Foil Chicken Dinner & Baked Stuffed Apples

I haven't been home much this summer and therefore haven't had the opportunity to cook a whole lot.  I'm usually home long enough to unpack, do laundry and pack again so there wasn't much point in doing big grocery shopping trips.  Tonight I don't have much in the cupboards and fridge but was determined to make a yummy home cooked meal. Hmmm...chicken breasts, a few mini potatoes, a small assortment of veggies and apples. I decided on a tin foil chicken dinner (similar to the one found here) and baked stuffed apples for dessert. It totally smells like Thanksgiving in here right now. Pure comfort food!

Dinner for 2

Chicken Dinner Ingredients
2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
4-6 mini potatoes, cubed
1 celery stalk, sliced thick
1 carrot, sliced thick
1/4 red onion, sliced
herbs (I used about a tablespoon of each of my fresh thyme and sage from my garden)
2 tablespoons olive oil
salt & pepper
* you can add any veggies you want. These are the only items I had in the fridge

Method
Dump all ingredients into an oven proof and cover with tin foil (you can also just make tin foil packages). Cook covered for 45 minutes at 400 degrees. Done and done!

Baked Apples Ingredients
4 apples, cored
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 rolled oats
1/4 teaspoon of each cinnamon and nutmeg (add more if you want to)
4 tablespoons of soft marg/butter


Method
Wash and core apples.  Mix all remain ingredients together.  Place apples in an oven proof dish. Stuff mixture into apple holes (that's what she said) and pack remaining mixture on top of apples. Bake for 20 minutes at 425 degrees. Serve on their own or with ice cream or whipped cream. Yummers!

 

Chicago

 Last weekend my amazing husband stole me away for a 4 day getaway to Chicago for our 5th Wedding Anniversary.  It was an amazing trip!  If you've never been to the Windy City you must go and be sure to leave the kiddies at home.  The city is stunning! Chicago has a very strong European influence with the river flowing right through the centre of the city, lift bridges every block, architecture to die for, lush gardens lining the sidewalks and soft sand beaches hugging the  beautiful skyline. While we did walk for 7+ hours each day, I found this trip very relaxing and a great chance for my husband and I to reconnect. We've spent the entire summer doing things for others and desperately needed this time escape.  We didn't make an itinerary but we did have a list of things that we wanted to do. We managed to fit in everything on our to-do lists and much, much more! Here's what we managed to do and highly recommend everything!

- Sat on the Navy Pier for 2 nights drinking beer in the beer garden and watching the world go by (and the sun set)
- Watched fireworks on the pier (every Wed & Sat night at 10:15pm all summer long!)
- Went up to the John Hancock Observatory
- Sat on the beach
- Had morning coffee on the canal
- 90 minute boat tour of the canal/skyline (we purchased a $35 package at the Hancock building for both the observatory and the boat tour - best deal in town for sure!)
- Visited a steakhouse, a burger joint, a pizzeria and ate sushi.
- Did1 hour of shopping on the Mag Mile (we didn't want to waste our time in change rooms)
- Wandered Millennium Park & Grant Park (saw the Bean & Buckingham Fountain)
- Garrett's Popcorn (ate it while we watched the fireworks. You MUST go there!!!!)
- Walked EVERYWHERE! We balanced out all the beer and food by working it off walking
- Stayed at a hotel that included breakfast
- Drove into the city - we didn't have to worry about a schedule, packed as much as we wanted and got to stop along the way to do some Target shopping! (Parking at our hotel for 4 days was only $87)
- stayed in a cool little boutique hotel (we knew we'd never have the opportunity to do that again so we went for it)
- booked our hotel on www.hotels.com to save some coin
- drank coffee in bed and watched the local morning news
- We didn't rush! We wanted to make sure this was a relaxing experience. We didn't make reservations for anything.  We wanted to just go with the flow.
- We traveled alone.  It was awesome to fly by the seat of our pants and do whatever we wanted

The food was great. Like any big city there was a huge spectrum of the types of food and the prices.  Steakhouses were everywhere!  We went to one that was considered a mid-priced steakhouse called Flemming's.  It happened to be next door to our hotel but came highly recommended by the staff at our hotel. It ran about $60 per person (not including drinks). The steak was delicious and so was the wine! They had a 4 page wine list. Worth the money for sure. But from what I could tell there were a ton of awesome options if you wanted a good steak. For one of our lunches we stumbled into a place called Epic Burger.  We sat on the patio and enjoyed AMAZING handmade burgs for cheap. We later found out that it was one the most popular Burger joints in the city! I'm so glad we turned down that side street.  That evening we were still full from our Epic burgers so we decided on a small little sushi place two blocks over from our hotel called Sushi Taiyo. Yummy! We had read and heard great things about Pizzeria Uno, which happened to be 3 doors down from our hotel so we saved it for our last night in the city.  It was at least an hour wait anytime so we put our name in and went back to our hotel and got ready.  Since my husband and I like different things on our pizza we ordered individual sized pizzas.  I'm going to be honest - we weren't overly impressed.  I did not like the crust at all.  It was dry and gritty but I loved the middle of my pizza.  My guess is it would be less dry if we ordered a bigger pizza so if you decided to go there, don't get the individual size.  And here I thought I loved all pizza... hmm....
 
What a great trip away - awesome company, great food and a beautiful city!  We would definitely go back if given the opportunity. Thank you E! Happy Anniversary!

August is the new December

This week my husband and I are celebrating our 5 year wedding anniversary.  WTF? We are too young for that!! Since I'm a hopeless romantic, I've scheduled a fun ( & cheeeeeeezy!) little activity every day this week, ranging from a couples massage to a movie date at the Drive-In.  Tonight is Christmas in August! My hubby is  sucker for Christmas cookies and I'm crazy for Christmas movies so tonight we are eating freshly baked Ginger Cookies, sipping on hot chocolate and watching Elf. Will Farrell and cookies?! Pfff, can't go wrong! I have to admit that the scent of freshly cut grass wafting through the open kitchen window and the strong aroma of ginger seeping from the oven is an odd combination...

Life is good!

Breakfast

I've been drinking spinach smoothies every weekday for breakfast since January.  Anyone who knows me would tell you that I'm far from a creature of routine.  I hate routine but for some reason I totally dig having a smoothie on my drive to work every morning. In fact, I look forward to it.  This summer has been crazy busy to say the least and I have been finding myself spending more time away from home then I do at home. Being away from home has caused me to fall off my spinach smoothie wagon. I think traveling with my bucket of spinach and a blender would be a little psycho. My husband and I have been trying out a few new breakfast ideas and have come up with a winner that happens to have all 4 food groups! Can I get a 'woot woot'?! All  food groups means this breakfast will stick to our ribs until lunchtime.  It's quick, simple and can be packed up in a Pyrex and taken to work too. Hope you like it as much as we do!

Yield: 1 Serving
Ingredients
1/3 cup fat free vanilla Greek yogurt (use Greek for the added protein)
1/4 cup granola (I currently use store bought but plan on making it homemade in the future)
1/4 - 1/2 cup fresh fruit (blueberries are my fav!)
1/4 cup trail mix

Beer Can BBQ Chicken

I sometimes wonder why I never decided to become a vegetarian.  I hate working with raw meat, I don't enjoy what I like to call 'weird' meats such as rabbit, lamb or venison, and I don't like eating meat with bones in it (that's what she said).  But the second I smell a burger on the BBQ or a pull pork simmering in the crock pot I realize that vegetarianism just isn't in my future.  This past weekend certainly tested my meat eating ways. My husband and I visited an old university friend and his family in Quebec at his newly established family egg farm.  I toured the property, helped sort eggs and checked out a barn full of 9,000 laying hens - Holy.Shit - I didn't anticipate being so overwhelmed by all the chickens. To say that I had a slight meltdown is somewhat of an understatement. Picture me, in a white skirt with a fedora on standing alone in the corner, shaking in my flip flops, trying not to make eye contact with the chickens. Classic. It appears that I still have some city in me! It was a very eye opening experience. As I ate my hard boiled egg on my spinach salad at lunch I couldn't help it but think of where it might have come from.

Ironic that whole chickens are on crazy sale this week?! hmm. Maybe. Regardless, I snagged one for dinner tonight for only $5.50 and decided on beer can chicken.  While preparing it I managed to only gag ONCE (that's what she said)! Success. As mentioned here, I wear rubber gloves when handling meat because it grosses me out so much. Don't judge. Minus the gaging, this was a super easy meal to prepare. About 3 minutes prep time and 1 hour and 15 minutes cook time. Easy peasy! I served it with broccoli salad. The perfect summer meal.

Ingredients
1 whole chicken
1/2 a can of beer (drink the other half!)
1/4 cup olive oil
your favourite herbs and spices (I used salt, pepper, rosemary, thyme, coriander, paprika and garlic powder)

Method
Using a chicken BBQ stand (I think ours is from Canadian Tire - a wedding gift), place beer can in the middle and plop the bird on top. In a small bowl add olive oil, herbs and spice.  Paint onto chicken.  Place on the BBQ for 1 hour 15 minutes on medium-high heat.  It is fully cooked when juices run clear.  Get your farm husband to carve it up so you don't puke and serve with your favourite sides. Enjoy!

Personalized Pizza Dough

Last night I made homemade pizza for dinner and decided to spruce up my classic dough a little by adding garlic powder, red pepper flakes and rosemary. You can add any of your favourite herbs and spices during the mixing process and make a basic dough have a little more UMPH! 

Last night was the first time I was finally able to put my pizza stone from Pampered Chef to use. I've heard a lot of hype about stone bakeware and decided to purchase my own. Because I co-hosted a Pampered Chef party as a fundraiser at my school, it only ended up costing me $18.00. To be honest, I'm not overly thrilled with how it baked my pizza.  The stone bakes very evenly, however I'm a sucker for a crispy crust so I think I'll stick with my regular pizza pan in the future. I also encountered an issue with the dough sticking to the stone. I think my stone will be put to better use for baking cookies. I'll keep you posted.

My old faithful pan that I'm sticking with!

My stone & dough

I heart pizza.

Wedding Bells & Broccoli Salad

I've recently returned home from a 6 day journey across the Province where I celebrated the marriage of two very close friends. The day was perfect - we couldn't have asked for better weather or company. We ate, danced and drank the night away.  I felt an unbelievable amount of love and support in the banquet hall, which brought me to tears a few times. To say that this couple is adored by many is an understatement. Their love for each other, life, their families, and friends is a beautiful thing. Congratulations friends! XOXO

Enough with the mushy-gushy crap, right?! Onto the FOOD. My favourite on the menu - Broccoli Salad. OH MAN! I loved it so much that I hit the grocery store upon arrival home and purchased all the ingredients necessary to make it.  So delish!  Perfect side for anything BBQ'ed.

Yield: 4 sides

Ingredients
1 head of broccoli, cut into bite sized pieces
1/2 red onion, chopped small
1/4 cup bacon bits
3 tablespoons shelled unsalted sunflower seeds
small handful dried raisins or cranberries
1/4 cup -1/2 cup light mayo (depending on the amout of broc)
3 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons white vinegar

Method
Mix mayo, sugar and vinegar in a small bowl.  In a large salad bowl add remaining ingredients and pour dressing over top.  Mix thoroughly. Enjoy!