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| Welcome to my kitchen! |
Recently I was invited to a home to cook with two
young women who are relatively new to cooking.
This is one of my favorite groups to work with—young women who are
starting families and want to learn how to feed them good, healthy meals. This group has generally not been formally
taught anything about cooking and may only know how to make “pre-packaged”
meals: tacos, macaroni and cheese, and
Hamburger Helper for example, which are full of less than desirable ingredients
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| Sisters-in-law Ready to Cook for the Clan! |
We talked over her goals:
she wanted to add to her basic repertoire of meals while making food that her
husband and daughter would enjoy. We
came up with three different meals that would limit the number of ingredients
to keep costs reasonable. I assured her
that each one would taste different from the next.
I think chicken is so versatile that everyone should know
how to make that into several different meals.
In this case, we started with boneless, skinless chicken breasts. These don’t have a lot of flavor unless they
are marinated, brined, stuffed or served with a pan sauce.
Meal Number One:
Sauteed Chicken Breasts with a pan sauce, green salad and a whole grain
pilaf.
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| Sauteed Chicken Breasts. |
Meal
Number two: Stuffed Chicken Breasts,
fresh vegetable and a whole grain side dish
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| Dishing up Stuffed Chicken Breasts. |
We also experimented with some homemade
vinaigrettes that can be used on green leafy salads, or with whole grain
salads. We used two different methods to
make these, and put them on the same basic leafy greens and vegetables to
discover how different flavors can be created without a lot of
ingredients.
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| Three different vinaigrettes used on three different salads. |
We also cooked up extra chicken breasts for “leftovers Judy
Style”. This is my way to have something
prepped for another meal so you cut down on your work load. You will save on both washing up and cooking
time.
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| Two Formerly Hungry Men having enjoyed our Menu! The food was consumed before we had a chance to take any photos! |
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| Molly with the girls. |
The “leftovers” can now be turned into a Main Course
Salad: slice up the chicken, add to
salad greens, chop some celery, scallions and cherry tomatoes, grate some
cheese, and make your vinaigrette. Or
make this leftover chicken into tacos; chop the chicken, shred lettuce, grate
cheese, put it on a tortilla with salsa or guacamole, and eat! Another option is to turn the chicken into a
salad spread for sandwiches. I can
create so many possibilities from just having a little extra cooked chicken breast
for another meal.
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| A final seal of Approval. |
This was such a fun event for me--helping Andrea and Anna make a couple of delicious meals for their hungry group!
