Holy Crap, I love salmon... part 1

If you'll recall, I told you I was a pescatarian, which means I eat seafood. Some people say this makes me a total cheater, and if so, i'm not even sorry because I love seafood, especially salmon. Salmon is the most perfect, amazing thing ever created. I love it in all forms... salmon sushi... salmon croquettes, and this magical, delicious baked salmon.

This salmon is so easy and delicious, and that sauce in the middle makes it even more freaking awesome. So, let's get started.
First, you're going to need these things:

Ten crushed up Ritz crackers, 1/4 cup of mayo, 2 tablespoons of parmesan cheese, the juice of 1/4 of a lemon, a little pepper to taste, and some salmon fillets. Just mix all of these things up in a bowl. POW:

Then, you have to prep your salmon. For some reason, salmon in the grocery store is effing enormous.

I don't know what up with that, but unless you're totally unreasonable or hungry, you're gonna want to cut it in half. I cut mine vertically, but I think you're actually supposed to cut it horizontally. Do whatever you want to do, because it will taste the same either way. I just cut it where it sort of naturally looked like it should be cut, right in the middle:

Great! Then, just spray a pan with some cooking spray, put down your salmon, and put the cracker mixture on top, like this:

Put in a 400 degree oven for 15-20 minutes, depending on the thickness of your salmon. Now, while that's cooking, make your awesome, magical salmon sauce.

It's just a tablespoon of minced onion, 1/2 tablespoon of dill, 1/3 cup of mayo, 1/3 cup of sour cream, a teaspoon of lemon juice, and a teaspoon of garlic powder. I didn't have garlic powder, so I used a teaspoon of the weird juice in my jar of minced garlic... It was surprisingly not gross!

Just mix all of these ingredients together and use as a sauce for your salmon. The longer you can make this ahead of time, the better. The flavors get all personal with each other until all of their deliciousness is brought out... But if you have to eat it right away, that's ok, too.

Ok, so check on your salmon after the allotted tiiiiiiime... and it should look like this!

Then just serve it on a plate with your magic sauce. I made broccoli and rice with mine, and it was so good. You will love it, I promise!

Just to remind you...

mmmmmm...

Crock Pot Chicken Cordon Blue Ivy Carter

When I first heard Beyonce was pregnant, I was so anxious that her baby would end up looking like this:

Luckily for everyone, Beyonce's baby is much prettier than this. Although, I guess it wouldn't matter, because she could totally afford to fix any situations she had going on. Anyway, in honor of Blue Ivy Carter, I made chicken cordon bleu.

It was a freaking disaster, but I'm not totally going to give up on it. Here's what happened. 

Mark and I have totally different schedules. I work days, and he works nights, BUT our day to hang out and be awesome is Saturday, meaning we decided to celebrate Valentine's Day on Saturday. He got tickets to a mystery dinner theater, and it was super fun. Unfortunately, right as we were leaving, my chicken was ready in the crock pot. We decided to keep it on 'warm' while we were gone... this was a really effing horrible idea, and we laughed at it when we came back and saw how creepy it was. Because Mark is so sweet, he ate it anyway, but his stomach has been hurting ever since. Some kind of stomach flu is obviously going around. Correlation is not causation, people!

I'm going to show you my process anyway, though, because when we first left, the chicken looked super appetizing and moist. When we left it on warm for 4 hours, it dried out and was awful, but here's what I did. Remember: Do not cook your chicken for 4 extra hours. Rookie mistake. 

To begin, you're going to need some thin chicken breasts. You can actually buy thin-cut chicken breasts, or just use a meat mallet to pound on normal chicken breasts. This is great for your aggression, but it makes you look crazy, so I bought already thin breasts. 

Oh hey, chicken!

Then, you make sure you can find your crock pot. This took me a while, because I haven't used it since I got it. Finally, I found it deep in my cabinet, way behind the stand mixer that I also haven't used yet.

Crock pot. Go time.

So, then you get your thawed chicken out of the package, and top it with our secret ingredients. The secret ingredients are sliced swiss or mozzarella cheese and ham. I used mozzarella cheese instead of swiss, because if I could imagine what feet would taste like, they would taste exactly like swiss cheese. I'm imposing my hatred of swiss cheese on Mark, so we went with mozzarella. 

And, there you have it. You'll need two pieces of ham and one piece of cheese per chicken breast. I recommend going ahead and getting these out, because you have to do a lot of chicken touching pretty soon. You are really going to get up close and personal with this shit, so get out what you need so you don't have to wash your hands a million times when you need to keep reaching in your cheese bag. Gross. 

Now, just put down your chicken, put down 2 pieces of ham per breast, and rip your cheese slices in half and put them on there. Then, you just roll them up and secure them with toothpicks. The rolling-up part is surprisingly easy, even for someone who's naturally spazzy like myself. It was completely impossible to take pictures while I rolled, so just trust me that you can do it!

Once they're rolled up, just secure with toothpicks-- You don't have to do this, but it helps your ingredients stay together, so I'd go ahead and do it. Then, put those in the crock pot. 

Perfecto. Now, you're going to mix up your sauce to pour on top. All this is is a can of  "cream of whatever" soup, and 1/4 cup of milk. I used cream of chicken soup, because I'm saving the vegetarian cream of-- soups for my own foodz. 

There it is, before and after. Now we just take this bowl of mixture and pour it on top of the chicken. Put the lid on the crock put, and put it on "low" for 4 hours. And that's it!

Here it is right after I put it in.... And the picture below is what it looked like about 2 hours in. 

And here's what it looks like when it's done!

Now you can probably tell that this is extremely dry and gross, but just imagine how appetizing it would be if it wasn't! I feel like you can't really go wrong if you don't cook it for waayyyy too long. So four hours, then stop. And don't leave it on "warm," because that's a trap. Doing so will make you this happy:

awwwww

Knock it off, Napoleon! Make yourself a dang quesadilla!

Mexican food is my favorite thing in the entire world. I love the free chips, the giant margaritas, and most of all I love fish tacos. Holy crap, I love fish tacos. I dream about them. Unfortunately, I suck at cooking fish... except salmon, which we'll get to in another post. So, when I make my own Mexican creations at home, I usually make something with grilled vegetables and refried beans. The other day, I was making somesuch thing, and I decided to lovingly throw some chicken in there for Mark. 


To begin, I cut up my vegetables and put them in the pan with some oil. I just used onions and peppers, because that's a really subtle flavor combination. Also, that's all we had, and you know by now that I refuse to leave the apartment unless it's an extreme emergency. 

And, there you go. Just green peppers, red peppers, and onions. These will cook down a lot, so don't worry about making them bite-sized. Crude chunks will be just fine. Put in some salt and pepper, and cover. 

In the meantime it's time to cut up your pal, chicken. I bought the Purdue fit n' easy chicken breasts, because I like my chicken fit and easy. I guess. Here it is:

Plus, at the store, all of the other packages of chicken were bloody and weird, and I could not deal with that. Therefore, here we are. All I did was take one breast out, and cut it into cubes.

Looking good. Okay, now once that's all done, add your chicken to your veggies and cook until those little cubes are no longer pink in any way. Cut one open to make SURE they aren't pink in the middle, because that's effing disgusting and will kill all of your loved ones. Or at least make them sick, which is also gross.

See that pinkness around 3:00? Mmmm mmmm, we cannot have that. Cook it for a little longer until all of the surface pinkness at least goes away. Then, add some taco seasoning to give it all the flavors of Mexico. 

I added about 1-2 tablespoons, and then I covered it for about 5 more minutes and cooked it on medium. Again, cut one of your pieces of chicken open to make sure it's fully cooked all the way through. Now we can assemble!

Take the chicken out of the pan, and put it in a bowl. Put a tortilla down in your chicken/veggie pan and let it get warm. You may be thinking, "you burned the shit out of your veggies and chicken!" Well, you're wrong. That's the taco seasoning giving it a nice burnt sheen. Also, my camera makes everything look slightly burnt. If you actually do burn your chicken and veggies, as I definitely did not, just cover them up with cheese and no one will dare complain to you about it.

Ahhh, cheese. Okay, now just let your cheese melt and fold! I made two of these and cut them into wedges like a delicious quesadilla pie. Mark ate some of these wedges before I could take a picture, so here you go. 

Delicioso!

Amazing Chicken BLT Salad

My husband often has these fantasies that he's on a diet. He does this all the time. Then, these diets get amended so that he can eat whatever the hell he wants, which makes me super jealous. Anyway, he's currently just starting a health kick, and these always begin with a proclamation by my dearest Mark that he's only eating salads for dinner. So, I came up with this really good salad that has tons of flavor and isn't that bad for you. It has chicken breast and bacon-- but it's lean bacon so the total amount on this salad only has 40 calories. I think your carnivorous counterparts will enjoy....

This salad is amazing. I can only say this is amazing because 1. it looks AMAZING, and 2. it has so many awesome veggies on it. This salad without the chicken and bacon would be soooo good, and as any carnivore will tell you, adding bacon to things makes it exponentially more fantastic in their minds. Chicken can't hurt either. So, let's get started.

To begin, I make my quick baste for the chicken. This could be used as a marinade, too, but I use it as a basting tool since I procrastinated and didn't have time for any overnight marinating. Marinating is for chumps.

This is a marinade that I found online a while ago, and sort of adapted for my own purposes. And it's also adapted according to what I had on hand. Most of the time, I'm super lazy and refuse to leave my apartment to buy baby yak tears, or whatever the hell some people expect me to have. So, here it is. It's just oil, dijon mustard, soy sauce, minced garlic, and italian seasoning. I go heavy on the dijon mustard, include about half a tablespoon of italian seasoning, and go easy on the soy sauce. Other people love soy sauce, and go heavy on that. Just taste it first, and make sure you like it. You can't go wrong with this combo, though!

When you mix it all together, it should look something like this:

Then, you take a boneless, skinless chicken breast and slosh it all around in there. I put the breasts in individual bags as soon as I got them, so that there would be minimal gross chicken touching. Check out this move...

Pow! Like a chicken contact avoiding ninja. Then, I thoroughly coat my chicken with this stuff, while putting a nonstick frying pan on medium heat with about a tablespoon of oil or butter. When you can tell your oil is sizzling and your pan is getting hot, put in your chicken. 

I let it sit like this for maybe a minute, and then I put the lid on and leave it alone for 5-6 minutes. Putting the lid on keeps your chicken from getting dry, because all that nice chicken steam is getting crazy in there like a magical chicken steam room. 

 Now just leave this here exactly like this for 5-6 minutes on medium heat. Next, we're moving on to the bacon. 

I'm just gonna put this out there... As a vegetarian, bacon disgusts me. I'm not even sure what the hell it is, but it's like bookmarks made of meat and it comes in a creepy pouch that's got some kind of yellow liquid all around it. That being said, bacon has really pissed me off a few good times, because when I pan fried it, I have to stand there, coddling the bacon, turning it, making sure it's ok while it acts like a porky asshole and pops grease all in my face. Not cool. Not okay. Not to mention... what do I do with this weird pan of grease? wait for it to cool and then let it stink up my trash can? Eff that. Then, I discovered that you can cook bacon in the oven. That's right. You can put the oven on 375 and put the bacon in there for 12-16 minutes, depending on the thickness of the meat. The bacon will then be finished, you don't get hot grease in your corneas, AND you can pick up this foil and throw it away. So amazing, I can't tell you. 

Oh, here you go, preheated oven magician. Let me put bacon in you, and you just cook it while I do some other stuff, okay? Thanks. Be back for you later. 

Meanwhile, it's probably been 5-6 minutes since you felt super pleased with yourself about putting bacon on a cookie sheet and making the oven your bitch. So, turn your chicken, cover it, and let it go another 6 minutes. I turn mine with a fork because I'm a spaz with a spatula, but I encourage you to do whatever the hell you want. 

Aaaaand, cover. Like I said, you've got 6 minutes, so cut up your lettuce and veggies. This is where I really shine, because I prep veggies like a badass. I recommend buying a big head of iceberg lettuce, because it's like a dollar and when you cut it up, you end up with A LOT of lettuce. If you're unsure of how to chop lettuce, just thonk the hard white bottom on the counter until the little white stem becomes unattached, yank that bitch out, cut your lettuce head in half, and cut it into vertical strips. Then, turn it and cut the other way. Perfect. Store it in a big Tupperware, because putting it in a big plastic bag will make it go brown faster.

I won't bore you with the details of cutting the veggies, but basically just cut them into bite-size chunks. My husband likes a lot of veggies, and I always have a lot on hand for myself. Therefore, this salad includes lettuce, tomato, onion, cucumbers, green peppers, and red peppers. You may adjust accordingly-- put in whatever you want!

You may not yet be a veggie cutting ninja like myself, so this may take you longer than 6 minutes. Just make sure that sometime in the meanwhile, you don't cook your chicken too long. After 6 minutes on the other side, take it out and cut it in half. If it isn't pink on the inside, you are good to go. 

Then, just transfer your chicken to a plate and cut it into smaller pieces for the salad. After this, you can just let it cool on the plate while you assemble the rest of everything. It doesn't have to be completely cool, but you don't want it to be screaming hot when you put it on your salad, either. Especially if you're making this salad to be eaten later, as I am.

Now, it should be about time to get that bacon out. I used the Gwaltney 40% less fat bacon, which is super thin. This is probably why it has 40% less fat, but I digress. It took 13 minutes in the oven. I've cooked the normal Oscar Mayer bacon, which is thicker, and it takes about 15-16 minutes. Just watch it. If your bacon is sizzling pretty well, and the bubbles on top are small, rather than really big, and if it doesn't have that creepy raw meat look, you're probably alright. This is what mine looked like when I took it out:

That's right, gurrrrl. That's how we do it. Then, just transfer to a paper towel, throw away the aluminum foil, and put your totally clean cookie sheet BACK in yo' cabinet. That's right. 

I actually only used 2 pieces of bacon for the salad, but go crazy if you'd like. Ok, now we can assemble! First, put down your lettuce, followed by your veggies. My husband says he likes it when the chicken is on the bottom, because he gets the veggies out of the way and there's a chickeny surprise for him at the bottom. I pretended I didn't hear this, because I think we can all agree that's a ridiculous thing to say. Therefore, like most other people, I put the chicken on top like God intended.  

Tear up your bacon and scatter it all over the top, and you are good to go! My husband is so strange to me, because he doesn't eat dressing on his salad. That's why this salad is sans dressing, but I think this would be one bomb ass salad with some ranch dressing. Just sayin. 

It's in this super fancy Tupperware so that Mark can take it to work tonight, and everyone can marvel at what a kickass salad he has, and what a great wife I am. Meanwhile, I'll be at home watching Keeping up with the Kardashians reruns and continuously patting myself on the back for yet another meaty salad achievement.