Chicken Tenders with Dipping Sauce

This recipe is from a friend at church. She is an AMAZING cook and has been doing some cooking classes at night for the rest of us ladies. This was an especially great one of hers that I tried.

These chicken tenders are SO good and MUCH better for you than the fried ones you get at the fast food places. Seriously, they taste just as good. So...give this one a shot.

Recipe:

1/3 cup flour
1 large egg, slightly beaten
salt and pepper
4 cups Rice Cereal
2 T vegetable oil (or EVOO)
1 1/2 pounds chicken tenders (I just had breasts, so I cut them into strips)
1/2 cup sour cream
2 T Dijon mustard (I just used regular)
1 T honey

Directions:

Preheat oven to 450. Place flour in a shallow bowl, and egg in a second bowl: season with salt and pepper. Pulse cereal and oil in a food processor (or blender) until fine crumbs form. (Don't take off the lid even if just for a second to look at it. Yes, I did this because I was using my smoothie maker and for some reason I didn't think it would shoot little sticky crumbs ALL OVER my kitchen. Um...it did.) Season with salt and pepper; transfer to a third shallow bowl.

Coat chicken; first in flour; shaking of excess; then with egg, letting excess drip off; and finally in cereal mixture, pressing to help it adhere. Place on a baking sheet, and bake until light golden brown and cooked through, 10-15 minutes, turning over halfway through.

Meanwhile, in a small bowl, mix together sour cream, mustard and honey; season with salt and pepper. Serve tenders with creamy honey mustard dipping sauce.




We ate them with baked potatoes and salad, but I think they'd be really good with homemade potato fries also. :)

Zucchini Pasta

***This recipe was originally a BIG recipe. I made it for about 2-3 people so it's scaled down a bit. :)

I got this recipe from this website the other day. I had a friend that gave me a bunch of delicious zucchini from her garden, so I had to find SOMETHING to do with it besides make a ton of zucchini bread.

On to the pasta. It's delicious! I didn't make it exactly like The Pioneer Woman did because I didn't have everything on hand at my house and this was a quick "whip it up" lunch. So...you get what you get. :)

Recipe:

1/2 LARGE zuchinni (equal to one regular sized zuchinni) not peeled, but chopped coarsely
Grape or cherry tomatoes (I didn't have any of these and so I sliced up carrots and put them in)
Olive oil
Chicken broth
Pasta (she used farfalle, I used penne)
Cream (I had none...so I used sour cream, surprisingly ... it worked)
Parmesan Cheese
Corn Starch

Directions:

Heat 2 T Olive Oil in a skillet, and then add the zucchini until it's slightly browned. DON'T cook it for very long, mushy vegetables are gross. Plus, it cooks more later.

Remove the zucchini from the pan. Add in chopped onion (1/4 onion or so) and 1 clove garlic.
Put in the tomatoes (or carrots) and heat.

Pour in 1/3 cup chicken broth. Scrape the bottom of the pan and get it all mixed in.

In another bowl, stir together 1/3 cup chicken broth and 1 T Corn Starch.

Stir this mixture into the vegetables and add about 3 T sour cream.

Stir to combine. Add the zucchini back in and turn off the heat and just let the flavors combine.

Stir this mixture together with your cooked pasta and enjoy!

My only warning is that this has LOT of vegetables in it. So, if your little digestive system isn't used to vege. overload ... maybe eat this with some bread or something to tone it down a bit. :)

Are you still there?

I'm sure we've lost many readers due to our lack of posts.

I just wanted to apologize and let you know that we DO have a good reason for the absence.

We're both prego! Looking at food, talking about food, cooking food...just hasn't been super fun the past few months.

But, we're back.

Look for new blogs soon.

Chili Cornbread Casserole

I got the idea for this recipe from my Mom and was reminded to use it when I saw this recipe this morning.

This is a great way to use your left-over chili or you can make it from scratch like I did today.

Whip up some chili. Mine is always different, depending on what's in the cupboard. But, today I had kidney beans, black beans, a bag of corn, salsa and some cooked and shredded chicken. (And of course a little salt and pepper). We're not big fans of spicy food, so if you like things kicked up a bit you could add a can of green chilies or some Rotel or something.

Pour the chili into a baking dish. I'm not sure what size this is, it's my "medium" one. Does that help?

Then, mix up a batch of cornbread. I always use the recipe on the back of the cornmeal bag. It's super simple. ****TIP*** Don't try substituting wheat flour for the white flour, it makes really grainy and dry cornbread. I use half and half sometimes, but all white flour really tastes the best.

Pour the cornbread mix right on top of the chili. My mom's tip is to only put the cornmix on the outsides of the pan and leave the middle uncovered because it's hard to get it to cook all the way through. I tried to do this, but when I lifted the pan to put it in the oven, it just slid all over the casserole. Anyhow, it baked just fine...luckily!

Bake it in the oven with no cover for about 20 minutes. After 20 minutes, mine was perfectly cooked though, no gooey-ness. If you like it a little gooey, then just take a few minutes of time off.

Scoop away and enjoy!

Oh, and there was a little extra cornmeal mix so I baked two muffins with the casserole. Yum-o!

Fruit cuplets

These are so easy and good. I made them for my niece and nephew and they ate the fruit and cream out of the middle and left me the rest. I think next time I'd cut the cuplet in half. The dough to cream ratio was a bit off.

Buy some puff pastry cuplets.
Bake according to directions on box.
Remove as much of the middle as you can after you bake them.
Mix up some of the previously posted fruit dip (or you could just use your favorite whipped cream)
Add the fruit of season
Top with a dallop more of the fruit dip and place the lid back on top.