Roast Chicken!!

We've been practicing our roasting skills and cooked a wonderful roast chicken the other night, complete with veggies and stuffing.


We've been pulling from a number of recipes. What we've decided works best is the following:

25 minutes per pound at 350 degrees until the breast temperature is 170 degrees
rub the chicken in butter before roasting. sometimes we squeeze lemon on it, sometimes we add herbs and spices, but always butter

Big chunks of veggies under the bird taste WONDERFUL after steeping in the chicken's juices while it cooks...


And there ya have it. delish. I've certainly made better stuffing in my life, but for a quick no-fuss meal it sufficed to pick up some ready-to-make stuffing and add some roughly chopped onion and celery. The remaining onion and celery can be thrown in the roasting pan beneath the chicken! Next I want to learn how to make some stock, a friend gave me her recipe so we'll see!

Sloppy Joes!

Sloppy Joes! I've been slacking in the crafts department, but the cold weather has been making me crave warm hearty meals. I don't believe I've ever had sloppy joes before...at least not that I can remember, but we were looking for dinner meals this week and for some odd reason I thought, yum! meaty, vegetablely, messy sloppy joes.

They were shockingly easy. We browned a pound of ground meat with a bell pepper and 1/4 onion...


...then added these lovely ingredients (the recipe had exact measurements, but I think it could be done simply by taste):


let it all simmer for about 20 minutes....


and voila! We ate about two each and then had some leftovers. They were suuuuper delicious and definitely a recipe we will make again. Most of the ingredients are everyday items we have in our kitchen which makes it a really easy last minute dish. It is especially good for using up extra hamburger buns before they go stale : )

Baked Ziti!

It's been a hectic few weeks with grad school work and we've been putting off a lot of home cooked meals.

HOWEVER!

We made baked ziti last night...and a ton of it. We tried this recipe on a whim, we originally wanted to make enchiladas but weren't sure if we'd be able to find tomatillos (or good tomatillos) at our local supermarket.

My favorite part of the prep work was "shredding" the mozzarella. It was messy and left lots of little bits of cheese on my fingers for me to then nibble on.


Simon took charge of the meat. As a former veg, I still get pretty uncomfortable playing around with raw meat.


The sauce got really messy but it smelled delicious. I think we'll use less tomato sauce then the recipe calls for next time. It didn't thicken very well and the dish ended up a little watery when all was said and done.


Nevertheless.....it was/is deliiiiicious!


It seems as though Fall came upon us in full force, so in addition to our warm, hearty dish and our pumpkin beer, we lit our very first fire in our new fireplace. It was wonderful. The room was nice and toasty and there was no problem with smoke, soot, or sparks threatening to set our carpet on fire.


It was all very lovely.

Larger Magnets and Blueberry Deliciousness

Just a few quick projects to post about today. Expect a large post sometime next week on my new sewing machine! Lauren is coming over on Sunday to check it all out and show me what's what.

Once Simon and I settled into our new place, the magnets I made looked super tiny, albeit adorable, on our big, white, empty fridge door. So I ordered some larger buttons and used the same process to make some larger fridge magnets. I've included two of the previous ones for scale:


In an attempt to cook more, eat out less, and eat healthier, I made Simon and I some blueberry muffins using this recipe from Smitten Kitchen. I'm not going to re-type the recipe because I strictly stayed on her recipe.



I must admit, adding the lemon zest and using plain yogurt turned out wonderfully.

Thai Chicken Curry

o.m.g. delicious.

A while back, our friend Erica Saint Clair wrote a cookbook: Paleolicious. I had not been able to cook any of the recipes until the other night when Simon and I were looking for something fun to cook in our new kitchen! This recipe for Thai Chicken Curry is fantastic, absolutely delicious and really super easy.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 pounds boneless skinless chicken breast
Crush red pepper
Black pepper
Olive Oil
1 inch ground ginger
1 diced small onion
1 sliced red bell pepper
3 sliced cloves of garlic (we used 2 because our garlic was very big)
1 tbsp honey
1 cup chicken broth
1 cup unsweetened coconut milk (we bought sweetened for no particular reason other than we didn't realize it was supposed to be unsweetened...and boy did we love the sweet taste!)
1 packet curry powder



Sprinkle the chicken with the red and black pepper and cook in a little oil. Our chicken was a little big so this took some time.

Once that was finally complete and Simon and I were positive that we weren't going to eat raw meat, the chicken was removed and the onions were placed in the very same pan:


We sauteed them for a while, mostly because we're not big fans of very onion-y dishes.

Next, the pepper and garlic were added and they sauteed for about 2 minutes.

And then put everything in the pot! Coconut milk, honey, broth, ginger, curry powder, everything. Stir until it boils, turn the heat down to medium and then let it simmer until about half of the liquid reduces.

It turns a really pretty shade of gold, and began to smell delicious.


Pour in a bowl and serve!! Delicious. We were very happy with this simple, filling and flavorful dish.