Two new paleo chicken recipes!

Here is the quick, pictureless version. These were both tasty and the whole family loved both. I am NO recipe writer, so let me know if you have any questions. Enjoy!

"Breaded" chicken with baby bella mushrooms-

Ingredients:

• 1 package baby bella mushrooms
• 3 cloves fresh garlic
• extra virgin olive oil (EVOO)
• 3-4 boneless chicken breast halves
• 1/2 log of goat cheese, crumbled
• 3/4 cup chicken broth
• paleo "bread crumbs"
• 2 eggs, beaten

To make paleo "bread crumbs": heaping 1/4 cup of almond meal + 1/8 cup ground flax seeds + some marjoram + some oregano + a little pepper + a dash of salt...mix together

1. Preheat oven to 350
2. In medium skillet over medium high heat, pour generous amount of EVOO and crushed garlic. Sautee mushrooms for about 3-4 minutes. Remove them and place in large baking dish.
3. Pound chicken breast. I am a firm believer in meat pounding. :)
4. Cut chicken breast into strips approximately 2 inches wide and the length of the breast.
5. Heat generous amount of EVOO over medium high heat in large skillet.
6. Dip chicken in egg and roll into paleo "bread crumb" mix.
7. Place chicken in large skillet and brown each side approximately 3 minutes (until "bread crumbs" bind and it's a little brown)
8. Remove chicken and bury under mushrooms in large baking dish. You may have to brown the chicken in several batches. Don't be afraid to add more EVOO before you start a new batch so it doesn't burn.
9. Pour chicken broth over chicken and mushrooms.
10. Spread crushed goat cheese all over the top.
11. Cook for 30ish minutes until chicken is thoroughly cooked.
12. Serve with spoonfuls of liquid remains of baking dish over top of chicken.

Coconut creamed dill chicken-

Ingredients:

• 4 boneless chicken breast halves
• seasoned salt (I used Arizona Jalapeño Salt from Anthony Spices. Because it's what we had. And it's delicious.)
• 1 T coconut manna (although you could use butter...I'm dairy free)
• 1 T extra vigin olive oil (EVOO)
• 1/2 cup chicken broth
• 1/2 cup of full fat coconut milk
• almond meal (or other thickener-I think arrowroot powder would have worked better, but I didn't have any)
• 1-2 T fresh dill or a few tsp of dried dill would work

1. Pound chicken breasts. Cut into strips approximately 2 inches wide and the length of the breast.
2. Sprinkle chicken breasts with seasoned salt.
3. Melt manna (or butter) and EVOO in large skillet (that has a lid) over medium high heat.
4. Add chicken breast pieces and cook 3-4 minutes until chicken is browned on each side.
5. Reduce heat to low.
6. Add broth. Cover and simmer for approximately 10 minutes until chicken is fully cooked. (This will depend on how thick your chicken is.)
7. Remove from skillet and cover with foil to keep warm.
8. In small bowl, combine coconut milk and dill. You may need to melt your coconut milk if it is not in liquid form.
9. Pour into skillet and add almond meal to thicken it up a bit. I added about 1/4 cup and ours was still more runny than creamy, but the flavor was great!
10. Serve chicken breasts with sauce poured over top.

These are both pretty quick, simple recipes. I'd love to hear anything you come up with to improve them!

Not a morning person

I am NOT a morning person. It has taken me 30+ years to come to terms with it AND learn to deal with it. One thing that I have realized makes my transition to awake life better is not having to deal with cooking for a bunch of hungry tummies first thing in the morning. I'm always looking for late night scrambles, cooks, or bakes that will be easy to reheat and serve as soon as I roll out of bed. Tonight I experimented with baked eggs in my Pampered Chef muffin stoneware.

I started out by baking our bacon for about 20 minutes at 375*. It was almost, but not quite cooked. (Side note: I line our baking sheets with foil so that I can save the bacon grease. We use it frequently to brown meat or cook vegetables, eggs, etc. in. It stores well in the fridge and solidifies, making it easy to scoop out spoonfuls as needed.)


When the bacon was done, I folded it into the cups of the muffin stoneware. I placed sliced avocado in 8 cups and left 4 without (for my currently picky eaters). Then I cracked an egg on top of each one. I thought about throwing in a little goat cheese, but laziness won out and I only topped them with a little pepper.


I placed them back in the oven at 375* and checked them until it seemed the white had solidified. I think it was around 30 minutes.


I let them cool in the stoneware and then used a knife to cut around them and a spoon to scoop them out.

Andrew and I tried them...YUM! The white was completely cooked, the yoke a little bit runny, and the bacon was just the right amount of crispy. And avocado? Well, it never really changes.

The top:

The bottom:
The yum:

Evolution of a kitchen

I found a couple photos of our kitchen before the house was even ours. Everything in the kitchen was pretty basic, but we lucked out that pretty much everything was there considering we bought a HUD home in 2003. This was our blank slate complete with world's cheapest appliances when we moved in.



I have no idea why we have a picture of this mess or what in the world we were doing with all of those boxes on our counters, but I'll post it anyway because it gives a pretty accurate picture of bleh wall color+red curtains+ugly counters+cheap counter tops+white appliances. We did add new light fixtures, a hanging pan rack, and a nice ceiling fan in our eating area.

I went through a series of other curtains before ending with these, which are still hanging now, but soon to change to colorful roman shades...


This is our lovely old table that we grew out of. Now it lives in our adjoining school room. Back then, I attempted to keep live plants in the kitchen. *snort*


Ah...mismatched appliances. We bought a black dish washer when our old white one broke. So here we had a stainless fridge and a white stove to go with it. Believe it or not, my least favorite thing about that stove wasn't even the color, or the fact that it didn't really heat to the proper temperature, but that it had one large and three tiny burners. With every mouth we had to feed it became more and more annoying.


Then our crummy old cupboards started to get the best of me. So I painted. For months. I took down the doors and painted a few each night. Then I flipped them. We lived without doors for a while. Then I did the frames, including the tops and bottoms. And I went bold. Then I painted the room in Harbor Blue by Behr. I added nice new brushed nickle hardware to match our decor (and to get rid of the ugly rusted brass hardware). Sorry for the poor picture quality.


The new colors made our counter top look extra awful, and pieces were cracking off everywhere. We found a little extra cash and hired someone on Craigslist to replace our counter top. And we were soon after gifted a beautiful black range and microwave. We opted not to get the built-in backsplash, so I read a DIY on tiling and off I went.

Finally things were coming together. But there was the issue of the hole in the island from Atticus sliding into it with his foot. Neither Andrew or I could figure out how to replace the wood easily, and since tiling went so well, I tiled it instead. I even got fancy and added glass tiles sporadically.


And then came mid-December of 2010. I was around 34 weeks pregnant and had the flu. And all of a sudden we had a hole in our kitchen ceiling, and water everywhere. To make a long story short, one thing lead to another, and our kitchen was torn out and completely replaced...finishing after my 40th week of pregnancy. I'll spare you the details on the mold treatment, living without a kitchen for over a month DURING the holiday season, and having people in and out of the house every day for well over a month even after my birthtub was prominently placed in our family room. But it paid off and the results are fantastic.

I love the tall, handmade cupboards more than I can express. The "artisan" who crafted them was sooooooo slow and unreliable, but it turns out dealing with him was great practice for waiting patiently for Dempsey to arrive after 42 weeks and 4 days of pregnancy.

They even replaced the backsplash (I thought my tiling job was better).


Now we just want to redo our tile floors with large slate tiles that match the basksplash. And I dream of a more family friendly pantry. But for now, here's a glimpse at the beginning of our owl collection and our history timeline.

And one of my favorite owls who remains perched on top of our fridge and holds important papers, like my jury summons for example.


Just today we turned our dining table in the opposite direction, but no pictures of that yet.

For those who are interested, the windows will soon have this as covering:


I'll update when they're ready!

Sharing some of my pretties.

Last night I was sitting here admiring my beautiful fans and had my camera out so I decided to snap some pictures. These beauties were a thoughtful Mother's Day gift from my own mother this year. They are fantastically gorgeous, and completely my style ! It is actually very difficult to capture their beauty in photographs, but I did attempt it.

We have one in our eating area and one in the schoolroom. The blades and base are a coppery, blackish, brownish color, which changes with the time of day and angle you are admiring them from.

And once we hung them our old light over the kitchen area looked dreadful. Luckily I found this little discontinued gem at Lowe's at a killer price. I can't believe how well it matches!


I hardly like to boast about "things," but these are too beautiful not to share.

Sneak peek at Oak Meadow 1st Grade Language Arts

We started first grade Oak Meadow Language Arts with Creeley today. I picked up a very well- loved copy of the First Grade Syllabus and First Grade Fairy Tales for a most excellent price. I plan on using this program for Language Arts and Social Studies immediately. I'll pick up Science in the fall because the program is designed to follow the typical school year pattern with regards to seasonal lessons. We will continue on with Singapore Math 1A for Creeley because that program is a perfect fit for him.

I think we are going to adore this program! Here's a sneak peek of what we did today for our A day.

Here's the whole spread:

First we read our alphabet story for the letter A-"The Magic Spindle." The story was just the right length and very well-written.

Creeley and I both wrote an A and a and made them into pictures to symbolize what we read in "The Magic Spindle" (haystack for A and a little girl with golden hair for a).

Then we read through our -at and -ay word families using the phonogram sheets from Jan Brett. We love her cute little illustrations. (Sorry the picture is the wrong direction...I can't figure out how to flip it for the life of me.)

Then I read the A poem 3 times. You can see that they provided a list of the word families for this week, but the Jan Brett sheets are adorable and Creeley really loves little creatures so we are going to stick with those instead.

He can't wait to do B tomorrow!

Puddin' pops

The thing I enjoy the most about the summer heat here in Arizona is the definitive *need* for frozen goodies. Today we tried our hand at making pudding pops (whatever happened to those Jello pudding pops toted by Bill Cosby?). They were easy and fabulous!

Atticus and I mixed up some instant chocolate pudding. I chopped up some strawberries to add to the pops. We've been eating everything a la strawberry here this week since they were $.77 per pound at our local grocery store.

We filled each hole in our Pampered Chef muffin stoneware about 1/3 full with chocolate pudding.


We layered our sliced strawberries on top of the pudding.


Then we covered them with more pudding.


We stuck colorful sticks in the middle of each one.


All ready for the freezer!


A nap time later I cut around them with a knife. Success!


They taste even better than they look!


Townsyn said, "these are like, super yummy."


I think so too!