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

Stitching When All Else Fails

It wasn't the most pleasant of weekends. I don't know what it was but I just didn't feel right all weekend. I was tired. I was uncomfortable. My eyes were very dry and itchy and quite red.at night, I had cramps in my shins which then migrated to my feet. And, I couldn't sleep, at least not at the usual time. I don't know why all of this happened over the weekend, but it did.

The best thing to do, when I have no idea when I'm going to fall asleep, is to cross-stitch. Friday night, after work, I loaded up the sink to wash some of the dishes and plopped down in the recliner to stitch while they were soaking. At batch number three, I came back to this.

This is where I sit. The light is to the upper right, off camera. The ottoman, where I store the unfinished project, the package with the floss, the chart and my current cup of tea is also to the right. I didn't get much done on Friday night as I couldn't bear to move her. Mija 1; Deb 0.

Saturday was way more productive. I got up at the usual time, had breakfast and decided to stitch for a couple hours while I did some wash.

Orange is now a part of the design. I started feeling "funky" about noon so I took a nap and wound up sleeping for 3 hours. I'm hoping this is not a side effect of the metholtrexate. My dosage has been upped to 6 pills a week now and I take them all on Friday. I felt find on Friday but just went downhill all day on Saturday. By the time it was time for bed, I couldn't sleep. I should know better than a long nap in the middle of the day. It will screw with what sleep schedule you have.

When tossing and turning didn't work, I got up at 1 a.m., sat in the recliner and stitched. At 4 a.m., I was sufficiently tired enough that I just grabbed a blanket and slept in the recliner. I still wasn't feeling well. I got up, took my morning meds and went back to sleep. I finally got up at 1 p.m., which meant that Sunday night was another fiasco of trying to get to sleep and stay there. But, the wee hours were great for stitching.

I've figured out how to stitch two-handed, too, which makes this go a bit faster. The hoop, which is large, rests on my chest. I stick the needle into the fabric with my left hand and pull it through with my right. The hard part is making sure I'm on the right row with the right color.

It might look like something to you if you squint.

Beverage:  Root beer

Deb

Elebenty Bill-yum Calories

One of the best parts of having to be gone all day on a job is the opportunity to get lunch and expense it. There are a great number of places to eat in the Mishawaka/South Bend, Indiana area. I considered, very carefully, what it was that I wanted and, I wanted bacon cheese fries from Steak 'n Shake.

I don't want to know the calorie or fat content of this meal. Don't bother me with that. Some days, what you want to eat, what you crave, just blows any kind of calorie restriction out of the water. I got a single bacon cheeseburger and small order of bacon cheese fries. I knew, walking into SnS, I was going to be happy.

And then, I saw it. The shake came out right around Valentine's Day. I haven't eaten at SnS since, I think early January, so I was unaware of this.

Chocolate fudge brownie shake. I still had a bit on the gift card from April and Perry so the shake was free. It was every bit as good as it sounds, every bit. Chocolate ice cream with brownie bits. Heaven.

If I was doing a legitimate diet, I'd have to run to Denver and back to work this off. But, I have satisfied the SnS and the bacon cheese fries cravings. Now, the shake craving is going to be harder. I take my duty to find and test out appealing foodstuffs so you don't have to, seriously. Under my shake is their other new one, Nutter Butter. The only good thing is that I have to drive to get to an SnS. It's not worth it to drive just for the shake. That's what will save me.

If you find yourself near a Steak 'n Shake, have a chocolate fudge brownie shake. Oh my. It's almost better than...well...yeah.

Beverage:  Lady Gray tea

Deb

Scents of Time

The survey featuring the free Micheal Kors perfume is over. I get to keep the small bottle I received. I marked it an 8 out of 10. The biggest fault is that bottle design. I never, ever could get it open without some spillage. As packaging, particularly for colognes, is part of the overall effect, I had to make sure my vote was reflective of my difficulty.

So, now that it's done, what to do with the cologne? I rather enjoyed wearing a fragrance daily. I'd gotten out of that over the last 12 years of employment because of the hazards of cologne on a job site. You wouldn't think wearing cologne around sweaty construction or quarry employees would have hazards but there is a big one; bugs.

I cannot tell you how many times some bee or wasp has tried to land on me because I smell like some flower that surely must have pollen grains for pick up. Less common is the implied message you are sending by being a female on a male-dominated work site and smelling of gardenia or something else. Scents attract and sometimes that attention is not in the form you want. My wearing of cologne grew increasingly less and less until it was, maybe, once a month and then only because I was attending a concert or other kind of public event. I might have worn cologne to the office Christmas party. Then again, knowing me, I might not have.

The testing of the cologne and the knowledge that I spend most of my days in the office has inspired me to wear scents again. There are dozens of bottles and samples in a drawer in the dressing table and in a basket on its top. They sit there, collecting dust. Cologne is a mood elevator and heaven knows sometimes I need my mood elevated.

I decided to fish all the free samples out and start with them. The above are all those freebie packets I've got. One-by-one, I'm going to wear these to use them up. Then, I will gather up all those little sample vials and use one until its gone and work on another. I will probably find something, like the Michael Kors sample I received, that I like, but I am not replacing a sample with a big bottle of the stuff. I have dozens of bottles of fragrance. The desire is to use them up. It's part of a much grander goal of decluttering my life.

Since taking the photo, I've worn one of the pink Givenchy samples and am wearing one of the light pink Avon Soft Musk samples. Both are nice and are colognes I could see wearing long-term. I shuffle the stack and whatever comes out on top is the pick for that day.

In looking ahead, some of what I have, I have had for a very long time. I also have some rather large bottles of some scents. It's going to take years to use up some cologne. I don't wear scents when I'm not leaving the house or when I will be outside at a job site. This is just for those days when I'm in the office or out and about. Plus, I have to remember that not everyone can be around someone wearing cologne. Even I can't apply a scent as rigorously as I might have in years past. It's not a good experience when I'm coughing. As the old Brylcream commercials said, "A little dab will do ya'."

In another week, I'll post what vials I have and I have a lot.

Beverage:  Lady Gray tea

Deb