Easy Chicken with George!

So over the past several weeks I've been figuring out how to take care of a baby and cook at the same time which I LOVE. I had missed cooking so I'm very grateful to get back to it. However, there are still plenty of nights that, for whatever reason, I'm not able to cook and then Jord gets home and there's not much time to get dinner ready before it gets late so often times we're looking for something really quick, but more sustainable than a pbj. Though we have our fill of pbj-like dinners. :)

So we started employing the George Foreman a lot more to make some quick grilled chicken! We'd then pair it with some quick sides and voila! A quick dinner that feels like more effort was put in than there actually was. 

Here are some ideas of ways to quickly put a dinner like this together. 

The chicken:

You could top it with any mixture of the following-

Basil, thyme, rosemary, parsley, etc. 

seasoned salt

Mrs dash 

You could even marinate it (but you'd have to have planned ahead for that... But the making of the meal would still be fast!)

The sides:

Plain rice

Any flavor of the quick packaged Pasta Sides (it was actually one of my favorite meals when we paired it with a pasta Sides!)

Any flavor of the quick packages Rice Sides

Potatoes (roasted, mashed, like fries, etc)

Or we made a quick sauce once with some leftover cilantro in our knock-off magic bullet blender. (Thanks for the idea, Shae!!) And it was still fast and turned out super yummy!! That is the pic below. Any type of sauce would be way yummy over plain rice and the chicken. 

Then just add a veggie and/or fruit and you're good to go! This type of meal has become our fall back meal and I love that you can do lots of variations with it. 

Hope it helps on crazy evenings!!

Love y'all!

Kristi

Fun Themed Night

Since having Joshy, Jord and I have done a lot of things inside at home so we've had to get creative on date nights, etc. We've gotten into old episodes of The Cosby Show and that's been awesome! 

But I was wanting to do something to mix it up a bit. So we had a Country Music Awards night! The CMA's were on a Wednesday night so we made some "southern" food and watched them. It was a fun themed night and was a good variation for the middle of the week. 

We made white chicken chili (great idea, Shae) and cornbread. The white chicken chili recipe is from Our Best Bites and Jord and I both love it! So fun and tasty! And a fun date night idea if you're looking for something fun and free! Any awards night or something on tv with a theme would work. 

Love you!

Kristi

Donuts (doughnuts?) and Side Dishes

Here is the link for the donuts that we made for the pumpkin patch. It was our first experience making donuts and I can't wait to try a different kind. The donuts were a lot easier to make than I thought they would be.

http://www.mondaymorningdonut.com/2013/05/glazed-old-fashioned-rings-and-holes.html

I don't know about you, but I struggle sometimes with what to serve with my dinners during the week. I have my standby frozen vegetables that I steam, but sometimes I want something different. Here are a couple of simple side dishes that I have made recently.

Tomatoes and Cucumbers
tomatoes, diced
cucumbers, diced
ranch dressing

This was super easy. I just diced some tomatoes and cucumbers. Then we put them on our forks and dipped them in ranch dressing. We have had a lot of tomatoes (from other peoples' gardens) and cucumbers (from our garden :) ) recently. This was just another way that I found to use them.

Sweet Carrots
bag of baby carrots
butter (1-2 tablespoons depending on how many carrots you use)
brown sugar

Carrots are naturally sweet when you steam them so I decided to play on this idea. I steamed my carrots, which takes forever!! When they were steamed to the desired tenderness I tossed the carrots with some butter and brown sugar. It ended up making a kind of syrup. Tyler told me after this that steamed carrots are one of his favorite vegetables. I never would have known?!

Happy cooking!
Heather