School Conversation

Late in the afternoon, Sweetling comes out of her room, enters the kitchen, and asks if we are going to do logic. Especially if we are going to do logic involving distrubuted popcorn.

Toa of Boy, in the living room, calls out, "I want popcorn!"

I say, "It's not real popcorn. It's logical popcorn. Like the unicorns."

Sweetling adds, "It's more popcorn in the metaphorical sense....with transitive verb crackers."

Two for Tuesday: Chicken Parmesan and Knock You Naked Brownies

Look at me, writing a blog post like a good girl instead of squeezing in some Dragon Age playing time before Tae Kwon Do tonight.

You're welcome, world.

I made this last night, and it turned out great! I modified a recipe from Pioneer Woman. She has an amazing looking dish that I'd highly recommend trying as is. But, since Toa has some tomato allergies, I couldn't use her made from scratch in 20 minutes sauce. Also, Mamma has high blood pressure, and since I'm already getting a lot of sodium in the canned sauce, I switch to a Mrs Dash blend for my seasoning, rather than the salt a pepper approach used by Pioneer Woman.

Here's my take on

Chicken Parmesan

Ingredients

• 4-6 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
• Mrs Dash, chicken blend
• flour, maybe a 1/4 cup?
• 28 oz jar of spaghetti sauce (we use LaRosa's, because we live in Cincinnati and are awesome like that)
• Parmesan cheese, real stuff, not the powder in a can
• pasta of your choice 

Directions

1. Start a pot of water boiling for your pasta. Pour a tablespoon or so of oil into the pot to keep your pasta from sticking together.
2. Place the chicken breasts in a large ziplock bag. You can fit 4 in a gallon sized bag. Lay the bag flat on your table or counter, and make sure each chicken piece is flat and not overlapping each other. (You can cheat and hop over to pioneer woman for a picture. She has great food pictures.)
3.  With the flat side of a kitchen mallet, pound the snot out of your chicken. You want each piece of chicken down to about a quarter of an inch of thickness. 
4. Transfer your chicken to a plate and sprinkle the Mrs. Dash chicken blend on each side.
5. On another plate mix about a quarter cup of flour with more of the Mrs. Dash chicken blend. No, I didn't measure it. In fact, I let Toa of Boy do this step. 
6. In a frying pan, heat a little olive oil and add a pat of butter. Yes, a little and a pat. You can do it. Don't obsess over perfection.
7. (When your water is boiling, go ahead and toss your pasta in to cook. Remember to stir it occasionally.)
8. Dredge your chicken pieces in your flour mixture and coat them completely. 
9. Brown them in the skillet. Get them nice and golden brown and crispy on each side. Yum yum. 
10. Transfer them to a clean plate. (I find it's easiest to flip them and transfer them with a meat fork rather than a spatula, but that's just my preference.
11. Now, if your family likes wonderful things like onions, you could saute some in your skillet. My family would be traumatized by things like onions or vegetables in their sauce, so I didn't do any sauteing.
12.  I drained off the extra oil from my skillet, but left the crunchy bits of breading in the skillet.
13. Pour at least one large jar of spaghetti sauce into your skillet. Stir and heat till hot, but not quite bubbling.
14. Carefully place your chicken pieces on top of your sauce. Top with grated Parmesan cheese. Lots of it. Cover the skillet and simmer on low heat to let the cheese and the chicken finish cooking through if needed.
15. How's the pasta? Ready to drain maybe?
16. Let the chicken and sauce cook for 8-10 minutes. Put more delicious cheese on top of the chicken. Melt it with the lid on the top for just another minute or so.
17. Serve a nice piece of chicken beside or on top of a dish of pasta. scoop some sauce out of your pan to spoon over the pasta, but for heavens sake don't cover your wonderful looking chicken with it!

Also this week, from Pioneer Woman, I made Knock-You Naked Brownies. I'm not going to reprint her recipe here. Do everything she says EXCEPT by all means use a full cup of chocolate chips. Not 1/3 of a cup. Really, I can't believe Ree  actually claims there is such a thing as too many chocolate chips. My opinion of her is forever tainted.