Pesto Pasta & Poultry

So, I realize it has been a crazy long time since we last updated. If there's anyone who avidly reads this, I apologize. May is always a crazy month with school & finals, plus we were both sick for a good portion of the month which means a lot of Campbell's soup & nothing fancy. Sarah is home for the summer now, which means no more pizza nights either.

As I'm going through the kitchen trying to use up all my food before the beginning of the summer, I remembered I haven't made pesto in a while, plus I have a lot of chicken in the freezer that I should cook, and I found leftover sun-dried tomatoes. Here's the end result:

Of course, it wasn't as great as the usual family bbq, but it was pretty good for my homework filled, rainy Memorial Day.

-Amanda

Mexican on St. Patrick's Day!

For our weekly food extravaganza we strayed away from Italian and instead went with a Mexican inspired feast. We wanted to use the rest of the peppers we had from Ravioli last week, so we cooked them in a little oil and just let them sit on low heat while we did everything else.

It was cheaper for us to make our own tortilla chips than to buy them, so we heated up some vegetable oil and cut the corn tortillas in quarters and fried them up! It was surprisingly fun and easy, and now we have a ton of extra chips!



Amanda cooked her chicken with a little cayenne pepper and taco seasoning to give it a more spicy, Mexican flavor.

I cooked mine with some pepper and minced garlic.

For a side I made some regular white rice and Amanda made Spanish rice.

Amanda's Dinner-chicken fajitas

My Dinner - I'm not a big fan of Mexican food, so I consider this a huge step in my culinary experience.

We also made some virgin margaritas with ginger ale. Not the most delicious drinks ever but very frothy and festive! Plus its just fun drinking out of margarita glasses.
Happy Green River Day from Chicago!
-Sarah

An Oscar Worthy Dinner

When I was flipping through the cookbook we got last night's ravioli inspiration from I came upon a recipe for Pepper Chicken with Honey Butter. It sounded absolutely amazing so I decided I would make that for dinner. It was very easy. The recipe itself calls for a whole chicken breast, but I've been working my way through a large bag of frozen chicken breast strips, so i used those. So you take the chicken and cover it in coarsely crushed peppercorn, both black and white variates (but I only had black) and cook on the stove with a little oil. The sauce is a 1/4 cup butter and two teaspoons honey. I drizzled some on when the chicken was almost done cooking and then more when I put it on the plate. The sweetness of the honey contrasted nicely with the pepper. For a side dish I made box mashed potatoes which were a cinch to make. It turned out to be a lovely, quick meal.





bon appetit!

-Sarah

Calzone & Ed Byrne, what a lovely way to spend the evening

I believe its been about two weeks since we last made a pizza (and began this blog) so Sarah & I decided it was due time to try our hand at pizza once again. This time we wanted to be more creative than last so we made a calzone! Since I have about 3 weeks experience working at a pizza joint (Cheezies, gotta love it) I mustered up my memory on how to make these bad boys.

We wanted something different than just regular pizza & were inspired by the chicken, bacon, ranch flavor combination. We substituted marinara sauce for good ole Kraft ranch salad dressing (on sale at Target even!) and also added tomato, onion & green pepper to the meats. I almost forgot to put in the cheese but luckily Sarah reminded me before we put it in the oven.

We were much better at multi-tasking this time around. Here's all the prep work we did while the dough finished rising. Go us, right?

Despite what you may think by looking at this photo, the calzone didn't fall off the counter.

And the finished product. We brushed the crust with melted butter & garlic salt to keep it soft.

And we finished off our lovely evening by watching Ed Byrne, one of our favorite Irish comedians. Admittedly, he's one of the few Irish comedians I know, but still. Watch this, you'll laugh.

-Amanda

Salsa Chicken

When I went grocery shopping at the beginning of the quarter I bought quite a few chicken breasts that have since been forgotten in the freezer. Well, yesterday I decided I should actually make something with one of them. I had some left over refried beans and rice from a couple of days ago, so I thought I'd cook the chicken in a way that would complement those flavors. What I ended up doing was putting cayenne pepper on the chicken as it was cooking. When it was nearly done, I added medium salsa and let the chicken absorb the flavors. The salsa somehow caramelized or something and it tasted kind of like a spicy barbecue sauce, but with onions and peppers on top. Then while I was reheating my leftovers, I topped the chicken with some cheese.

¡Lo era muy delicioso!

-Amanda