Cook. Craft. Enjoy.

Easy Chicken and Broccoli

It amazes me just how technological everything has become in the last few years -- everything gadety is so mainstream and things that used to be just for "nerds" you almost feel left out if you don't have.  Amazingly one of the things I find myself using all the time was a gift I got last year for the holidays ... an iPad. 

What do I do with it?  Well, I surf the web on the couch now (like I need any more laziness where surfing the web is concerned), watch movies via Netflix in bed when I (or one of the kids) isn't feeling well, read on it (with the Kindle app), play games on it (Trade Nations, anyone?), and even plan our weekly menu on it.  One of my favorite apps is RecipeGrazer - it's the app from the website keyingredient.com - and every day it has new recipes to browse through.  One of the recipes I found this week was for chicken, broccoli and lemon stir fry.

Add some rice, and a dinner is born! 

How was it?  I'd say it was good ... not overwhelmingly flavored but the freshness of the broccoli and lemon brought it all together.  Next time I might used seasoned rice vinegar to add a slight sweetness to it, but overall I'd say give it a try.

Almost Halloween

You can sure feel the fall in the air around here ... tonight they're even promising a few snow flurries.  Brrrr.... but that doesn't mean we can't enjoy Halloween.   This started out innocently enough ...

Does that make me a bad cook for using packaged cake mix and frosting?  Liam and I were in Target last week, he saw these, and *poof* his little 10 year old brain was in action wanting to make it.  Not that there's not enough sugar around this time of year (no, I haven't bought my candy yet, have you?), but I'm a softie at heart and we came home with it.

Greek Salad or Nachos?

This honestly is too good not to share ...

This recipe started out from here - a recipe from Mark Bittman that was posted in 2009 on the New York Times website.  We had these a couple weeks ago in nacho form, but I decided tonight to put it into salad form and found I liked it much better.

The changes I made to his original recipe were a few, so here's what I did:

1. I couldn't find ground lamb at Wegmans this week so I used ground pork.  I browned that with some cumin, oregano and onion powder.
2. The tzatziki sauce I made from Greek yogurt (2 small containers of plain), 4 cloves of garlic, 1 bunch of mint, the juice of 1 lemon, 1/2 cucumber (diced), and a sprinkling of both oregano and onion powder, and a handful of feta cheese.  All that got whizzed in my Ninja chopper.
3. I opted not to toast the pitas -- the first time I made this I did and every one agreed that it was better soft. 
4. To serve, I had a base of lettuce greens, added the pork, diced cucumber, a couple of marinated olives and peppers, feta cheese, a spoonful of hummus, the pitas and then of course the tzatziki sauce. 

DELICIOUS.  I actually can't wait to have the leftovers for lunch tomorrow.  :)