On Tonight's Menu

As you may or may not know, I've recently discovered that I LOVE COOKING (shout out to Pioneer Woman, Ree Drummond!).  And I'm pretty sure my husband loves me a little more for it.  One day maybe I'll be really good at this whole "sharing recipes" thing, but for now, I'll just try to explain what I made.

Tonight's entree was a variation of a dish that we had at our wedding reception last year.  That dish was called Ranch Chicken Fried Steak.  Sounds good, right?  Well, to change it up a bit, I went with Ranch Chicken Fried CHICKEN!  Totally different and new.

List of Ingredients:
2 chicken breasts (or 1 very large chicken breast cut in half if you're me)
1/2 c flour
1 tbsp Lawry's seasoning salt
1 tsp garlic salt
1-2 tsp pepper (depends on how much you like pepper)
2 eggs
splash of milk
Ranch dressing
4 slices of bacon
2 slices of mozzarella cheese

First up, fry the bacon in a skillet on medium to med-high heat.  Just a couple of minutes on each side should do.  Remove it to a stack of paper towels to drain once it is done, but DO NOT drain the pan!  You are, however, allowed to turn the stove off.  It will be a couple of minutes until we get back to it.

Mix flour, garlic salt, pepper and Lawry's together. I put mine on a plate and mix with a fork.

On another plate, I whip the egg and milk together, usually with the same fork.  It's all about less dishes for me!  *side note - My plates work for this because they have a decent sized lip to keep all the liquid in one place.

Put the chicken in a large plastic bag and beat the crap out of it with a meat tenderizer.  Get out a little frustration. You'll want to make the chicken about 1/2 inch thick so that it can cook through in the skillet. 

At this point, go ahead and turn the stove back to med-high heat.  If there isn't a layer of grease coating the bottom of the pan from the bacon, go ahead and add in a little vegetable oil... we are chicken fryin' for Pete's sake!

Ok, dredging time.  Everyone has a different style of doing this, but here's what I do:
Put the chicken breast directly in the flour mixture.  Flip it over a couple of times to make sure the whole thing has a layer of flour on it. 
Gently shake it off and dunk it in the egg mixture.  Flip it over a few times to make sure the whole thing has a layer of egg on it. 
Now, back to the flour.  Make sure it has a good coating of flour, then send it to the skillet (you know, the one with the bacon grease still in it... yum).

IMPORTANT:  Chicken must cook through thoroughly! 

For me, this took about 4 minutes on the first side, then I flipped it over for about 3 minutes on the other side, but it all depends on how think your breasts are (hehe). 

But seriously folks, if you're not sure about this whole thing you could probably use a meat thermometer.  I, on the other (read "not as safe") hand just poke the chicken with a knife.  If the juices are clear, you're good to go.  You can even cut into it a little and take a look if you want.  NO PINK!

Remove the chicken to a paper towel to drain. 

Turn the broiler on the "Low" setting.

Get out an over safe dish to assemble your masterpiece.  I went with a grungy cookie sheet.

Ok, layer like this:

First goes the chicken fried chicken. 
Next, slather a heaping tablespoon or two on each piece of chicken.
Then, slap a couple of slices of bacon on top.
Lastly, top it off with the mozzarella cheese slices.

Place the whole thing in the over for just a minute or two.  You have to watch it; broilers can be tricky!
When the cheese is melty looking and delicious, take it out and Voila!  Ranch Chicken Fried Chicken!
(FYI - At our wedding, the dish had a layer of fresh tomatoes under the cheese, but I didn't have any tomatoes... so I left that part out.)  :)

Try it.  Men will love you.

I served it with some homemade mac and cheese and sauteed zucchini, yellow squash, mushrooms and onions.

Carrollton's Finest

Today was an eventful day!  And I didn't even have to get out of my pajamas!

You see, we have this problem.  The trash truck pulls down the power lines in our alley.  We have lived in our house since May, and this has happened four times.  This time was the worst as the truck actually broke the line.  See.... broken line.

Unfortunately for the driver of said truck, Chris was home and working in the garage today when the truck lumbered past our house.  So he saw everything, and proceeded to chase the truck down the alley to give the driver a piece of his mind!  So sorry I don't have pictures of THAT.

However, because this has happened so many times, we are a little desensitized to it.  We know if we call the city, they will blame the trash people.  If we call the trash people, they will tell us to call the city or the electric company because the line is too low.  If we call Oncor (electric co) they come out and tell us it's not their line, it's a cable line which belongs to Charter Communications.  When I call Charter, they tell me they'll be out in 14 days... which turns into never.  Eventually TXU gets tired of harrassing phone calls and comes out to temporarily "fix" the problem.  Within weeks, the trash truck hits the line... and the circle of life continues.

Today was different, though.  Today, the truck broke the power line, which caused a neighbor to call the fire dept. to tell them of a down power line.  (Why didn't I think of that??) 

I didn't think of that because I happen to know that the line is inactive... thanks to the number of phone calls I've had to make in the past.  I even pulled the line today to get it out from behind my garage... so I'm WELL aware that there is no power in this line.  BUT, since the FD was called, and THEY don't know it's not an active line, they blocked off the alley from all directions, had the police come out, who found a Charter guy working a few miles away, made him come to our house and see what he could do.

Well, what he could do was not much.  The power line was broken, which would require someone with a skill level higher than his to fix.  And more people came!  So they've been our there for the better part of 8 hours trying to fix this problem.  Oh, I can only hope I don't ever open my garage to this, again:

(It might look like shadows, but it's not... it's a crapload of cables.)

~D

Is it 1987 in here?

What: The Griffins 1st Annual (???) Christmas Party

When: December 19, 2009 (despite what the pictures look like) 7pm

Where: The Griffin Estate

Theme: Ugly Christmas Sweater

Cast of Characters: The KPMG Gang!

Everyone did a spectacular job with the sweaters, but the Masseys really commited themselves to the part.... check out the wine bottle!

Here's everyone else... The McDannels

The Smyths

Sorry about the hair! It's how he rolls.

Now let's talk about the food. Unfortunately, I didn't remember to take a picture of the spread before our friends devoured everything, but I'll go ahead and tell you what we offered...

• Sausage & cheese balls
  
• lil smokies
  
• stuffed mushrooms (PW's recipe... she makes me want to be a better person!)
  
• pheasant wrapped in bacon (courtesy Chris' hunting trip last weekend)
  
• cheese and crackers
  
• fruit (courtesy Ashley & the Dallas Arboretum) with fruit dip (courtesy ME... that stuff is GOOD)


• white trash chex mix


• mint chocolate chip brownie bites


• sugar cookies


• cheesecake (again, courtesy Ashley & the Dallas Arboretum).


• ALCOHOL (the key ingredient to a good party)

I almost thought that we were going to have waaaaaaay too much food, but our dear friends proved me wrong as they ate EVERYTHING! I think there were 3 crackers left over at the end.

Since I have just recently started cooking for real, it made me feel good for others to enjoy the stuff I cooked. There just might be hope for me and this cooking thing after all.

Activities:

We cheered on the Cowboys to a victory over the previously undefeated NO Saints... Go, Cowboys! There just might be hope for them after all... but probably not for kicker Nick Folk... sorry, buddy.

As usual, as some point in the evening there was a discussion of grammar, specifically apostrophe placement in contractions. Hey, what good party doesn't include a grammar lesson. For this Reading teacher, that is ALWAYS a good time.

The only thing that was missing was a good round of some sort of board game... Why, you ask? Well, because Chris and I don't own any board games. We are SO lame. Sorry, everyone. Maybe next time.

All in all... Party = Success.

Oh, I almost forgot. I gave prizes for the best (worst) ugly Christmas sweater...

Jordan was pretty excited about it. :)

Merry Christmas!

~D

A New Era

Well, I guess I'm doing this... blogging. I'm not so sure who, if anyone, will ever read this, but at least I'll have a place to write my thought, feelings, adventures, etc.

One might ask, "Why not just get a journal?" To that I answer, "It's almost 2010! Let's move it into the 21st century!" Jokes! But for real, they're always making me integrate technology into EVERYTHING I do at work, so I might as well do it at home too.

I worry that I might not be interesting enough for this sort of thing... I'm well aware that I spend my days at work, and then come home and retire to my couch for the majority of the evening. How can I possibly make that sound interesting???

Well, I have started cooking for The Hubs every night. That's new and fun. I could talk about how that's going.

I also watch a LOT of tv. Shocking, I know. I could give reviews of shows, or at least talk about anything particularly great I saw. (Or talk about how The Hubs looks EXACTLY like Finn on gLee!)

I'd really like to write a book about the REAL LIVES OF TEACHERS one day. Perhaps, I could actually get started on that and chronicle my work.

This is very stressful already.

I do know that I love my life! Which includes:

my husband

our dogs, Roxy and Lola

my family, yup, all those crazy Mexicans

and my friends.

These are the days of our lives. :)

Adios for now~D

P.S. - I've been trying to fix the formatting on this thing forEVER now... so if anyone out there wants to inform me on how to get blank lines, I would be forever grateful to you! Thanks!