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!

fresh tostadas and salsa

I bought a $4 whole chicken at the grocery store on Sunday, cooked it in the crock-pot and I'm still finishing it up! What a bargain! I've been able to make so many meals with it, including last night's tostada dish.

I had to add a few more spices to the chicken, since it seems only the skin absorbed the flavor of the spices I added when I cooked it in the crock-pot. So I just chopped up about 1 1/2 cups of chicken, threw it into a pan with a little bit of olive oil, then seasoned it with cilantro, salt, pepper, and parsley. I added about 1/2 tsp of parsley, 1/4-1/2 tsp of cilantro, then a few shakes of salt and a sprinkle of pepper. I also cut up a small garlic clove and 1/8 cup of onion--added that to the chicken while it was spiced over a medium flame for about 5-7 minutes--or until it was slighty golden (I like toasting chicken sometimes because it adds good flavor, especially in Mexican dishes...I notice that pork chops also taste better when they're on the crispier side, not burned, though!)

As for the tortillas that I used for the tostadas, I purchased a bag of locally made tortillas that are completely preservative free (I am horrible at making tortillas, I tried a few times and all that results is a horrible mess and blocks of flour!), then I fried them in olive oil over a medium flame until they were crispy. If you don't want to fry them (I actually didn't fry the ones I ate) you can toast them on a grittle pan until they get crunchy--this is what my grandma does.

The garnish I used for the tostadas included the following ingredients: romaine lettuce (chopped), a chopped roma tomato, some grated cheese, and of course the salsa.

My grandma taught me how to make salsa a few months ago, but I wanted to add a few more things to it. I added chopped red bell pepper because it has a sweetness to it that balances out the spiciness of the chili piquin I used.
Here's what went into the salsa (this makes about 1/2 cup of salsa):
2 boiled roma tomatoes, with the skin removed
1 chili piquin
1/8 cup sweet onion
1 small chopped garlic
2 TBSP finely chopped red bell pepper
3/4 tsp cilantro
1/4 tsp salt
a pinch of pepper
I threw the roma tomatoes into the blender with 2 1/2 tsp of warm water and the little piquin. While this was blending into a liquid, I chopped up the garlic, onion and red bell pepper, then lightly sauteed these ingredients in olive oil with the cilantro and pepper. I then added the sauteed veggies to the plain roma tomato/piquin chili "sauce", added about 1/4 tsp of salt, then I turned the blender back on for a few seconds on the "grate" setting; I didn't want a complete puree, there should still be some small pieces of bell pepper in there.

That's about it for the salsa, you can chill it if you want to, or eat it warm on top of the tostadas.

One thing I really like on my tostadas is refried beans. I still had beans left over from the other day (you can get the recipe here), so I just added a couple of tablespoons of oil to a pan (I used olive because it doesn't smell up the house as much as canola/vegetable oil, and it does taste good with the beans), spooned in the beans, raised the flame to a medium-low setting and started mashing them with a spoon once they warmed up. I didn't completely mash them into a big mushy thing, I left a few semi-whole and then let all the beans simmer over a low flame until most of the watery bean "soup" evaporated, so that I was left with the refried beans.

Oh, and before I go, here are a few more pictures of my guineas, I took these a few days ago:
This is Mochi (we refer to him as the mini buffalo, he kinda looks like it)


This is Yoshi! (he's actually really hyper, but you can't tell that here)