Sunday, September 30, 2007

cranberry chicken summer salad with citrus honey sauce

This is something I made this weekend when I was feeling too lazy to make something more time consuming. I basically made baked chicken fingers, a quick veggie/cranberry salad, some seasoned rice and decided I'd call it a salad. It was fast and easy but still flavorful. I didn't measure the spices I added to the bread-crumbs that covered the chicken, but here's a rough estimate of what all went in to this part of the meal:
about...
1 lb chicken breast tenders
3/4 cup garlic and herb bread crumb
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp paprika
1/4 tsp black pepper
1 1/2 tsp basil
Then the chicken breast tenders were dipped in an egg wash, covered in the bread crumb seasoning mixed. They cooked in the oven for about 30-35 minutes at 325.

The "salad", if you want to call it that, was also easy to make. Most of the prep time for this dinner was spent cutting up the ingredients I used, which included:
1/2 sweet onion
1/4 cup sweet, dried cranberries
1/4-1/3 cup finely chopped celery
1 finely chopped onion
2 TBSP olive oil
a pinch of salt and pepper
1/2-3/4 cup chopped mushrooms
I then seared all these veggies/fruits together until they had a sweet and spicy aroma.

The rice was cooked in chicken broth and a mixture of spices, then I made the dressing last, so I could throw it over the baked chicken before serving. This is enough dressing for about 2 people:
1/2 tsp balsamic vinegar
1/2 tsp brown sugar
2 1/2 tsp freshly squeezed tangelo or orange juice (I actually squeezed a tangelo...and I've only recently heard of them :)
1/2-1 tsp honey (depending on how sweet you want it)

This was all pretty quick and easy to make, I had a very lazy weekend. Today we made a pizza...and I'm really happy with how well the bread maker makes pizza dough! With just a few extra seasonings sprinkled over the dough after rolling it into a pizza shape, and the proper veggies and cheeses, the bread maker pizza dough, and the pizza in general, comes out so much better than delivery! I should have taken a picture, but it was so good that I couldn't resist diving into it before getting the camera out. Slow weekends are nice...especially on cold winter days...which I am definitely looking forward. But there's good news, it seems the unbearable Texas heat is finally giving in, at least a little, to the slight coolness of the approaching autumn days...we're finally in the low 90s!

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