Chicken and Spinach Casserole

I can't believe it is Friday again and that it has been 4 days since I wrote last.  This week has flown by.  I have been looking at ways to save whether that is making gifts, cooking at home more or just realizing I really don't need those pair of jeans. 

The cooking part has been fun.  Working on ways to change up dishes to make them more interesting or creating others to take the desire of out of eating out so much.  The only time that is a little more difficult is keeping the flavors in line with what my family likes.   Friday in my house is fend night, so I am going to try a new casserole that I pinned recently. 

  This is a Chicken and Spinach Casserole from marthstewart.com  I am going to give this one a try.  I may substitute homemade chicken broth for the Wine.

Ingredients

• 2 cups torn bread (I keep left over bread cubed in the freezer for quick to make croutons)
• 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
• coarse salt and ground pepper
• 4 cups packed flat-leaf spinach, washed
• 1 medium yellow onion, finely chopped
• 1 garlic clove, minced (I used 2)
• 1/4 cup white wine
• 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 cups half-and-half
• 1/2 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
• 1 cup shredded rotisserie chicken

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees. In a medium bowl, combine bread with 1 tablespoon oil; season with salt. Set aside, [I separated out 3/4c in a small bowl]. In a medium pot, heat 1 1/2 teaspoons oil over medium-high. Add spinach; season with salt [I only had frozen, so I used about 1c frozen and cooked it just a little while to thaw and then drained]. Cook, stirring, until wilted, 2 minutes. Transfer to a colander, let cool, then squeeze out water. Coarsely chop. [Mine was already chopped]
2. Wipe pot clean and heat 1 1/2 teaspoons oil over medium. Add onion, garlic; season with salt and pepper. Cook, stirring occasionally, until onion is soft, about 8 minutes.
3. Add wine to pot [I used homemade chicken stock] and cook until almost evaporated, about 5 minutes. Add flour and cook, stirring, 30 seconds. Gradually whisk in half-and-half. Add lemon juice and bring mixture to a boil over high. [I only had whipped cream so I used 1c cream and 1/2c chicken broth]. 
4. Remove from heat and stir in [another add in, I added 1/4c Parmesan and asiago cheese blend], chopped spinach and chicken; season with salt and pepper. [I mixed this into the cubed bread]. Transfer to a 2-quart baking dish and top with [the reserved 3/4c] bread pieces. Bake until bread is golden brown and mixture is bubbling, 8 to 10 minutes.

I modified the recipe some from the original version, all the italicized sections are what I changed.  I am notorious for doing that but I know what I like and half the time recipes don't make sense to me.  This one without the cheese seemed a little bland when I read it.  The cheese added just enough flavor.

If you have ever made Chicken Florentine, this is just like it but a great make ahead meal and less messy to prepare.  For the chicken, I had an uncooked breast so I roasted that in the oven, just 1, with salt, pepper and a little olive oil.  The chicken, spinach cream mixture can be made in advance and just before baking add in the bread and pop in the oven.  Perfect for a weeknight meal especially if you had grilled chicken previously, just sent 1 breast aside or for guests.  Tastes like you spent a lot of time on it.

This really came out good.  The bread on top was nice and crunchy with the bread in to the dish like a bread pudding consistency.   My mother and sister-n-laws would love this dish.

  

Hope you try this dish and enjoy it as much as Steve and I did.

On to planning my weekend.   I have a girlfriends birthday coming up so I think I am going to try my hand a making her homemade soaps.  Another of my "80" projects where I have all the ingredients, some thanks to Nikki, but never got up to finishing. 

I love the rain and today the weather was perfect.  Don't get me wrong, I like the sun more, but a good rainy day like today was lovely.  Tomorrow is going to be sunny and after a steady rain makes everything look clearer, cleaner and smell lovely.

Nothing better on a rainy day that cooking comfort food.  I have to being by saying that the meal was already planned prior to the rain, but I think it came out better because of it.  I am going to digress a bit and lay the groundwork.  Every week, I do a menu which is pretty consistent from a general category stand point;

Sunday is usually the "big" family meal where I will go the extra mile and put more work into the meal; Monday: Sandwich night, or soup and sandwiches and in the summer salad and sandwich;

Tuesday: Mexican, "taco Tuesday" is how that came about;

Wednesday: Italian, not sure why, but it is usually some kind of pasta;

Thursday: American and lately another "Monday" night meal; and this is followed up by

Friday is Fend!! all the leftovers, normally my son has plans, or my husband and I meet out friends for a date night.  Saturday is normally this as well.

So with that said, this past week I moved the Sunday meal to Saturday night since we were having friends over for a football day and today was Sandwich night.  In preparation for that, and here is where I left off before, I decided to make Grilled Chicken and Avocado on a Ciabatta roll.  I found this great recipe and everyone was raving about. 

I normally made my bread from an Artisan style recipe that is a large batch of dough made up in advance and then I can pull from it and bake throughout the week.  Great stand by for anything from pizza to a crusty loaf. 

This time I was going for a very specific style of bread and found it at food.com.  (my new go to for consistently good recipes and variety.)

http://www.food.com/recipe/ciabatta-italian-slipper-bread-29100

This starts with a "sponge" which is sort of like a sourdough starter but only has to be made 12 hours to 1 day in advance.  I made it last night, and it turned into a very bubbly looking yeasty soft dough.   Today I made the full dough which was very easy and it baked up beautifully.  The recipe makes 2 loaves, one I did just like the recipe calls for and the other I brushed lightly with olive oil and covered in Asiago cheese.

         

I also made as a last minute add in, the Cheesy Potato Rounds which are basically potato wedges but so much quicker and easier.  They came out so good.

All  in all a pretty good Monday, even if I did have to work all day, but the cooking and baking totally made up for it and I got to enjoy a rainy day. 

Red Cooked Chicken

or so the recipe is called.  I tried it out today and well, it didn't come out red but i give it *** out of 5.
Here is the recipe pic if you didn't catch it from yesterday.

Mine didn't come out quite so pretty.  But I loved the flavor.  My family isn't a huge fan of chicken thighs which this recipe calls for but I decided to get it a try.  The only substitute I did from the original recipe was replace the sherry for homemade chicken broth.  Didn't want to go out and but sherry for this one recipe and I am not sure I care for the flavor.   The ingredients are sherry (broth), soy sauce brown sugar, fresh ginger, garlic, green onions and Chinese 5 spice (my new favorite spice blend).  Mix that all together and pop it in the slow cooker with skinless bone-in thighs. 

I am not sure when the slow cooker fell out of popularity but growing up we never used it.  I have to say it is one of my most prized cooking devices.  So anytime I find a recipe that catches my eye and has slow cooker in the description I am game.

Once the chicken is coated, I turned on the cooker for 2 hours high and 4 1/2 low.  This was due to the recipe calling for 10 low or 4 high depending on your time, well I had 7 hours and figured I would combine them.

The chicken came out a little dry but the taste was great.  I did a carrot, broccoli, snow pea combo and served it all over steamed rice I had left over from another Asian inspired meal I made last week.

As you can tell by know I am no photographer so be will ask for a bit of forgiveness with the images on this blog.  (I am sure I will mention that again as well. )

The recipe can be found at http://pinterest.com/cookingchannel/slow-cooker-versus-crock-pot/  I will make it again and made some minor modifications in the printed recipe. 

Happy cooking.

Happy Friday

So I never figured out how to create "categories" but I am using the free blogger template and that could be why.  Needless to say, I have been most frustrated with the whole process and almost gave up on the "blog" concept until a short time ago.   The actual blog almost became my first casualty.  Can you believe it?
I have come back to my senses though and am ready to move forward.

As noted above it is Friday and a really long week at work. Good but long.  I am finally done for the day and have started switching gears on what I am going to do this weekend.

I have looked up a few recipes and this one seems to look pretty tasty and a slow cooker one at that. 


It is called "Red Cooked Chicken" and is asian style so looking forward to trying this one out.  I plan on making it on Sunday so check back to see how it comes out.

I also need to start my taxes this weekend, yuck but necessary.  Hoping to get a little something back.  We will see.

I am still trying to figure this blog thing out.  I am trying to determine how to post an netry but have it be displayed on the main page until the next entry and then move into a "page" I have created. 

I think this is going to take me longer than I thought.  I am not a computer genius but neither am I challenged but this has me stumped.

I will keep poking around and hopefully get this figured out. 

g

Valentine's Project continued

Again it has been almost a week since I last wrote.  I am trying to get better at updating and thinking of things to write.  That is proving to be more difficult than I anticipated.

I was able to finish the wall hanging, which turned out to not be a hanging after all.  I ended up making a mat for my table since I really don't have a place to put up a themed item on my walls. 

I have to say I was pretty surprised when it was all done.  I just finished it tonight and love it.  My favorite are the flowers, so cute.  There is certainly room for improvement but for my first try at something like this, I think it is okay.

Although this took me a little longer than expected, I really tried not to obsess since that is what usually causes me to lose interest. 

Now on to the next one.  I am going to switch gears and try my hand at a new dish I think this weekend.  I have been going through some of my cook books to see what catches my eye, or stomach.  In my house, trying a new meal item is tricky.  Steve and Elijah, (husband and son) are a little picky, well a lot picky. 

Right now they both have decided sweets are bad so baking is out unless I want to eat it all, Yes, but No!  I made homemade buttermilk biscuits over the weekend, 5 got eaten (3 by me, not on the same day) and then they sat.  I froze them in hopes that they will be good for another day.  It takes the fun out of cooking when it isn't as appreciated as much as it was creating.

So this weekend I am going for a main dish.  It has been cold lately so something hearty but not heavy.  Will let you know how that turns out. 

until next time...

Valentine's Project

It has been a few days since I wrote last.  Well more like a few weeks.  My family and I went on a mini road trip up north to see my in-laws and my family.  It was nice to see everyone for the Holiday's which for my side of the family has been forever.  Years to be more exact so seeing them around the Holiday time was special.  We were just as happy to be back home to attempt to get into a routine for the new year.

I have been trying to think about what to do with this blog and the direction if any I wanted it to go in.  Still working on that, hence why there has been some delay from my last entry. 

As I was thinking about what to what I wanted my next project to be.  I got an add in the mail and saw some lovely Valentine decorations.  Valentine's Day, already!  WOW.  I just put away Christmas and New Years.  I couldn't stop myself though when I saw this cute Valentine inspired flag and thought that I could tackle that. 

I went through some scrap fabric I had left over from various other projects and jumped right in.  It took a little planning since I wanted it to be more of a quilt style then a print.  And here is where I get the "80" nickname talked about before.  I got very gunghoe, printed a copy of the picture, measured out a diagram of what I wanted and how big to make it, layed out different fabrics and jumped in with both feet.  Now mind you, it took a little time to set up everything; pull the iron out, find an extension cord, rearrange my work space, get the right color thread, find my fabric roller cutter, ... and now I am an hour in and I am tired.  I haven't even cut anything. 

That is when I thought of this blog and said, "I will finish."  So I got to work on cutting out the roof, windows, wall peices and started sewing them together. 

I am no where near finished but feel good with what I have done thus far.  Here is a peak at the beginnings of the hanging.

The door is too long so I have some work to do on that.  I will start working on it again this weekend.  Keep in mind this is an "interpretation" of the picture, but one I hope will inspire me to work on other things and keep moving in the right direction.

It it my son Elijah's birthday today, 17 so we are doing a family night.  I was thinking yesterday that there are moments in my life that I can see with such clarity, as if looking through a window.  One of those moments was when my son was born, as I am sure is the same for every mother.

I can recall the moment when my doctor told me I had to go to the hospital, the movie that was playing while in labor in my room, the technician that came in and changed the clock and so much more.  God blessed me that day 17 years ago when my son was born, 7lbs, 6oz and 20" long.  Today he is 5'10", and has grown into such an amazing young man that I am so proud of.

On that note, good night.