Oven Fried Chicken

My quest for a good fried chicken recipe is finally over.  Well, not really, because I love fried chicken and would probably be willing to try other recipes, but I don't need to actively look for one anymore. This recipe is delicious!

I found this recipe in the Comfort Food Makeovers book, and knew I had to try it.  They actually use bone in chicken breasts, but I had boneless skinless, chicken thighs, so I used those instead.  I did cut them in half, though.

The recipe also uses crushed corn flakes.  I didn't have those and didn't want to buy them just for this recipe, so I used Panko breadcrumbs.  They're crispy, delicious and I can use them in other recipes.

What's interesting about this recipe is that you only put the breadcrumbs on one side.  This way you don't have to flip over the chicken pieces, which makes the chicken really crispy.  Since the chicken is pretty thin anyway, when you eat a bite of it, you don't really notice that it's not crunchy on both sides since you get a good crunch anyway.  It's an excellent technique.  I've noticed, while making other "oven fried chicken recipes" that the chicken is not that crunchy, since one side usually ends up "wet" when it is flipped over.

From the perspective of the book, since there is bone on the other side anyway, which will not be eaten, there is really no point in putting breadcrumbs on the underside of the chicken.

The recipe also calls for using a wire rack, which would also probably help keep the underside crisp, but I didn't have one of those, so I just put mine on top of aluminum foil on a baking sheet.

Turkey Chilli

Mike loves corn bread with chili.  I don't quite understand the combination.  I think it tastes OK, but he thinks the combo is phenomenal.  He used the Jiffy mix to make cornbread.  I personally wanted to have him make his own cornbread, but according to Michele, it's cheaper to just use the mix.  Also, I would've had to buy cornmeal.  I don't know which other recipes I would've made with cornmeal, so I just bought the mix.

Mike and I both love chili.  We especially love Cincinnati Chili from Hard Times Cafe.  We bought the spices from Hard Times to make our own chili at home, and have made it a few times.  It's pretty good.  Still, I wanted to make my own chili from scratch.  That way I would know what spices are in the dish.

Here is the chili as it is still cooking.  The red kidney beans are quite evident in this dish.

Mike thought the dish turned out rather bland.  I didn't put any cayenne pepper in there since I didn't have any, and I don't like spicy food.  I also didn't put any bell peppers in there since Mike and I both don't like bell peppers.  I also didn't put any red pepper flakes in here either since I don't have those either.  Luckily I only made half the recipe.

I also used stewed tomatoes instead of crushed tomatoes since I had stewed tomatoes, and couldn't find a recipe to use them.  Most recipes which use stewed tomatoes are either chili recipes or pasta sauce recipes.  The can showed that the stewed tomatoes did not merely contain tomatoes.  It also contained other ingredients, such as bell peppers.  I was hoping that by using these tomatoes, it would add more flavor to the chili.  Apparently I failed.  I did process the stewed tomatoes in the Vitamix in to make them smaller.

The recipe does say to "season with salt and pepper to taste".  Mike finished making the recipe since it had to stew for a while.  At the end he did not add any salt and pepper.  It might have been OK if he had.  I have had to add extra salt/pepper to some of the recipes in the Comfort Food Makeovers book if it didn't seem to have enough seasoning.

We are definitely getting a lot of use out of this muffin pan!

Here is another artistic shot of the corn bread in the pan.

Just the chili.  There are beans in there, but it's hard to tell from this picture.  I think I was supposed to use a whole can of the kidney beans, but I just used however much I had leftover from the Minestrone.  I didn't want to buy a whole can just for this, and I didn't have a use for the rest of the beans leftover from the Minestrone.  I thought about adding the Garbanzo beans that were leftover from the Minestrone, but I wasn't sure they would go well together.

Minestrone

Mike loves Minestrone soup.  I don't really understand it, but it the fact that I don't like beans may have something to do with that.  Minestrone is actually pretty easy to make and is a pretty healthy soup, since it's mainly a tomato soup with vegetables in it.

I made this particular broth using the Vitamix, and just added the veggies in at the end, simmering the soup to let it heat up.  The only issue is that I had to buy Garbanzo beans for this soup, and now I have about 3/4 of a can of Garbanzo beans which I'm not sure how I will finish it.

Here is a close up of all the good stuff.  Look at all the vegetables!  The best part about this soup is it is quick to make, healthy and Mike likes to eat it!

PB Pie

Here

Angel hair and meatballs

This was really supposed to be Spaghetti and Meatballs, but I didn't have any spaghetti.  I asked Mike if he wanted Angel Hair or Fettuccine and he said "Angel Hair".  All of these long, thin pastas are the same to me anyway.

I've always wanted to try to make my own meatballs.  The ones in the package from Costco are OK, but I've never really liked them that much.  The ones that I've had at restaurants are usually really good.  The Aidells brand meatballs that are at Costco sometimes are good, but there are only so many meatballs you can eat...  Most of the meatball recipes which I found online use a mix of ground beef, pork and lamb.  I didn't really want to buy that much meat just to make meatballs, especially since I don't know how the dish will turn out.

Comfort Food Makeovers (this is starting to become one of my favorite cookbooks!) had a recipe for Spaghetti and Meatballs that uses ground turkey.  I like to use ground turkey because it's healthier, and I don't mind buying lots of it since it can use it in various dishes.  It's much healthier than ground beef, and for some reason ground pork just seems to be more expensive, though ground turkey can be expensive when not on sale.

Mike actually helped make the meatballs, but then he had to do something else, so I had to do the rest of the recipe.  It actually wasn't hard to make.  The only problem is that I need bigger pots and pans.  I didn't have a 12 inch skillet and somehow Mike made more than the 12 meatballs which the recipe said to make, so I had to cook the meatball in batches.  I'm not sure if he used more meat than the recipe called for, or if he just made them the wrong size.  The first meatball he made was definitely not 1 1/2 inches.

Also, the recipe uses 3 cans of diced tomatoes.  2 cans are pureed in a food processor so that there are no tomato chunks (I used my Vitamix of course) and one is left alone so that the sauce will have tomato chunks.  When Mike brought home his lunch container, I noticed that he had picked out all of the tomato chunks.  Sigh.  If I'd known, I would've just pureed all 3 cans instead of wasting all of those good tomatoes!

Pork Chops

Kim was able to get an excellent deal on pork chops at the grocery store.  The pork chops were buy one, get one free.  On top of that, she bought the packages of pork chops that were on Manager's Special.  Each package had a two dollar off coupon on it.  As a result, she not only was able to get one package for free, she also received four dollars off the purchase!

She wanted to make some good pork chops, but she didn't want to fry them.  She doesn't like to fry food since it's not very healthy, and the oil tends to splatter everywhere.  She was able to find a recipe for Busy Day Pork Chops, which are baked.  The instructions were easy to follow and she had all of the ingredients!  She served the chops with rice.

The pork chops did end up being a little dry.  She cooked it for the full 11 minutes on one side, because she didn't think it looked cooked enough when it came time to flip the chops over.  She only cooked the chops for 9 minutes on the other side.  She feels that if she only cooked the chops for 9 minutes on each side, it would have been much better.  The dish was still good, and she would definitely make it again.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Kim had apparently signed me up, without informing me or asking me, to make her 36 chocolate chip cookies. Which is a lot, since there is approximately a 10% tax on all cookie dough going through my Kitchen Aid mixer, but I sure enough managed to do it. To top it off, I decided to make Mike and Bruce an extra large cookie! I was honestly a little nervous about making the larger cookies, but by flattening them down, they managed to come out nice and evenly without requiring a modification to the cooking time or anything. I also decided to make cookies for our favorite Boba employees! I think that they were extremely appreciative of the cookies, which is nice, especially since I don't have to eat all the cookies myself, which is a very rough task to have to endure.

Two special-order cookies, extra large!

For recipe, I just used the recipe that came with the Kitchen Aid mixer. They come out extremely legendary, and are pretty simple to make. I am not a huge chocolate fan, so i typically go light on the chocolate chips.

-Mike

Kim: I DID tell Mike that I had signed him up to make cookies.  I gave him over a month's notice!  I told him that I promised that we would make cookies as soon as I found out that we would be making food for the homeless shelter.  I just forgot which date in May we were supposed to be going to make food.  As a result, I REMINDED Mike a few days before the cookies needed to be made.