Easy moist Roast Chicken

Is anyone else dying at the cost of chicken lately. Then, whenever it is on sale I always seem to miss it, or they sell out too fast. So, I have been experimenting with roasting whole chickens. I finally found an easy recipe that makes a nice moist chicken. Ches couldn't get enough of it. This is the recipe as I found it on All Recipes.com

Juicy Roast Chicken

INGREDIENTS
1 (3 pound) whole chicken, giblets removed
salt and black pepper to taste
1 tablespoon onion powder, or to taste
1/2 cup margarine, divided
1 stalk celery, leaves removed

DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
Place chicken in a roasting pan, and season generously inside and out with salt and pepper. Sprinkle inside and out with onion powder. Place 3 tablespoons margarine in the chicken cavity. Arrange dollops of the remaining margarine around the chicken's exterior. Cut the celery into 3 or 4 pieces, and place in the chicken cavity.
Bake uncovered 1 hour and 15 minutes in the preheated oven, to a minimum internal temperature of 180 degrees F (82 degrees C). Remove from heat, and baste with melted margarine and drippings. Cover with aluminum foil, and allow to rest about 30 minutes before serving.

Notes: My chicken was bigger, and I still used less butter then that. I used enough celery to fill the chicken full, and probably almost half as much butter, and my chicken was 7 lbs. I also cut the skin down the center of the top, put the seasonings and some butter on the inside, and then pinned the skin back up with my roasting pins. It was fabulous! Then I just take all of the leftover and bag and freeze for easy chicken later.

Roast Pumpkin Soup

I got this recipe from Elizabeth, who I think got from an English cook book she has. It is a great fall meal, or any cold day meal!! My family prefers it made with Butternut Squash, but I have done both ways.

Roast Pumpkin Soup

2 c. pumpkin
(to roast, cut up squash, brush with olive oil, and bake at 350 til tender. I cover mine for the most of it, and uncover at end to get a good roast flavor)
1 TBS olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
2 tsp cumin
2 large carrots (or more)
2 celery sticks (or more_
4 c. chicken broth

Cook onion and cumin in oil for 2 min. Add carrots and celery, cook for 3 minutes. Add pumpkin and stock. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 20 plus minutes. Puree when all vegs are tender.

Serve with sour cream, nutmeg and parsley.

Country Tomato Bisque

This is my cousins recipe. It makes a lot so I freeze it in portions for later. A big hit in my family, and so much healthier then Cambell's.

Country Tomato Bisque
Serves 8-10

4 Tbsp butter
2 garlic cloves, minced
3 stalks celery, chopped
3 large carrots, peeled and chopped
2 onions, chopped
3 zucchini, chopped
4 Tbsp flour
2 28-oz (or 4 14-oz) cans diced tomatoes with juices
3 cups chicken or vegetable broth
2 Tbsp brown sugar 1 tsp salt
1 tsp dried basil
1 tsp dried marjoram
2 bay leaves
2 cups half & half
grated Cheddar cheese
sunflower seeds

Melt butter in large soup pot. Stir in garlic, celery, carrots, onions, and zucchini until vegetables are tender, about 10 minutes. Blend in flour. Add tomatoes, broth, sugar, salt, basil, marjoram, and bay leaves. Heat to boiling. Cover and simmer for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat. Remove bay leaves. Puree mixture in a blender in small batches until smooth. Pour in half & half and stir. Garnish with grated Cheddar cheese and sunflower seeds.

Spiced Pork Chops

This is the meal that made me want to start posting again. It was so good Ches kept asking for more, and CJ wanted me to make it again tonight!! It is from my a distant cousin of mine (I think).

Spiced Pork Chops

1/2 c. flour
1 1/2 tsp garlic powder
1 1/2 tsp ground mustard
1 1/2 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp. celery salt
1/4 tsp. ground ginger
1/8 tsp. dried oregano
1/8 tsp dried basil
1/8 tsp salt
pinch of pepper
4 pork chops (boneless)
1 to 2 Tbs oil
1 c. ketchup
1 c. water
1/4 c. packed brown sugar

In a shallow dish, combine the first 10 ingredients; dredge pork chops till completely covered. In a skillet, brown chops in oil on all sides. Place in a greased square pyrex dish. Combine ketchup, water and b. sugar; pour over chops. Bake, uncovered, at 350 degrees for 1 hour, or until tender. Serve with rice.

Notes: I cut up my chops into smaller pieces so as to get more coating on everything. I didn't have any dry mustard, so I added some spicy brown mustard to the ketchup mix. Do not over cook. Enjoy!!

Re-Start!!

Okay, it's time to get this thing restarted. I have several recipes I have been wanting to post, but haven't because I forget to take pictures. Then I thought, that is dumb, I shouldn't with hold fabulous meals just because there isn't a pretty picture to share! So, post now, picture later.

And we're off!!

sage chicken and rice

1 large onion, chopped
1 garlic clove, crushed
2 celery stalks, diced
2 carrots, diced
1 tsp dried sage
1 1/4 cups chicken stock
2 chicken breasts, cut in 1-inch pieces - do not pre-cook
1 1/3 cups mixed wild rice and brown rice
14 ounce can chopped tomatoes
dash of Tabasco sauce
2 medium zucchini, thinly sliced
3 1/2 ounces lean ham, diced
salt and pepper

1 - Put the onion, garlic, celery, carrots, and sage in a large pan and pour over the chicken stock. Bring to boil, cover pan, simmer for 5 minutes.

2 - Add chicken to the pan, cover, continue to cook for another 5 minutes.

3 - Stir in rice, chopped tomatoes, Tabasco sauce, salt and pepper to taste. Bring to boil, cover, simmer for 25 minutes.

4 - Stir in zucchini and ham. Cook another 10 minutes uncovered, stir occasionally until rice is tender and heated through.

My notes: I skipped the ham because we didn't have any. I don't know how this would have changed the flavor, because I screwed up with the rice.

I didn't have wild rice, so I used only brown rice. This had 2 effects, neither of which went over very well. First, it doubled the cooking time - the step where it's supposed to cook for 25 minutes, I had to cook it for about an hour so the brown rice was soft enough. That meant I had to keep adding liquid to it to keep it from burning the bottom of the skillet. It's cooked in chicken stock and I kept adding water, which totally diluted the flavor. It ended up being pretty bland. I should have at least added some more chicken stock when continuing to put liquid in it.

It was good other than that, so I'm definitely planning to try it again.

This is from a Lowfat cookbook I have, and each serving is only 390 calories with 4 grams of fat.

pita chicken

Wow, it's been a long time since anyone posted on this blog! I've been meaning to post some recipes for my sisters, so I figured I should just post them here instead of duplicating things all over the place. I've tried a few other recipes on this blog - I LOVE the summer squash pasta that Tiana posted back in April. I've made it 2 or 3 times this summer.

This is a really yummy dinner that we had last night - I got the recipe from allrecipes.com here.

2 chicken breasts cut into strips
1 tbl olive oil
1/4 tsp each: garlic powder, onion powder, salt, pepper, cayenne pepper
1/4 cup salsa
pita bread
tomato sliced
avocado sliced
sour cream

Heat the olive oil, and cook the chicken strips. Just before it's done, sprinkle with the spices and add the salsa until it's all heated through and the liquid from the salsa cooks out a bit.

Put chicken/salsa in the pita, top with tomato and avocado slices, and sour cream. Eat.

You can of course add any other tex-mex toppings you like, like olives or lettuce or something. We had it with just tomato and avocado, and it certainly didn't seem lacking to us.

I didn't measure the spices - just sprinkled them over the chicken. Go super light on the cayenne unless you like things spicy. I like the kick, but my kids don't so they didn't eat much. I didn't measure the salsa either - just put it in until it was a balance that I liked.