Friday, January 7, 2011

I never said I was a chef!

Ahh, staying at home with much time to cook. It can be a beautiful thing! That is, when your almost 3 year old isn't climbing up your leg. Travis wanted to "help" me cook this week, but he quickly lost interest. So I was on my own with my recipes.

Earlier in the week I tried home made chicken nuggets from "Deceptively Delicious". I had tried this recipe once before when I first got the cook book, so I figured I could handle it, and Travis loves chicken nuggets. One thing I must note is I like to change recipes a lot, either substituting or leaving something out because I don't have it around the house.

This recipe called for 1 cup panko breadcrumbs, 1/2 cup flaxseed meal (didn't have it, so I left it out), 1 tablespoon grated parmesan, 1/2 teaspoon Paprika, 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder, 1/2 teaspoon onion powder, 1 cup broccoli puree, 1 large egg beaten, 1 pound chicken cut into small chunks, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1 tablespoon Olive oil (I used Canola).

You mix all the dry ingredients in one bowl and the egg and broccoli puree in another. Get the skillet nice and hot with the oil and start breading the chicken. First in the egg/puree mixture, and then in the dry mixture, drop in the pan. 3 to 4 minutes on each side until chicken is cooked.
 
This really was a quick easy recipe that i paired with the broccoli that I didn't puree and some mashed sweet potatoes. Don and I loved it, Travis loved the broccoli, but prefers the store bought chicken nuggets. I plan to make this recipe again, so he'll just have to get over it!

A couple days later I decided to make the meatball sub recipe from "Double Delicious". I used deer meat instead of the ground meat and ground turkey that she suggested. Don said it might not hold together pretty well since there isn't a lot of fat in Deer meat, but I went ahead anyway.

Recipe: 1/2 cup whole wheat breadcrumbs, 1 cup chicken broth, 1 cup sweet potato puree, 1 large egg white, garlic, 1/4 teaspoon salt, 1/4 teaspoon pepper, 1 pound meat (1/2 ground, 1/2 turkey), 1 table spoon olive oil, 1/2 onion chopped, 2 tablespoons tomato paste, 1 can diced tomato.

I had a pregnancy brain moment and missed the step where it said to put 1/2 the chicken broth into the meatball mixture, so I put all the chicken broth in. Too much! I had to heat the onions in the oil and get it ready for the first meatballs. I plopped them in and tried to gently turn them when ready. It wasn't working out so well. Some of them decided to fall apart. When I was done with the whole thing I had about half meatballs and half sloppy joe. Oh well! I will try it again later, much later!

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