BBQ Ranch Chicken

An Ode to PW

Oh how I love your website,
You have changed my kitchen life,
You make and teach such wonderful, hearty meals,
Will you be my wife?

Oh, wait a second, I am a woman and I already have a husband. Hmm...Ok, scratch that.  I would settle with just living with you. I will stay at the lodge. I will keep my distance. Well, except when you are cooking. And when you are taking pictures of the ranch. Oh, and I want to be there when you decorate or go shopping because you have great taste.

If you don't know who I am talking about, you haven't been looking at food blog sites for very long. PW or the Pioneer Woman, or for those of you on a first name basis, Ree, has an amazing site. You must visit. Her writing style will suck you in, her pictures are phenomenal, and her food is hearty and satisfying.

Today's recipe is adapted from her Ranch Style Chicken. I have made her Ranch Style Chicken before and I loved it. Absolutely wonderful!  But sometimes, I don't have all of the ingredients I need for her marinade or the hour or two to let the chicken soak in the marinade, so I make a substitution, BBQ sauce. The wonderful thing about her recipe is that the techniques involved allow flexibility in the flavor profile of your marinade and it will still turn out wonderful and juicy every time.  Nicol, are you reading this? I promise you this chicken is so juicy and flavorful you will even love it.

On with the chicken...

Chicken Stir Fry

Finally I am starting to feel better and have enough energy to get back in to the kitchen.  You have no idea how happy this makes me.  So to kick off being in the kitchen again I decided to try a new recipe.  I have been looking forward to making this for the last week and a half so I am really glad that I got to try it out. 

You see, my family likes the occasional chinese food take out. My husband is more of a mongolian beef man while my daughter and I like sweet and sour chicken. Unfortunately our local chinese place doesn't deliver, although probably not unfortunately because if they did we would eat a lot more of it then we do.

I have been looking for an easy chinese recipe, one that we could all agree on, and one that would hopefully be healthy.  Thankfully, and surprisingly to me, I found this recipe on the back of the Uncle Ben's Brown Rice box.  I did change a few things to suit my taste and what was already in my kitchen, and thankfully this recipe is flexible enough so that you can make it your own. Since we are using skinless chicken breast, a variety of veggies, low sodium soy sauce, and brown rice this is a cheaper and healthier option then your local restaurant, totally customizable to your own veggie preferences and it is quite tasty.

On with the show...

Chicken Alfredo Calzones

For my first experiment I decided to try a new recipe that I stumbled upon online. Recently Chris and I have been into those Chicken Alfredo pizzas so I thought this would be a good way to take some of those flavors into something I could make at home.
Now as some of my family can tell you I can make a pretty awesome pizza roll. Usually it has pepperoni, cheese, veggies like onions and bell peppers, and sometimes spinach. Then I will put a good deal of garlic powder, italian seasoning, salt and pepper and wrap it all up using a canned pizza crust. I will have to make a post of it in the future.

Well, the thing that has bothered me about the pizza roll was that I was relying upon the canned pizza crust and that has two downfalls. First, what if I have all of the ingredients except for the pizza crust. Secondly, and more important to me, a lot of times when I pop open the can the crust will tear and it is a pain. So how wonderful would it be if I could make my own crust.

With this new recipe from Food For The Family it let me put together some of my favorite ingredients as well as make a pizza crust from scratch.