No-Soup Chicken Breasts

Posted by on Jan 21, 2009 in Food Glorious Food | 2 comments

Last night for some reason I wanted to bake chicken breasts. Usually I sear them quickly on top of the stove and finish them in the oven, and very good they are, too, but variety is the spice of life. My challenge was a) I didn’t have any gloppy canned “cream of” soup, and b) I didn’t want to spoil my beautiful chicken breasts with gloppy canned “cream of” soup anyway. So I played a riff on a baked dip recipe I love and made these. They are just as easy as the canned soup variety and so much better. Really.

I don’t measure in a conventional sense unless I’m baking. So bear with me here.

Start by pre-heating your oven to 375.

Mix together:

Artichoke hearts. I used canned ones (drained, of course). Frozen would work, too. Maybe ten or twelve. Chopped up, not too finely.

Mayonnaise. It does have to be the real thing. Lowfat and fat-free mayonnaise separates in a particularly nasty way when you try to cook with it. I used about half a cup.

Parmesan cheese, grated or shredded, in about the same amount as the mayonnaise.

Canned chopped jalapenos. A couple of tablespoons. This is kind of a to-taste thing. You can leave them out entirely if you don’t like jalapenos.

This will look like cole slaw when you’re done with it.

Rub a baking dish with olive oil. Salt and pepper your chicken breasts (I had two, because there are two of us. You may have one, or four, or twelve. Adjust the sauce ingredients proportionally) and arrange them in the dish. Cover them with the artichoke-parmesan-mayonnaise mixture. Make sure all the meat surface is covered because that’s what keeps the meat beautifully moist. Sprinkle with a little hot Hungarian paprika if you’re feeling crazy. Bake for about thirty minutes. This may vary a bit depending on how many breasts you’ve got in there. They’re done when there’s no pink left in the middle.

Serve with egg noodles (what I used last night, because the Broadcasting Legend™ is particularly partial to noodles), rice, or pasta—farfalle would be good.

These were delicious, quick, and so much better than the canned-soup variety. Sorry, Campbell’s.

Beginning with One Step

Posted by on Jan 19, 2009 in Pedometer | 1 comment

Pedometer, January 19, 2008I have a new project: 10,000 steps. People who are supposed to know such things say it’s a Good Thing to walk 10,000 steps a day. So I bought a pedometer and tried it. Well, as you can see, so far today I’m a total washout. And this includes our regular walk with the doggies! Clearly I’m going to have to walk two or three times a day with the dogs (cue sound of two beagles baying with joy) or something.

As a side note, I made the Broadcasting Legend™’s day when he walked into my office and saw me shooting pictures of my own hip. He’s still laughing.

Solitude

Posted by on Jan 18, 2009 in Life, Reading | 2 comments

I love Walden. When I had to read it for a high school class I hated it. The war between the ants? Oh, please. But later, at my own pace and for my own pleasure, I read it again—and again and again and again—and the intensity of Thoreau’s transcendentalism and love of solitude always delights and refreshes me.

I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will.

A (wo)man thinking or working is always alone.

Suicide (No, I’m Not Considering It)

Posted by on Jan 15, 2009 in History, Words, Writing | 2 comments

One of the fascinating aspects of writing historical fiction is the never-ending struggle to keep your word choice consistent with your time period, while avoiding distracting “Olde Englysshe” constructions. My trusty sidekick in this battle is the Online Etymology Dictionary.

Take the word “suicide.” Two characters in my book are suspected suicides. However, the word “suicide” itself was not recorded until 1651, about a hundred years after the time of my story. For other words or phrases I could use, I read documents of the time, and mused over Hamlet and the discussions of Ophelia’s death—the Shakespeare Search Engine is another way of checking word usage (in English, anyway) in the second half of the sixteenth century.

Words. I do love words.

Six Things That Make Me Happy

Posted by on Jan 14, 2009 in Beagles, Books, Life, Lists, Poetry, Reading, Stargazing | 2 comments

Tagged again! This time, it’s Bryn Greenwood’s doing. I really have to learn to run faster. Heh.

All right. Six things that make me happy.

  1. My first cup of coffee in the morning. Strong strong coffee with milk. It’s not really lattè because the milk isn’t steamed or foamed, but I call it lattè anyway. So report me to the lattè police.
  2. Taking a siesta after lunch. Piling into bed with both doggies and the Broadcasting Legend™ if he’s not on the road and drowsing deliciously through Everyday Italian and Barefoot Contessa on the Food Network.
  3. Hugs from little children.
  4. Going to church. Singing For All the Saints or one of the other great processionals as the scrubbed acolytes (more little children) and the choir stream into the sanctuary, and almost crying as the sopranos launch into the high, soaring descant on the last verse of the hymn.
  5. Flower scents. Real flowers, not perfumes or oils. Lilies of the valley, lilacs, old-fashioned clove pinks. Our English roses—Jude the Obscure, Eglantyne, Winchester Cathedral.
  6. Standing in the back yard and looking up at the sky. Picking out the constellations I learned when I was a little girl at the lake. Trying to work my mind around the inconceivable distances.
  7. Opening a thick, tantalizing new book to the first page.
  8. Reading Algernon Charles Swinburne.

Oh wait. That’s eight. And I haven’t even gotten to chocolate.

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