everything else went really well, I’m not going to bother boring you with the details of how to put it all together (use the link on to the right of this post to see the recipe). The chicken smells awesome while it’s cooking. It has my favorite ingredients of coconut milk and curry, which is one of the reasons I choose to make it. Although it reminds me a bit of an Indian dish, it’s labeled as a classic Latin dish. So while my chicken was becoming tender and filled with flavor I moved onto the rice.

This recipe was a tough one for me. There were parts of it that just didn’t make any sense to me. You start the dish by heating up a ¼ cup of canola oil in a pan. Then you add long grain white rice and salt and coat the rice in the oil. Once the rice looks opaque you: “add enough cold water to cover the rice by the width of 2 fingers (about 1-inch). Bring to a rapid boil, and boil-without stirring!-until the water level reaches the level of the rice. Stir the rice once and reduce the heat to low. Cover and cook 20 minutes.” This is where things went very wrong. I didn’t understand the 2 fingers equal an inch logic. So I poured in what I thought was an inch of water. Then I waited until the water looked like it had reached rice level, though I’m still not completely clear on what that means. Next I stirred it and threw the cover on. 20 minutes later, the rice wasn’t cooked at all! AT ALL!! I have no idea what really went wrong. All I know is that I wasted 4 cups of rice!! I made 4 cups in the hopes of bringing the leftovers to work. HA! I did manage to cook the spinach correctly so I still had that to work with. So Anthony suggested cooking up some instant rice and throwing the spinach in that with olive oil and butter. So I did and it worked out fine.

Final Product:

Just because this dinner was saved in the end, does not mean I am happy about it. I’m super annoyed about the rice. Did I not use enough water? Well, who would know with the crazy finger instructions?! Grrr Argh! The chicken was tasty. I would totally make it again, but forget about that rice. I would rather just cook up some basmati rice with this chicken dish. I would still add the spinach to the rice, because that was a nice addition. Anthony really liked this meal even with the instant rice and asked me why I don't make this more often. That's a good sign. Sorry there are not more pictures, but these two things kept me pretty busy and I couldn’t be bothered with the camera.

I’m supposed to be cooking again tonight, but I might retire the duties to Anthony. I feel so defeated. I need to work my way back into the cooking life slowly. Oh and here is a picture of the Black Bean Lasagna from the other night. It was not all the amazing and I think I'll just stick to the classic lasagna that I make well.

Bacon Wrapped Chicken

Day 19-Did my kitchen depression carry on? Yes and no. I did want to get into the kitchen and cook last night, but only because I wanted to get it over with. The passion is gone people, at least for this week. Being the amazing person I am, I carried on with cooking as planned. No take out tonight! I had a feeling this meal was actually going to taste pretty good so that was the goal that I kept looking towards in order to get through the process.

I wanted to make something with bacon in it this week to honor Anthony, my bacon fanatic husband. I came across a recipe for Bacon Wrapped Chicken on Taste of Home. This is a pretty fattening recipe so if you are looking for something dainty and healthy check out my other posts. Last night I still really didn’t have a side dish in mind for this chicken. I bought some zucchini at the store on Sunday, so I needed to do something with that. I looked through the cupboards and found a partially used box of plain couscous. Perfect! Since I was flying by the seat of my pants with this one, I asked Anthony what I should add to zucchini sautéed in olive oil. He said it would probably only need some onion sautéed with it. Onion! My mortal enemy. Why do we always need to use it?! But alas I decided that would be the best option.

Did I mention this recipe is quick? It’s great for a weeknight dinner. So I started getting the chicken ready. I pounded the chicken out until it was pretty thin. Then I took the chive and onion cream cheese and spread it onto each chicken breast. I think I went a little overboard and could probably use a little less cream cheese next time. Then for whatever reason the recipe says to put a few dabs of butter on top of the cream cheese, so I did. Anyone know what that would be for?? I’m not sure it’s necessary, since I can’t figure out what the butter’s purpose is. Don’t forget some salt after you add the butter. Once that is finished, you roll the chicken breasts and wrap one piece of bacon around each one. Place the chicken breasts seam-side down on a greased baking pan. Pop them in the oven at 400 degrees for 35 minutes.

After the chicken was in the oven I chopped up the zucchini and onion. Once the chicken had been cooking for a bit I started sautéing the zucchini and onion in olive oil. But as is typical with my brain it must have shut down and I put the zucchini and onions in the pan at the same time. Oops! Not a huge ordeal, the onion just didn’t cook the way I really wanted it to. I added some salt and pepper to the vegetables. Once the veggies were nicely sautéed I started the couscous. I love couscous, it cooks so fast! Yay!

Now the chicken is ready to be put under the broiler for 5 minutes. I had to go to the bathroom at this point in the process, so I left the kitchen for a few seconds. Next thing I know the smoke detector is going off. I tell Anthony to deal with it since I was in the bathroom. He comes into the kitchen and checks the chicken and says he saw a fire in the oven. So he shut the oven off and apparently everything was all better. I did notice that there was bacon grease splattered on the oven door, but I never saw a fire just a little smoke inside the oven. If only one person see's the fire, then the fire doesn't exist. Right?

The couscous was mixed into the zucchini and onion mixture, with a tablespoon of olive oil. Looking good, if I do say so myself. The chicken smelled and looked pretty good too. I’m not a good chicken cooker. Chicken makes me nervous, since I’ve gotten food poisoning twice from chicken. Never any cooked at home though, so that makes me feel a bit better about the situation. Plus this chicken was on “fire” so it must be done!

Final Product:

All of this tasted good to me! No complaints. I think I could have done without the extra grease sitting under the chicken. A broiler pan might be the better pan to use next time. When eating the chicken with each bite you get some of the cream cheese goodness and the bacon flavor. Anthony added some parmesan cheese to the top of the couscous and it was the perfect addition. Yum! As far as I know Anthony also liked this meal, but since I’m not sure if he is telling me the truth I’m suspicious!

Totals: 10 minutes prep, 40 minutes cooking time, 1 baking pan.

Next up: Grilled Salmon Bacon and Feta Packets with Kale Chips