Boneless Skinless Chicken Breasts Are Never on Sale!

My girlfriend, Shana, sent me a recipe last night that she thought would be a good one to try for my food blog.

CHICKEN PARMIGIANA
4 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves
2 eggs, beaten
1 c. Italian bread crumbs
1/4 c. olive oil
1 (15 1/2 oz.) jar meat flavored spaghetti sauce
1/2 c. grated Parmesan cheese
1 c. (4 oz.) shredded Mozzarella cheese

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Dip chicken into egg, then bread crumbs. Heat olive oil in skillet. Brown chicken well on both sides. Pour spaghetti sauce into 11 x 7 inch baking dish. Place chicken on sauce and top with cheeses. Bake 20minutes or until cheese melts and is lightly browned.

I have been searching for nearly two months for the boneless skinless chicken breasts to go on sale and they wont! I refuse to pay over $2/lb for chicken breasts so I haven't had chicken in quite awhile except when Dwayne cut the meat off the bone for the delicious dinner we had posted below. Once they do go on sale, Shana, I will make this and post the picture. But that might not be until you guys actually come for a visit - hey there's an idea!

Chicken Vegetable Pasta thingy with Peach Daiquiris

I haven't made anything new the past few days but that doesn't mean I haven't had delicious meals since my last post. Last night after we came home from the river, we decided that we want Jason's Deli for dinner. I LOVE JASON'S DELI!! We go overboard with Jason's Deli, too, and always order too much food. I wanted to lay it all out on table and take a picture of it for the blog but my hungriness overcame me!

We had all sorts of things. Dwayne had a Ruben sandwich, I had a California Club with broccoli and cheese soups. We split a "side" salad. Their salad bar is deliciously good with all sorts of treats besides just salad fixins. They give you a little container for the salad dressing but we used it for Hummus and just put the dressing on the salad, duh! Dwayne ordered us some cute sodas in a glass bottle, Ginger Ale for me and Root Beer for him. I also got fruit with my meal and at the last minute, Dwayne also ordered us two slices of Turtle Cheesecake! YUMMY!! I still haven't eat my cheesecake yet, I'm saving it.

But I did want to share a picture of a meal that we ate last Sunday. We had a bunch of pasta sauce in a jar so I wanted Dwayne to spice them up and have some chicken with it. He makes great homemade spaghetti sauce so I knew this would come out well. He cut all the meat off the bones from the chicken before cooked them in the same pan as the vegetables were sauteed in. We had mushrooms, tomatoes, zucchini and yellow squash. He layered the pasta with chicken on top then the sauteed veggies on top of that with melted cheese. Exactly what my taste buds were craving!!

He also threw in another special treat and made Peach Daiquiris to drink before and during dinner.

(oh, and now my breakfast is ready so I better finish this up!)

Marble Cake - my favorite!

The only thing I made yesterday was the marble cake that I wanted to make the day before. With the meatballs and soup and sandwiches, I just didn't feel like it anymore! So here's the cake all put together, ready to go into the oven.

Dwayne doesn't understand eating cake without frosting and I cant stand the stuff. I only like the whipped cream icing. While we had the heavy whipping cream in the fridge, I did not feel like standing there whipping all that cream (which I never can seem to do properly, anyway). So I bought some DH frosting at the store the other day. This is cake all ready to devour with chocolate frosting on one side and bare on the other. Enjoy!

Meatballs with Italian Wedding Soup and Italian Grilled Cheeses

I made my first meatballs today and they are tasty!! I read recipe after recipe this morning trying to come up with the best one to make my meatballs.

I decided to bake them instead of frying them or cooking them in the soup, which is what my recipe for Italian Wedding Soup actually says to do. The original recipe that I had called for Orzo in the soup. While I would have liked to try that, Orzo is very expensive as I saw in the store today. About $8.50 for a container. I have left over tiny shells, anyway, so I will use those.

I ended up picking a recipe for the soup from Rachael Ray. She cooks her meatballs in the soup but seeing as how it was my first time making them, I thought a fail safe way would be to bake them. Sure was! Here's how I made the meatballs:

1 pound ground beef
1 egg, beaten
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano or Romano, a couple of handfuls
1/2 cup plain bread crumbs, a couple of handfuls

Combine meat, egg, garlic, grated cheese, bread crumbs, salt, pepper, splash of milk. Bake for 25 minutes at 350.

Now it was time to make the soup! I love soups so I was really looking forward to cooking this and tasting it afterwards. I thought it came out really well! A little salty but that can be easily corrected next time. I let it cook for about two hours before I boiled it and added the pasta and cooked meatballs.

The noodles cooked and the meatballs warmed up at the same time the grilled cheeses were done. I made Italian grilled cheeses with a mix of provolone, mozzarella, asiago, fontina and Parmesan - and more Parmesan!

Dwayne loved it and I was so proud! We will be having this for lunch, also!

My first meatballs!

I love food! And because of this, I like to take a lot of pictures of the food I eat so that I can be reminded of the yumminess over and over again.

I'm a rookie when it comes to cooking delicious meals. But, I am the master at eating them! The real chef in my family is my lovely boyfriend, Dwayne. He can throw together a scrumptious meal with practically nothing in the house. He is the best cook that I have ever met and he is slowly teaching me the ways of preparing delicious meals. I love the show Down Home with The Neely's, and I hope Dwayne and I can be like that one day!

But first things first, I need to start making delicious recipes that I can some day teach Dwayne! My typicals are chicken tettrazinni, qusadillas, and pasta (which he is even better at!). Oh, and I can make a mean sanwich, too! We made quite the Thanksgiving Dinner in 2008, Summer, Dwayne and I.

Last week I made the best thing I have ever made and it came out delicious! It was a pork tenderloin roast with potatos. Now, I usually dont even like pork and I thought this was great! By far, the best thing I have ever made! Here is a picture :)

I have had a craving for meatballs for the past two days so I woke up this morning and decided to make meatballs. Then realized I had a receipe for Italian Wedding Soup. Meatballs and soup?!? I think YES! That will be my next post :) Thanks for reading!

(thanks to previous bloggers who gave me formatting inspiration for my new blog)