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dinner

Broiled Lemon Chicken with Basil Sauce

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Oh hi, summer. 

Lemon broiled chicken with basil sauce, gluten free and dairy free.

My basil plant is doing GREAT this year, in a new sunny spot from years past, so prepare yourself for a gazillion “but it’s seasonal” basil-using recipes. You’ll get no apologies from me on that one. 

I’ve been playing around with broiled chicken more, and after a few tries I’m definitely liking the method for a few reasons. It’s super quick and doesn’t smell up the house OR require walking outside to get to the grill, two things that can be a deterrent for me sometimes. This particular broiled lemon chicken is broiled on just one side because the pieces of chicken are super thin. If you don’t feel like cutting the chicken pieces in half (or buying thin-cut chicken) you don’t have to, just flip the chicken and broil on the second side. 

This entire meal is done in half an hour or even less if you make the basil sauce another day as part of meal prep. Let’s do it!

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Quick Chilaquiles Verdes

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How to make chilaquiles verdes with chips, chicken, and green enchilada sauce. Funnyloveblog.com

We are making chips for dinner a thing. Because we survived the hurricane! 

How to make chilaquiles verdes with chips, chicken, and green enchilada sauce. Funnyloveblog.com

Kidding. The rain did zilch here, which of course is a good thing, and it definitely did some huge damage elsewhere. And honestly even if you aren’t in hurricane-land chips for dinner just sounds like a perfect idea, right? You know it does, admit it. 

Chilaquiles is a generic Mexican dish that varies from region to region and household to household. It mostly involves sauce and fried tortillas. In this case we’re using leftover chips, the few handfuls at the bottom of the bag, the leftovers from takeout, you get it. This version is super simple: you can make your own chicken OR use leftovers, and the sauce comes from a can. I love all things verde, but red enchilada sauce would be delicious here as well. The result is a 30-ish minute meal that includes chicken, veggies, and chips, so a well-rounded meal with tons of flavor and precious little effort. 

We win Monday! 

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Parmesan Chicken Cutlet

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Today we are going to be talking about fried chicken. 

Not fried chicken that you have to heat up a vat of oil for, though. Easy weeknight fried chicken that you make right on the stovetop, that doesn’t make a huge mess or tons of oil stink, and that is perfectly crispy and delicious every single time. Perfect for a Monday, practically a health food, that sort of thing. 

I know fried chicken on a weeknight isn’t something we do a ton (it’s super rare for us, although I wish it weren’t so), but once you have the method down it really doesn’t take a ton of extra time or effort, and the results are SO rewarding. This particular chicken cutlet is wonderful on its own with a side dish or two, but is also yummy sliced over a salad or doused with some marinara for a quick chicken-parm type of meal. Or OR! You could put it on a sandwich and that wouldn’t be a bad thing at all. 

A note on portioning here: Once you pound a chicken breast (which is really a half breast, but the regular cut from the grocery store, boneless and skinless) to a thin thickness and bread it, it can seem pretty huge. If you have big appetites you could certainly make one chicken breast per person, but I find that one chicken breast is more than enough for two servings, especially with other things on the plate. Of course, you can also make ten of these at a time and have leftovers. Make ten for sure. 

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Weeknight Meatball Bolognese

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HI. 

How was your Labor Day? Our was GREAT minus a few things. 1. my back stopped functioning on Sunday morning so I’m on day three of super painful spasms and no I can’t stop picking up my toddler and no I can’t take medicine because of the fetus and no I refuse to stop wiping my ass or any other normal thing that hurts. Because everything hurts. 2. Beck peed on our bed last night because she giggled too hard so we had to wash the sheets at 8pm after a long weekend but also we got clean sheets out of it? There was also a criminal incident on our street in the middle of the night last night that yielded us sleeping about three hours total. 

OTHER THAN THAT. The holiday was great. We did some fun family things but mostly hung out just us, watched enough TV that it felt lazy but did some cleaning and organizing and walked a ton. I also made an entire Thanksgiving dinner which was suuuuuper delicious but weird because it’s still 90 degrees here. But! It’s done and the fall decorations are out, which I’m not mad about. 

It’s during holiday weeks that I often find my self really craving things that don’t taste like traditional American food, if that makes any sense at all. Asian flavors, Mexican flavors, and hell yes to Italian food all the time. This is that! It’s on the weeknight train of things that are easy to make but is a teensy bit special because we’re calling it bolognese instead of spaghetti. This was inspired in real life by two things: we came home from vacation with a half bag of frozen meatballs from my sister-in-law, and then we celebrated our anniversary at a fancy Italian place. I ordered bologese there and it had these big chunks of carrot that were cooked down in meat sauce and I LOVED them because veggies should be with pasta in the name of balance. So meatballs instead of meat sauce, extra carrots for your health. Everything simmers super quickly and you can definitely eat in under an hour OR make this on a weekend or random free afternoon and it’ll keep great in the fridge for several days, so dinner can be done in the time it takes to cook pasta. 

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Quickest Weeknight Salsa Chicken

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I’m on a very annoying and very necessary mission. 

The mission is to reduce waste, and you’re joining me today. I HATE food waste. I hate all waste, really, but I also know that it’s a part of life (don’t even get me started on the unnecessary packaging that is involved in having children), and since I’m not yet ready to go full no-waste (have you seen documentaries about those people? It’s inspiring and also seems hard), food waste is really where I focus my efforts, mainly because it’s easily avoidable compared to other things. A little bit of thought and creativity can go a long way, and today we’re tackling condiments. Specifically, salsa! I was rummaging around the fridge a few weeks ago and realized we had four types of salsa. Some in little ramekins from takeout (you can use that stuff you know…) and a few jars with an inch or two of salsa. Not quite enough to put out for chips and dip, but not bad or old at all. 

By the way, expiration dates literally have nothing to do with food going bad or being unsafe, even with meat and dairy. Literally nothing. They are dates used for the producer to “talk” to the grocer and to give the consumer (you) some information about when the food might not be perfect anymore. Imperfect food is not unsafe to eat, and usually doesn’t even taste different. This is not my opinion, this is a fact. Food is bad when it has a strange smell, grows mold or something else, or has a physical sign that it is bad. You of course are in charge of when you throw things out, but throwing things out because they have passed an arbitrary date is willful waste, so keep that in mind when doing purges and cleaning out. If nothing else, it’s a money saver to not constantly throw away things you purchase. 

SO WITH THAT, I had all of this salsa and no plan for it. And I had chicken, and I always have rice. So I made this super duper quick seared chicken, reduced the salsa together into a sauce, and served it over rice in half an hour. I’ve made this several times since with other salsa, and the fun thing about this is that it tastes different but familiar each time. Salsa usually involves a base of onions and garlic which add tons of flavor without any chopping on your part. I’ve also chopped up extra onions, peppers, and random veggies (see: no waste!) and simmered them in the sauce, and they turn out delicious as well with zero effort. This is all about use-what-you-have, with delicious results. It feels GREAT to get a few items out of the fridge without throwing them straight in the trash. 

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