Packet Chicken

Now this was good.

I was paging through a cookbook and happened to stumble across this recipe for chicken. It takes about 15 minutes of prep time, an hour to cook and the result was very tasty.

Start with a cookie sheet and line it with foil. Then pour 1/4 cup of barbecue sauce in a pile. On top of the sauce, place two chicken breasts. Roll them around in the sauce so each side is covered. The original recipe called for 4 chicken breasts in 1/4 cup of sauce. That's not enough sauce. You want sauce on all the breasts and just looking at 1/4 cup told me 4 breasts weren't going to get enough. Stick with 2 or double the amount of sauce if you're cooking four.

Peel and slice one potato and place on top of the chicken. Top that with a sliced pepper. The recipe called for a red pepper but I happen to have orange on hand. This would be excellent with all four colors of peppers in it.

Cover the chicken and vegetables with another 1/4 cup of barbecue sauce. Rip off another sheet of aluminum foil and cover this. Fold in the sides to make it tight. You've now got a packet that looks sort of like this. If you're really good, you can make it square. Mine is just an amorphous blob.

Bake it in a 350 oven for an hour. The recipe says 50 minutes and then check the chicken to see if it's done. As the steam escapes when you open this and then, if the chicken isn't done, it has to form steam all over again to finish cooking, I left the thing in the oven for an hour. Remove and open. Be careful. As I said, there's steam inside this packet or there should be if you've sealed it properly. Steam can burn you if you aren't careful.

Viola.

This was so good.

What I would do differently next time is to add spices to the chicken. The whole point of the cookbook I was looking through was to take everyday favorites and reduce their calories, sodium and fat. That is done with this recipe but the chicken still came out not as flavorful as I like. It would definitely benefit from the addition of garlic. If you like onions, I could see adding onions to this. Varying the flavor of the barbecue sauce would produce other tastes. The one hour cooking time was just perfect and keeping the packet completely sealed resulted in moist chicken. This recipe is not unlike my favorite hobo suppers, which are a cooked hamburger, potatoes, carrots, corn and peas wrapped in a foil packet.

I liked this. Quick, simple and, best of all, there was no mess to clean up. I put the second breast in a container for lunch the next day, balled up the foil and tossed it. I had just gotten the kitchen cleaned up from an earlier multi-step meal so a whole supper with minimal dishes makes me doubly happy.

Enjoy.

Beverage:  water

Deb

What to Do When the Power Goes Out Again

I should have known things were going to be kind of dicey tonight. I left work and headed west to the pharmacy to get my Meloxicam. Half-way between the office and the pharmacy, traffic came to a complete halt. There was no visible accident and the stoplight I could see was working. That meant the blockage or whatever it was, was farther west, out of my sight. It wasn't until I got into Wheaton that the reason for traffic crawling was apparent. The stop light 5 blocks south of my house was not working. Looking at the businesses on that corner, they were all dark and people living in an apartment complex on the corner were sitting on their stoops, fanning themselves. Uh oh.

Continuing westward, I got to the pharmacy only to be greeted by a handmade sign, "Closed. No Power. Sorry." That means in the morning, I will have to dash over to the pharmacy to get my pills. I came home, did a load of wash and started hobo suppers in the oven. They'd cooked about 10 minutes and the lights flickered. Then they dimmed and then they went out. (Sigh) Ironically, I read in Monday's paper where the last two businesses without power from last week's storm had their power restored on Sunday evening. Com Ed was saying 100% restoration.

I opened the windows to let what little breeze there was flow through the house. It's warm but not broiling hot in the house. I had cut up some strawberries for supper so I ate them and just left the hobo suppers in the oven, figuring they would continue to cook even if the oven wasn't on. (The potatoes didn't get completely cooked and will have to be nuked tomorrow when I take one for lunch.)

I read the papers and scratched some ears, hung up a load of wash, but then, what to do? I think I shall start on my Christmas project. Jessie might remember this material. She was buying material to make a throw for a friend for Christmas and this was in the bin to be reshelved. I was immediately drawn to it. I knew  exactly what I could do with it. So I got a couple of yards. It's sat in the box of cloth for a couple years now. It's time to turn it into my Christmas project.

So, I spent two hours cutting. The power came back on at 8:15, two hours after it had gone off. I finished cutting what I was working on. Now I have a stack of squares. These are ready for the next step. It's supposed to be in the 90's this weekend. I have no plans to go anywhere. I can work on Step 2.

Beverage:  water

Deb

Sunday baking

April and Perry are coming this weekend! I think it's been a year since we were last together. Perry was getting some training and was in Downers Grove and we got together with he and his friend, Richard, for food and games.

April has a convention in Lincolnshire and Perry gets to tag along.

On Saturday, Jon, April, Perry, Richard and his wife, Lifcha, will come to my house for games and food or food and games or food and food. I'm excited. I haven't had a reason to cook more than tuna melts. The menu is slated to be hobo suppers, raspberry applesauce salad, cole slaw, potato salad, chips and warm blueberry cobbler with vanilla ice cream. We'll have soda and Perry is bringing bottles of his homemade mead.

I got started on Sunday with chocolate chip orange muffins. I had a bag of mini chocolate chips. The recipe was an old one I had never made and, as I really need a grocery visit, one for which I had all the ingredients on hand. They are good but they need more orange for my tastes.

I also made Fresh Strawberry Muffins. This recipe is, essentially, coarsely chopped strawberries held together with batter. There is a hint of nutmeg in them which makes them so good.

April is allergic to chocolate so I think, once I finish washing the muffin tins tonight, I'll make some Cinnamon Topped Muffins for Saturday.

I love muffins. I love to have lots in the freezer. They make excellent breakfasts and two is plenty to have with your morning juice or milk. And they freeze so well.

Now if someone would answer me this, why is it that when I make muffins, I always get more than the recipe says it makes? I stir just until moistened. The batter is still lumpy. Yet, invariably, the amount of muffin batter can be 1/2 to 2 times greater than what the recipe says it makes. The chocolate chip recipe said it made 18. I got 30. The strawberry one made the dozen listed only because I made sure the cups were filled to the brink.

Technically, I'm not complaining because it means I have more muffins than expressed in the recipe. It's just that on days when I go on a muffin baking binge, I run out of muffin tins before I run out of batter.

MMMMMMMMMMMM. I think couple of warmed muffins with butter would be good tonight.

Beverage: Pepsi

Deb