Is Frozen Chicken OK to Eat?

So here is an age old question, how long does a defrosted piece of chicken stay fresh, after you put it in the fridge? The answer is between 24 – 72 hours according to a Google Search. According to a Grill Boy Mommy phone call the answer is DON’T EAT THE CHICKEN ON THURSDAY YOU DEFROSTED ON SUNDAY. Just don’t risk it!!!

So now that the planned dinner of General Tsos Chicken was out how do you make a quick and delicious dinner with odds and ends in the fridge. The answer is THE FREEZER.

We had a few frozen meatballs, some tomato sauce, a green pepper, an onion, garlic, tomato, some bread and BOOM we had a wonderful dinner.

Bruschetta , Spaghetti and meatballs and a delicious sauce!!!

Dinner Disaster Over!!

Enchilada Pie

Tonight  we married two cultural cuisines together to create a culinary trifecta (yes I realize we only had two cuisine, but the addition of the cast iron pan makes it a trifecta in the eyes of Grill Boy and Baker Girl). Having read about a sweet potato enchilada pie on Gracefulfitness I wanted to give it a try with a few tweaks. The layers just looked super appealing, I couldn’t pass it up and of course Grill Boy loves using his cast iron anytime he can.

I looked up a few recipes for Enchilada pie, just to get a sense of what people typically put in, but we mostly made it up as we went along.

Enchilada Pie

1 large cast iron pan
5-6 large tortillas (a size that will fit in your large cast iron pan, a large round casserole dish would work as well, but Grill Boy finds them inferior for no plausible reason.)
2 cans enchilada sauce (or about 3 cups if you are brave enough to make your own)
1 green bell pepper, diced,
1/2 large onion, diced
1 can black olives, diced
1 cup frozen corn (or 15 oz can drained).
1 chicken breast, butterflied and then hand-pulled
1 can refried beans
1 tsp cumin
2 cups shredded Mexican cheese,
Salt and Pepper to taste

1. Filet your chicken breast, just to make it thinner and cook faster, cook in a frying pan, about 10 minutes (flipping occasionally). Set aside to cool.

2. Add all the vegetables to the frying pan you just cooked the chicken in, that way you absorb the chicken flavors. Add salt, pepper and cumin. Saute for about 8 minutes, until the onions are translucent. Then add about 1 cup of enchilada sauce, I added some taco seasoning and crushed red pepper flakes as well just to spice it up a bit.

3. Lightly cover the bottom of your cast iron pan with enchilada sauce, add a tortilla, and then spread half a can of refried beans on top of the tortilla.

4. Add another tortilla on top of the refried beans, and cover with your vegetable mixture and 1/2 cup of cheese.

5. Meanwhile, hand pull and shred the chicken, and saute with another cup of the enchilada sauce in your frying pan. Add another tortilla and top with the chicken mixture and 1/2 cup of cheese.

6. Top with another tortilla (I used 1.5 tortillas, just to cover the whole top), spread with the remaining refried beans, enchilada sauce and cheese.

7. Cover with aluminum foil and bake at 375 degrees for 35 minutes, then uncover and cook for an additional 10 minutes. Remove from oven and allow to sit before cutting.

8. Serve and enjoy deliciousness!  Of course the best way to enjoy is with a nice margarita, guacamole, salsa, sour cream and some corn bread.  The margarita was an adventure for Grill Boy.  I tasked him with trying to make me a tasty beverage to go with the meal but we lacked lime juice and triple sec.  So he made a 1 to 1 to 1 ratio of tequila, lemon juice, and simple syrup and it was quite tasty and was a nice addition to the meal.

Outcome:

Baker Girl: YUMMMM, this dish is winning!

Grill Boy:Holy Cast Iron Pan Batman, this was AMAZING!! — Stop what you are doing right now and go make it!!!

Menus for the Season

Have no fear Grill Boy & Baker Girl have not fallen into their summer slump of forgetting to blog.  Merely they have been swamped with the reality of November…preparing for Friend’s Thanksgiving & Thanksgiving. The culinary duo  will continue to update the blog every Sunday night, especially since they have fallen in love with the New England Patriots Games with DVR and blogging at the same time.  (By the way that was a great little interception bu Molden # 27 against the Philadelphia Eagles).  Sunday’s really just turn out to be a really nice day to hang out and get such things accomplish.  Now last year Grill Boy & Baker Girl explained all of the fun ways to brine a turkey, make a chutney brie appetizer, delicious carrots and of course scalloped corn and pecan pie.  This year they thought they would share the menus from both Friends Thanksgiving 2011 and a wonderful Grill Boy Family Thanksgiving. Grill Boy often searches the internet for menu ideas when he and Baker Girl have people over so he others might be interested on what goes together and what to have around the table.

Friends Thanksgiving 2011

 

• Cheese & Cracker Platter
• Vegetable Platter w/ Ranch Dip
• Turkey (which was brined 24 hours before hand) …Click Here for the recipe 
• Scalloped Corn …Click Here for the recipe 
• Cranberry Chutney
• Mama D’s Stuffing
• Gravey
• Bacon Braised Green Beans
• Baked Cheesy Mashed Potatoes
• Sweet Potatoes in Orange Halves w/ Marshmallows
• Pillsbury Crescent Rolls
• Pumpkin Pie
• Apple Pie w/ crumble top & caramel drizzle with nuts
• Pumpkin Whoopie-Pies
• Egg Nog
• Sam Adams Octoberfest
• Shipyard Pumpkin Head
• Apple Sin
• 1 1/2 oz apple cider
• 1 oz vodka
• 1 1/2 oz spiced rum
• 1 oz simple syrup
• dash of cinnamon

Grill Boy Family Thanksgiving 2011

• Spinach Artichoke Dip in a Bread Bowl
• Vegetables platter w/ Onion Dip
• Butternut Squash Soup
• Turkey
• Stuffing
• Mashed Potatoes
• Gravey
• Gourmet Sweet Potatoes …Click Here for recipe
• Butternut Squash
• Scalloped Corn …Click Here for the recipe 
• Cranberry Chutney
• Ocean Spray Cranberry Sauce
• Corn Bread
• Pillsbury Crescent Rolls
• Peas & Carrots
• Boiled Pearl Onions
• Black Olives
• Gerkin Pickles
• Pumpkin Pie
• Pecan Pie
• Mince Meat Pie
• Chocolate Cream Pie
• Pumpkin Cheesecake
• White Wine
• Red Wine
• Sam Adams Boston Lager
• Ginger Ale
• Shipyard Pumpkin Head
• Captain Johnny ( Grill Boy invented title as a mixture of Captain Morgan’s and Johnny Appleseed)
• 6 oz apple cider
• 2 oz Captain Morgan’s Spiced Rum

All was delicious and both dishes were finished by Grill Boy…..which is actually really disgusting ….did you see how much food was on those plates, especially consider they were only a few days in between the two rounds.

Homemade Tomato Sauce

Feeling domestic and hankering for a hearty meal, I decided to tackle something I haven’t ever attempted but have been meaning to master, Tomato/Pasta/Spaghetti Sauce from scratch. I checked out a couple different recipes from allrecipes.com which has a giant like encyclopedia of tomato sauce information and Smitten Kitchen. I tried asking Siri “How to make homemade tomato sauce?” Her answer: “I found 12 restaurants nearby who’s reviews mention tomato and sauce.” Clearly someone does not have faith in my cooking abilities, that saucy minx.

Compiling the best of the recipes I found, and shocked to see carrot and celery as popular items in homemade sauce, Grill Boy and I ventured out on our weekly shopping excursion to purchase the ingredients. Including 4 pounds of tomatoes, aka a lot of freaking tomatoes.

The combination of recipes I settled on:

Homemade Tomato Sauce

4 lbs fresh tomatoes (I used plum, although I might seek out a redder tomato in the future as the sauce is quite orange)
1 small sweet onion
1/2 celery stalk
1/2 large carrot (perhaps I should have gone with a smaller carrot)
Fresh Basil
Fresh Garlic (3-5 cloves)
Salt and Pepper to taste
1/2 tablespoon-ish Oregano
1/2 tablespoon-ish Thyme
a few shakes of Marjoram (cause its just fun to say)

Boiling and Blanching

Boil a large pot water, get your tomatoes ready, with a slotted spoon. Also prepare an ice bath in a large bowl. Plop a few tomatoes into the boiling water, and boil (blanch) for about a minute, or until you see the skin tear. Drop into ice bath (Note: ice bath made infinitly better if you have a shark fin ice mold floating in it to scare the tomatoes).

Next up you will take the tomatoes from the ice bath and peel the skin off, I switched back and forth between peeling and kind of squeezing and having the tomato shoot out.

Finish up blanching the large pile of tomatoes and then slice them in half. Now comes the fun part, squeezing and removing all the seeds and seed guts from the tomatoes. Do this over a strainer so you can reserve any liquid that comes off the tomatoes. You also might want to break the tomatoes up a bit while you have the tomatoes in your hot little hands.

Veggies and Flavor

While you do the tomatoes, solicit help from a partner in crime, to finely dice/mince, the onion, carrot and celery. Toss in a large stock pot with about 1/4 cup of olive oil and cook for 10 minutes. At this time also add in the fresh garlic (I use a garlic press, but mincing works just fine as well), the thyme, oregano, marjoram, salt and pepper to taste and any other spices you are feeling like.

Simmering Sauce

And now comes the waiting game. Add the tomatoes, some fresh basil to the veggie mixture, bring to a simmer and cook for at least 45 minutes. The longer you cook it, the thicker it will get.

Now as I mentioned in the ingredients list, the sauce was looking pretty orange, so I ended up adding a 15 ounce can of diced tomatoes after about an hour of cooking, as well as about 1/4 cup of parmesan cheese. I thought about adding some red wine too, but didn’t want to open a bottle. The sauce looked very much like a Vodka sauce after about an hour, but again I think due to the carrots, I might cut those out in the future.

I didn’t chop up the tomatoes before tossing them in the sauce, so I wanted to puree it a bit. I threw about 1/2 the sauce in a blender and pureed, just to give a little more smoothness to the consistency.

After about an hour and a half:

After two and a half hours:

Tossed with some chicken sausage and served on four cheese ravioli:

Outcome:

Grill Boy: Was slow to cook down, but not surprising. Sauce went really well with Parmesan cheese. Orange color was a little bit weird, but overall not terrible, just needs some tweaks.

Baker Girl: Thinking this might be a good vodka sauce from scratch recipe (yes I did contemplate throwing some vodka in). I think next time I will skip the blanching step, and just go with whole canned tomatoes, they have more vibrant red color and are canned at their peak versus having been on a truck and in a store before we bought them by the pound. I agree will Grill Boy, a good start, just needs some tweaks. Next challenge homemade pasta, I’ve done it before but not in like 10 years.

Tortilla Soup

Baker Girl is typing, but Grill Boy is dictating. He is knee deep in grape plucking:

One of the things that is always problematic is having a good breakfast without having to wake up early to cook it. Grill Boy is usually running out the door as soon as he is out of the shower and generally forgets to eat breakfast, but thankfully always remembers pants. So on their most recent trip to Costco Grill Boy and Baker Girl bought a GIANT crate of grapes, so he is plucking them off of the stems, so he and Baker Girl have an easy to go breakfast and more sleeping time.

Grill boy did the same thing with sandwich bags full of cheerios, as he has found grapes and cheerios are a wonderful breakfast snack for his 40 minute  commute to work. Preparing on Sunday is an easy way to get ready for the week, and a great activity while watching the DVR’ed Patriots Game. We watch it in just under an hour, without listening to stupid football announcers, commercials, or repetitive instant replays. There are only so many times you can watch a kick off.

But  breakfast prep and football aside, the big culinary experience of the day was Tortilla Soup with Chicken and Black Beans. Baker Girl unfortunately had to work all day, so Grill Boy was left to his own devices in the kitchen. [Baker Girl: I pictured him slaving over a hot stove ALLLLLL day].

Tortilla Soup with Chicken and Black Beans

1 small sweet onion, diced

2 cloves garlic, diced

1/4 cup chopped cilantro

15 oz can diced tomatoes

1/2 tsp ground cumin

4 cups Chicken stock

1 skinless boneless chicken breast

Salt and Pepper

2 tablespoons lime juice.

Steps

1. Continuation from last nights dinner, where Grill Boy made a quick marinade of an extra defrosted chicken breast. He diced up the chicken into tiny edible pieces, tossed it all into a ziploc bag with a 1/4 cup of lemon juice, an a few healthy dashes of cayenne pepper [Baker Girl: Not so sure on that definition of "healthy dashes"].

2. Then the day of soup making began with finely dicing onions, garlic, cilantro.

3. In a fry pan, add 1 teaspoon of vegetable oil, and saute the onion, garlic and cilantro mixture, until the onions are just about translucent (but only just).

4. Add to a blender with one can of diced tomatoes [Baker Girl: 15 oz can]. Puree until smooth.

5. In the pan from the onion/garlic/cilantro give your chicken bits a little fry.

6. Toss the tomato/onion/garlic/cilantro puree into a large sauce pan and let simmer until it begins to thicken. Add some cumin too.

7. While your two fry pans of chicken and tomato/onion/cilantro/garlic/cumin simmer, toss your frozen corn into a large stock pot, along with dice jalapeno, black beans, line juice, chicken stock, a small dash of chili power and red pepper flakes (large enough for all the ingredients you have going right now).

8. Once the tomato puree has thickened up a bit, and the chicken is a bit pink but white on the outside, toss everything into the big stock pot. Cover and cook at a simmer for about twenty minutes.

9. While it cooks, it may look a little watery, and since Grill Boy had no idea what it should look like, he added some flour. Grill Boy was mistaken, it got clumpy and took some serious effort to declump. [Baker Girl: I recommend corn starch if you are ever trying to thicken something up, although I would suggest just simmering soups on low to cook off excess liquid and thicken up].

10. Serve with shredded Monterey jack cheese on each bowl and enjoy with some delicious tortilla chips. And remember to take a picture before you start eating …opps

Outcome (We are thinking this should be a new feature for each entry…what do you the readers think?)

Grill Boy: I thought it was pretty tasty and even though Baker Girl is not a huge fan, 4he cilantro gave a needed taste to the dish.  It was a little spicy but not terrible.  I think the chicken chunks were too small because I really dont recall eating any.  The crunchy chips were an important addition as was the appetizer of guacamole.

Baker Girl:  HOLY SPICE BATMAN. The first bite delicious, the second bite, FIREEEEEE, in my mouth. But tasty nonetheless, I am now very curious about the definition of a “healthy dash,” methinks that healthy dash will put hair on my chest.

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

With fall officially here, the boxes from moving* gone from the first floor and a Sunday free to just do errands and relax in front of some Sunday football (Yay for the Falcons pulling off a win!), I decided it was high time to dust off the Kitchenaid mixer and bust out a fall recipe. Plus my colleagues at work have been bugging me about the lack of baked goods.

*Moving boxes because….we moved. Hence the lack of posting. We found out at the beginning of August we needed to move, and thus ensued what can only be described as a Charlie Foxtrot. I was set to go on a week and a half of travel for my job on Labor Day, Hurricane Irene hit the weekend we needed to get all our stuff out (we had to move into a storage unit for the night of August 31 as we were officially homeless), and then Grill Boy’s car died 0.4 miles from our new apartment, with the mattress on top. We were all up in Lemony Snicket’s Series of Unfortunate Events. BUT we’re mostly moved in, just hung some wall things tonight and we have a patio! As much as a pain in the butt it was, we’re loving the new digs!

Back to the baking though. Maryland Dagger brought pumpkin chocolate chip cookies over on Thursday night for Chili night with some friends of ours from college who were in town for Head of the Charles and they were too delicious not to replicate! They are like muffin tops but not the gross pre-made ones they sell in the freezer section! Mmm muffin tops, like that Gilmore Girls episode where Sookie brings Lorelai a basket of muffin tops to bribe her, or like in Seinfeld when Elaine tries to figure out what to do with all the muffin bottoms.

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

2 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp clove
pinch of ground ginger
1/ 2 cup (1 stick) butter, room temperature
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
15 oz can of pure pumpkin
1 tsp vanilla extract
1-2 cups chocolate chips (I used about 3 handfuls)

1. Sift the flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and ginger together in a small bowl.

2. Cream the butter, brown sugar and sugar together.

3. Mix in the pumpkin and vanilla extract. Then mix in the egg.

4. Slowly mix in the flour mixture. I suggest doing it one third of the flour mixture at a time.

5. Stir in the chocolate chips. If you are using a stand mixer, I recommend doing this part by hand, stand mixers and chocolate chips don’t go together.

6. Drop by spoonfuls onto either a greased baking sheet or one with parchment paper.

8. Bake for 13-15 minutes, or until lightly browned. Remove from the oven and then leave on the hot baking sheet for two more minutes before moving them to a cooling rack.

Enjoy while hot! Or for breakfast, they are delicious any time of day!

See you next Sunday! (Grill Boy and I have decided to post we will try and post every Sunday, so you can know when to expect tasty posts!)

Summer Sangria

Sangria, one of the tastiest beverages on a hot summer day, yet always so expensive when you go out to eat. Bertucci’s why don’t you take a page from Tasca’s book and offer $5.00 pitchers of sangria? I’ve come up with a tasty homemade recipe that also helps you out if you have any fruit about to spoil.

Summer Sangria

1 bottle red wine (I have found Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Zinfandel, and Shiraz work best)
A few cups of Club Soda (I usually use half a 33 oz bottle)
1 Orange
1 Lemon
1 Lime
1 Apple (non granny smith variety, I like Fujis)
Cinnamon sticks
1/2 cup Sugar

Basically add all the ingredients to a big pitcher or carafe, mix up and little, chill for at least 2 hours but up to 24 (the longer the better) and serve over ice. Do be careful if your sangria vessel is airtight, once you mix things up, open it to let out the gas from the club soda.

 

For a little fun after you have enjoy all the sangria, pour some vodka (or gin if you are my dad) over the fruit, allow to steep for 24 hours, and then enjoy pink vodka. After this little adventure, we went to a vodka and gin distillery to learn about making alcohol. Fun fact if you want to infuse alcohol with a flavor, don’t use the fruit you already infused sangria with! Distillery pictures to come!

 

High Desert Breakfast of Champions

Greetings and Salutations avid readers, this post is brought to you from the wonderful Central Oregon High Desert as Baker Girl and Grill Boy are once again visiting Baker Girl’s parents in Oregon.  While Boston and the rest of the country have been sweltering with temperatures over 100 degrees Central Oregon has been a wonderful daily high of maybe 80 degrees.  This morning Grill Boy woke up to a wonderful sunny cloudless sky at a beautiful 50 degrees and decided that it was the perfect opportunity for a grand and full breakfast.

While Baker Girl slept, Grill Boy thought it was a great idea to start off with some bacon.  After hunting around the kitchen for a useable pan for the cooking of bacon Grill Boy was shown a terrific device by Baker Girl’s father; a great 1960′s vintage electric cooking “griddle.”  Now it was probably a great thing that Baker Girl was still asleep as she had previously voiced concerns about the waffle maker of the same vintage “exploding.”  Now of course there was no explosion with either device and Grill Boy set to work making up the bacon.

French Toast

As the bacon sizzled and fried Grill Boy decided to make some french toast.  The first step is to find the necessary ingredients.  The next step is to make up some sort of measurement system because why the hell not, if Kelvin and Mr. Metric can invent their own measurements why cant Grill Boy.

• (4) Eggs
• 1/4 – 1/2 cup Milk
• Several dashes of Cinnamon
• Slightly fewer amount of dashes of nutmeg
• (1) small chunk butter

So once the ingredients are gathered toss them into a bowl that is large enough to dip a whole piece of bread in.  Now a tip for those of you who are unfamiliar with eggs not only are they delicious, nutritious and can stand on their bottoms at the equinoxes they also need to be beaten once cracked.  For cracking Grill Boy still recommends the one handed crack because it picks up chicks (especially if you can make said lady breakfast while she is still sleeping.)  [See earlier post for the full joke].  Right so back to the beating of eggs for french toast, while it is necessary to have a vessel for your ingredient mixture that will allow for adequate bread soaking that vessel is probably not the best one for beating eggs in.  When you really want to become a hardcore egg pugilist  it is recommended a small diameter bowl with high sides (this could also be a drinking glass Grill Boy reckons.)  Now while he was awake Grill Boy was not functioning enough to do that on this round but it still worked out.  So toss all the ingredients together and do the next logical thing and heat up a fry-pan, soak the bread on both sides and then do a nice frying of the bread in said pan and serve with some maple syrup.

 

 

Simple Hash-Browns

This was of course NOT what Grill Boy did he decided that he should make MORE food and looking around the kitchen he found a container of small red potatoes that needed to be used up, so home-fries it was.  Now for anyone reading this and trying to think of a nice timeline for cooking and serving breakfast should have realized at this point that making potatoes LAST was incredibly foolish because potatoes take a damn long time to cook, but alas as previously mentioned Grill Boy was not thinking he was just sort of meandering around the kitchen making food.  Right so here is a nice little collection of ingredients for simple home-fries.

• Several Red Potatoes, sliced
• 1/4 of a Sweet Onion, diced
• (1) clove of garlic, minced
• dash of sea salt
• dash of fresh cracked pepper (YES FRESH CRACKED IT MAKES A DIFFERENCE….ummm not really but maybe?)

Now an important cooking tip especially when pan cooking is that you want to slice your food up into evenly sized parts so that they all cook up the same.  This is why the giant cubes of potato are cold and raw while your tiny little julienne onions are burnt….size does matter…..So cut up all of those potatoes and onions into some what similar sizes, the potatoes in long slices seems to work very will for home-fries with onions because it is hard to cube an onion.  (Most breakfast joints have cubed potatoes for the home-fries, but then again most breakfast joints are not making Simple Grill Boy Home-Fries now are they?).  Now put all of the ingredients into a bowl with high sides so you can toss them all together so that the potatoes themselves are getting a nice coating of all the other ingredients.  Take a fry-pan with a cover is you have it and toss some cooking oil into and allow to heat up, once accomplished take a sip of your Bloody Mary.  Don’t have a Bloody Mary? Take a sip of your Mimosa.  Now with your pan properly heated toss the seasoned spuds into it.  Now potatoes are a wonderful and delicious starch but they really can take a while to cook so this is why you should do what Grill Boy didn’t and cook them FIRST.    You might even want to par-boil the potatoes first to speed up the process.  Once they are all done toss some shredded cheese on them, serve and enjoy.

Grill Boy lives to grill another day

                     

The Joys of Charcoal- by Grill Boy

Now there are many opinions on what is the best fuel to use for grilling and Grill Boy finds the uses for all to be great in different situations.  Currently the apartment the Grill Boy & Baker Girl live in does not allow propane gas grills so charcoal it is.

A fun fact is that the first charcoal briquettes were sold in combination with Henry Ford’s Model T.  Now the Model T was revolutionary for many reasons, but one way to look at it was that people now could go on picnics and this was not just your pack a tuna sandwich in a plastic bag with a red and white checkered blanket sort of picnic.  Back in the day people would want a hot meal to go with their picnic and thus a need for mobile cooking heat.  Now the body of the Model T like most cars of the age were made of wood and Henry Ford being the penny pincher he was wanted a way to sell the scrap wood that was procuded after the car body was cut. So he put all of this together and the charcoal briquette and the Great American Cookout was invented.  Thanks Henry!

Now for many of our instant information age, charcoal can be a confusing and frustrating experience but the key is to stack and have patience.

Step #1 – Get a grill — Weber’s are always fantastic …great story on how that was created later on

Step # 2 – Fill the grill with a large portion of briquettes, do not skimp on this step you really want to try and fill the grill that you have.  If you are not cooking a lot of food you might want to get a smaller grill.

Step #3 – You need to stack the briquettes into a pyramid because you want them to be close together and burn upwards (heat rises after all).  This is also a very important step, if you have them too spread out it will take a very long time for the briquettes to get hot and most likely a lot of lighter fluid.

Step # 4 – Add lighter fluid, you want to soak them coals, but don’t be stupid just enough to give most coals that wet look.  Then light with a match and BOOM FIRE!!!

Step # 5 – Do not touch it until the briquettes have changed to gray coals and when the center of your pyramid is glowing red/orange.

Step # 6 – ITS TIME TO GRILL

BBQ Sauced Chicken ~ by Grill Boy

Step #1 – Marinate the Meat – You want to try and get the meat juicy and tender before grilling sucks it all out.  A good marinade should have three basic parts, an acid, an oil (or liquid), and spices. Grill boy as a rule does not ever measure his marinades ….that is true in this recipe. BUT….there is a great list of ingredients.

• Canola Oil
• Honey
• Spicy Mustard
• Maple Syrup
• Ketchup
• Worcestershire Sauce
• White Vinegar
• Garlic Powder

Step # 2 – Let the marinade absorb into the meat for a while (this time it was for two days)

Step #3 – Get your sauce ready – This time Grill Boy wanted to keep the same sort of flavors that he used in the marinade but wanted to thicken it up.  So instead of the vinegar and oil he used brown sugar.

• Brown Sugar
• Honey
• Spicy Mustard
• Maple Syrup
• Ketchup
• Worcestershire Sauce
• Garlic Powder

Step # 4 – Time to put it on the grill and use some really fun tools.  Baker Girl’s parents gave Grill Boy the plastic brush and meat hook pictured here and they are wonderful.

Step # 5 – You don’t want to flip meat too often so try and get one side cooked without trying it out.  Once you flip the chicken slather on some sauce.  This will help keep the meat juicy and also give a nice caramelized crisp to the outside of the chicken…..Repeat until it is cooked and ready to serve.

Step # 6 – Now we should be honest, chicken can be hard to time and REALLY bad if under cooked…so don’t do that.  A way to check if you cooked it all the way and make it look like a nice presentation still, cut a few pieces and put it on the plate neatly.  This way you know you are not serving raw chicken and it looks a little fancier.  You can also add more sauce on top of the chicken once it is plated. 

Meanwhile, the carb portion of the meal, because Baker Girl LOVVVVESSS carbs

Israeli Couscous with Vegetables (aka Stoplight Couscous)

1 cup red or sweet onion diced
1/2 cup pepper diced
1/2 cup zucchini diced
1/2 cup yellow squash diced
1 1/2 cups pearl style couscous
2 cups chicken broth
Salt and Pepper
Olive Oil
Fresh Garlic
Any other misc. spices you want to throw in (onion powder, paprika, extra garlic, parsley, crushed red pepper)

          

1. Heat oil in a large skillet that has a lid. Add the onions and garlic, saute for 2 minutes until the aromas begin to make you drool. Add some salt and pepper as well.

2. Add the couscous, and lightly toast for around 3 minutes. Stir often, until some of the grains turn slightly brown. Make sure you use the big grain type, Near East doesn’t make a plain kind of the large pearl variety, so you probably will have to buy an unknown brand. Hormel (yes as in the chili) has a brand called Marrakesh Express that I’ve found to be really good.

3. Add the chicken broth and stir to combine. Cover and bring to a simmer. For a lighter option use fat free broth.

4. Add the peppers, zucchini, squash, bring to a simmer again, turn heat to low, cover and cook for approximately 8-10 minutes, or until most of the liquid is gone. You’ll want to keep an eye on it, and stir occasionally so the couscous doesn’t get stuck to the bottom of the pan.

5. Serve and enjoy, feel free to garnish with more salt, pepper, and fresh parsley if you have it.

Couscous is ready, note the stop light colors of the veggies.

Time to Eat!! Chicken, Couscous, and corn because its summer and DELICIOUS

Simple Blueberry Crisp

Giant Costco container of blueberries about to go bad in the fridge? Check

A few extra minutes while our caramelized onion, feta and tomato flatbread pizzas cook up in the oven? Check

And poof dessert is created.

Simple Blueberry Crisp

2 cups fresh blueberries
4 tablespoons butter
1 cup rolled oats
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup flour

1. Melt 3 tablespoons butter.

2. Combine butter, rolled oats, brown sugar and flour together in a bowl.

3. Place blueberries in a small baking dish, cover with rolled oats and sugar mixture.

4. Place pats of the remaining butter on top of the rolled oat mixture.

5. Cover with foil and bake at 350 degrees for around 20 minutes. Uncover and cook an additional 10 minutes, or until the smell of tasty fruit and butter hit you.

6. Enjoy tasty snack and know that buying a pound of blueberries at Costco was in fact not a waste, despite what Grill Boy says.