Mediterranean Chicken

This is the second time I've made this recipe.  Tyler didn't love it the first time I made it, but I think he liked it more second time around.  It's easy and super tasty, although it's one of those recipes you don't always have the stuff on hand to make.

What You'll Need

2-3 boneless skinless chicken breasts

1/4 cup flour

fresh cracked pepper

2 tbl oil (I use the oil from my artichokes)

1/2 cup (more or less) white wine

squeeze of lemon juice

1 large can of artichoke hearts 

1/3 cup sundried tomatoes in oil

salt and pepper to taste

2 tbl parmesan cheese (optional)

Cut the chicken into bite-sized chunks.  Combine the flour and fresh cracked pepper in a large Ziploc bag.  

Add the chicken to the bag and shake to coat.  

Place the oil in the pan and heat.  Add the chicken to the pan and cook 2-3 minutes turning, until the chicken starts to brown. (I feel like you should sear the chicken so it has a crispy bite)

Stir in the wine and cook over medium heat for another 2-3 minutes until the liquid is slightly reduced.  

I may or may not have used the whole jar of artichokes!  

Yes the whole litre!

Squeeze lemon juice over the chicken and stir in the artichokes and sundried tomatoes, salt (I don't use any, artichokes are salty enough)  and pepper.  Cook until done (probably 5 minutes).  

Remove from heat and sprinkle with parmesan cheese, if you want.  I serve this over rice, but it's equally good with noodles.

Make sure you don't go over board with the sundried tomatoes.  I did the first time I made it and that was a bad choice.  For some crazy reason sundried tomatoes are totally potent and their flavour can really be overpowering.  So don't go crazy with those tomatoes!  Other than that it's all good.  

A Very Different Halloween

I originally wrote this post last year and was never able to finish it.  As I look back on everything that has happened I thought I would share what I was doing, this time last year.
My life has been a bit of a shambles lately.  I had my in-laws at my house for Canadian Thanksgiving (October 10).  A few days after they left I got a phone call from my family asking me to come home due to a medical emergency.  So I have been in Saskatchewan since October 20th.  The Reader's Digest version is my dad has been in the hospital since October 10th and has been in the ICU since October 19th.  He has made some progress, albeit slowly.  Right now we are impatiently waiting for him to wake up.  The other day he opened his eyes when I asked him to, so that's definitely a step in the right direction.   So needless to say my Halloween plans were a little different than normal.  I hung out with my sister and her boyfriend and I elbowed in on their Halloween traditions; carving a pumpkin, making nachos and watching Halloween TV.  We didn't have a plan for the pumpkin, so we just whipped this design out.  We didn't have a printer so we didn't follow my awesome pumpkin carving tutorial from last year. But we still managed to carve a pretty sweet pumpkin!  At least I think so.

Jilly cut off the top of the pumpkin and we both scooped out the pumpkin guts.  Of course we saved the pumpkin seeds (literally the second best thing about carving pumpkins).  Jill scraped the inside of the pumpkin real clean and made sure to really scrape the side of the pumpkin we were going to carve, making it thinner and easier to work with.

 Next I drew our image.  This year we picked Jack Skellington from the Nightmare Before Christmas. Primarily because it was easy for me to free hand.  Yes I drew this free-hand.   Are you impressed? 
Then Jilly starting carving.  Normally I would never give this task to anyone else, but we only had one pumpkin, so we had to share.  While she was carving I helped her BF make nachos!

Doesn't it look like she's gonna cut her thumb off? Crazy woman!

TA DA!

On display, outside
Jill, taking all the credit, as usual
Ok here are the nachos!   I know you're so jealous right! So delicious!
We didn't have many kids so we may or may not have eaten a "few" Halloween treats.... and we also watched the last half of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.  It was a funny night.     Even though I spent a couple of hours at the hospital it was a pretty good night!  How was your Halloween?
This year I'll be celebrating Halloween with my best girlfriend Rachel and her daughter Bella!  Stay tuned.

Giveaway Sneak Peak

Y'all didn't forget about my giveaway right?  

You've got a week left to enter!  

And believe you me you've got a pretty good chance of winning!  

Make sure to leave a comment on this blog post to enter to win!

Here we are working hard on them

Here's my bestie Rachel working on her cards.  

PS she thinks she's going to win, so make sure to enter!

Here's "Aunty" Heather.  

The table is so clean in this picture - it was early in the day!

And here's a sneak peak of some of the cards

Sauteed Zucchini

Tis the season to have more than anyone could ever eat zucchini.  I know many of you probably have crispers full of zucchini and your neighbours won't accept any more!  Well here's a recipe that will make you want to eat zucchini every day!
What You'll Need 1 medium clove of garlic Extra virgin olive oil 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes 4-6 Italian zucchini (from Costco) salt and pepper Parmesan cheese
Simple right?  I know.  Just looking at those ingredients I'm already hungry!
Cut the ends off the zucchini and then cut them in half, if they're really long.  Then cut them into matchsticks.  Most of the zucchini I cut length wise into three and then thinly slice the flat sections of squash.
Heat up some EVOO in the pan (2 tsp ish?).  With the flat side of your knife smash the garlic clove and throw it into the pan.  Sprinkle in the red pepper flakes and cook over medium heat until fragrant.  The original recipe says to toss the garlic -  YEAH RIGHT!?!?!  Then toss the zucchini sticks into the pan.  I cranked up the heat to sear them, make 'em a little crispy.  Then I turned down the heat and continued to cook them until they're tender crisp (doesn't take long).

Remove from heat and season with salt and pepper and parmesan cheese.
Serve it up and chow down!

Seriously I could eat zucchini like this everyday!  It's so great.  It really lets the flavour of the zucchini come through and the garlic, red pepper flakes and parmesan cheese are wonderfully simple additions.

Fake it Chicken Parm

This is one of those "throw it together cuz you got 20 minutes and you know its gonna turn out great" dinners.  I do that quite often (don't we all?) but sometimes I feel bad about posting these types of recipes.  Why, you might ask?  Well, mainly because a lot of it isn't from scratch BUT you can make this meal from things you have on hand, and I totally dig that!

What You'll Need

2 chicken breasts, cut in half

1 egg

milk

italian seasoned bread crumbs

cheese slices 

(I use marble because thats what I have on hand.  I think it's supposed to be mozzarella.)

plain spaghetti sauce 

(Prego in this household)

Whisk together the egg and milk in a shallow bowl.  Sprinkle a side/salad plate with the breadcrumbs.  Cut the chicken breasts in half length wise so you have 4 thin chicken breasts.

Dip the chicken in the egg/milk wash and then coat with bread crumbs and lay them in a glass baking dish.

Place the cheese slices evenly across the chicken.

And then pour the tomato sauce over the chicken.  There's no set amount so I can't tell you how much or how little to use.  

Go with your gut.

Bake for, I dunno, 20 minutes?  30 minutes.  

Depending on your oven.  Cut one in half and see where it's at.

I served this up with Grilled Asparagus, which I thought I had blogged about.  I kinda have but not really.  So here's what you need for my Easy Peasy Asparagus.

Trim the asparagus to remove the woody ends.

Throw on a baking sheet.

Drizzle with olive oil and season with salt and pepper.  Toss with some tongs (dear lord I love me some tongs) and then throw a little parmesan cheese. Toss again and bake during the last 10 minutes your chicken is baking.

These two things go SUPER well together!

And they look amazing on the plate too!

Hungry yet?  This is a great meal if you have kids who dance, or play hockey, or karate and have to get to practice by 7pm.  This is a fast, protein packed, and nutrient rich meal (try to ignore those breadcrumbs and cheese), but other than that it's all good!

Pinspired Recipes

Hey y'all!  I want to let you know about this awesome blog I'm contributing to.  It's called Pinspired Recipes. You know, we're gonna make all those yummy things we pin on Pinterest and see if they're a good as we imagine them to be. 

So head on over to Pinspired Recipes and check out my totally delicious Pumpkin Spice Muffins.

  
Have you got something pinned on Pinterest and you're maybe not brave enough to try it?  Send it over to me, I'l definitely whip it up and then you can read all about it!

Crochet Creations

Something happens to me when fall hits.  All I want to do is curl up with a blankie, a mug of tea and my crochet hook.  Oh I also couldn't bare to go on Pinterest after my wedding.  I kept seeing amazing wedding things that I shoulda/coulda/woulda.  It was very depressing to look at wedding stuff when my wedding was finished.  So I spent hours on Ravelry instead of Pinterest....equally time consuming.  

And boy did I find some awesome patterns

This was the first time I tried the puff stitch.  

I love everything about this headband *

I can't talk too much about these creations since some of them are gifts (and may or may not be upcoming giveaways!)  

But  I hope it will inspire you to pick up that crochet hook!

So cute right?  They're like crocheted Uggs!  I made a trial pair for myself that are too disfigured to show. 

Click here * for the pattern

 I love this cowl so much.  Both are so cozy I don't want to give them away.  Might just have to make one for myself!

If you don't crochet but would like some lovely homemade gifts (for yourself or others) feel free to contact me.  I know I don't have an Etsy store but I'm happy to make custom items for you at a reasonable price.  Just send me an email westcoastleslie(at)gmail(dot)com

*All pattern links are on Ravelry.com  You will need to sign in to view these patterns

Adventures in Kale Chips

Every Thursday and Friday I teach at a pre-professional dance training program in North Vancouver. In the courtyard of our building is a raw food/vegan cafe. The staff are a little hippy dippy and not the fastest servers but I have fallen in love with their kale chips. They are made with nutritional yeast (which I thought at first was cheese) and they are delicious. So I jumped on the kale train and tried my hand at making my own.

One bunch of kale makes loads of chips. Remove the leaves from the thick stem by either cutting or tearing. 

 Wash the leaves and dry thoroughly.

Tear the leaves into your favorite size and place on a parchment lines baking sheet (how much do you LOVE parchment paper? Right?!?). I decided to spray my kale with Pam instead of drizzling with olive oil - they would have been sopping with olive oil. Then sprinkle with salt. The first recipe I used said to bake at 375 for 10-15 minutes. For my oven this was too much.  I baked my first batch for 12 minutes and were burnt :(   See how they look all browny black....yeah that's how they tasted.

I turned down the heat to 350 (as directed by Martha). I also tried her recipe with lemon juice drizzled on the kale. I also lessened the baking time. To about 7-8 minutes. I found because of the extra liquid from the lemon juice I had to bake these a little longer, still less than 10 minutes though.  I really liked the salt and lemon juice chips.  They were zingy and delicious.

Then I tried parmesan cheese.  These were pretty good too.  Part of me wishes I had broiled instead of baked these ones to brown and melt the cheese.  Also REAL grated parm would've been much better than 'powdered'.

Lastly I tried sprinkling the chips with taco seasoning-because taco seasoning already has salt in it DON'T over salt these ones or you'll be sorry.  I think these might have been my favourite, but that might be because I'd finally figured out how long to bake them and how hot etc.

They weren't as good as the store bought ones-which I think are actually dehydrated not baked.  But they'll definitely do in a pinch when I'm craving salty snack food....which is always.

Have you tried making kale chips?  

How'd they turn out?  Let me know!

Everyday I'm Partying