Skillet Italian Chicken

Here’s a yummy, fast dinner, if you have the ingredients on hand.

Skillet Italian Chicken

Over medium heat, fry 7-8 chicken breast tenders in 1 Tb. butter, liberally seasoned with Italian Seasoning (herbs and garlic from Frontier herbs) and celtic sea salt (my favorite yummy salt). I cooked the tenders from frozen, and it took only about 10 minutes. I kept a lid on my skillet the entire time to preserve the juices and keep the tenders moist, then I chopped them into chunks with the cooking spatula and transferred them into a lidded casserole to keep warm.

Next, I added to the skillet/juices: 1/2 lb of cherry tomatoes, cut in half, and 1 lb. red and yellow peppers, cored, seeded, and chopped. I left the lid off the skillet and turned the heat up to nearly high, to get some blackening on the edges of the veggies, about 7 minutes. I then transferred them to the casserole.

Next, I added more butter to the skillet, more salt, and 1.5 lbs crimini mushrooms (most of a large box from Costco), washed and halved. (I know you’re supposed to “wipe” mushrooms with a dry cloth to preserve their full flavor. But really? They’re grown in manure! I wash them.) Again I left the lid off and sauteed them on med. high until they produced a nice jus.

The mushrooms are then added to the casserole, blended together, and sprinkled with 1/2 cup shredded Parmesan cheese (I love the raw one which Trader Joe’s sells in a convenient bag). Serve hot next to a salad of baby greens. Bon appetit!

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Day Three [Diet Makeover pt. 10]

Breakfast:
Homemade 24 hour Yogurt, with berries and honey on top
Banana Muffins made with almond flour, topped with Irish Butter (Kerrygold)
Ripe banana

The kids woke up happy this morning, and excited about muffins and yogurt for breakfast. The pre-breakfast banana they each ate when they first rose pretty much filled up Sister, as she ate only about half her muffin and berries. But she was super excited that the berries were pink!! [favorite color] Brother ate 2 muffins plus his sister’s half muffin while I regaled him with the wonders of Irish Butter, from Irish Cows, feasting on Irish Clover. He’s been saying “Mmm, Irish Butter!” ever since.

Lunch:
Almond Roll Ups for kids (like a crepe made with just egg and butter, with almond or peanut butter and/or honey and cinnamon inside)
Soup leftovers for Moms

The Almond Roll Ups were not loved by these kids as they are by my children. I think a key is that hot crepes are awesome, but if you’re unsure about it, and stare at it for 20 minutes, they aren’t so great cold. However, the children all ate much better today, and we heard very few requests for contraband food.

In the afternoon, both Moms and kids/babies took a trip to the local Farmers Market, which was beautiful and had plenty of seasonal organic veggies. We bought asparagus and King Oyster mushrooms for dinner, as well as lettuce, several herbs, carrots, and broccoli.

Mr. Dad wasn’t able to make it home for lunch, and being pressed for time, swung through the Chic Fil-A drivethru, only to realize that there’s nothing “legal” to eat there. He ordered chicken nuggets in a heroic effort to avoid a bun. He confessed all this in true on-your-honor-boyscout spirit when he arrived home before dinner. Lesson learned: have a lunch plan.

Dinner:
Salmon fillets, broiled with marinade of lemon juice, olive oil, honey, and balsalmic vinegar, with some garlic and dill
Mushrooms sauteed in butter and garlic
Asparagus sauteed in butter and garlic

We had an unfortunate dinner malfunction because half of the frozen salmon I grabbed from the freezer had been frozen at home from a fresh whole fish…but it was too long ago and it tasted fishy and bitter. We realized this at the table, after the first bite, and had to chuck all the bad fish and divide the remaining flash frozen/individually sealed fish between us. What we had was good. Lesson learned: ask about viability of unmarked freezer food (me) and don’t freeze fish yourself (all of us).

Task list:
Begin another batch of yogurt and Creme Fraiche (trying to culture all their milk so they have some ahead when I leave town)
Make another batch of Banana Muffins
Shop for a short list at Trader Joe’s: most of what we need was already purchased there, and at Costco, earlier in the week

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