Dinner time!

Hey everyone! I apologize for my delay in posting. Our goal is 2 posts per week and I completely dropped the ball. Maybe the deliciousness of the recipe below will help you forgive me. Please?

Today's easy recipe requires very few ingredients and is very simple. I will say, though, that unlike other simple recipes we post, this is not one where you can pop it in the oven and forget about it until it's done. So maybe this is more of a medium difficulty recipe versus an easy recipe.  I found it on Martha Stewart's webpage. You can click the link to see her original recipe.

Ingredients:

4 Potatoes
1 lb. Asparagus
1 lb. Chicken (I used about 5 chicken tenderlions. You could also use chicken breast, chicken legs, or multiple parts of a whole chicken!)
Butter
1 Lemon
Thyme (fresh sprigs are preferable but I just used my dried kitchen spices.)
Step 1: Preheat oven to 475. Peel and quarter (cut into 4ths) potatoes, cut ends off of asparagus, slice lemon into wedges, thaw chicken.

Step 2: Layer potatoes and a small slice of butter in pan. Season with salt and pepper. Bake for 20-25 minutes (until potatoes are golden brown).

Step 3: Remove pan from oven. Add chicken over potatoes.  Season with salt and pepper. Bake for 20 minutes (until chicken is golden brown).

Step 4: Remove pan from oven. Add asparagus, lemon wedges, and a small slice of butter over the chicken. Season with thyme. Cook for 5 to 15 minutes, or until asparagus is tender. Serve with butter and lemon juices from pan sprinkled on top.

This was delicious and very easy--my only dislike about this recipe is that it's more difficult to make while multi-tasking, since you have stop every 20 minutes to add the next layer of food.

Enjoy!

Imitation Low Country Boil Recipe

Hello, folks! Today we're bringing you another quick and easy recipe!

Here's what you need to get started:
Shrimp: peeled, deveined, cooked
Sausage: the long tube kind, not the kind that looks like ground beef
Potatoes (as many as you feel like eating. On this occasion I used 4--2 medium and 2 very small.)
Cajun Seasoning
1/2 stick Butter
pinch of Salt and Pepper
1/4 Onion
optional: Corn, Peppers

To prepare:

Chop the onion into desired size pieces. I don't like biting into a huge chunk of onion so I cut mine fairly small.

Slice sausage into disks. I usually aim for disks about half an inch thick.

Peel and chop potatoes. I have several notes about this. 

1. You do not have to peel the potatoes if you like potato skins. I don't prefer it, but if you do--go ahead and leave it on!

2. If you use a less starchy potato, like a red potato, you will not get a mushy product. It will still taste great, it just won't look like the final pictures below!

3. The larger the potato slices, the longer it will take to cook. The size of the potatoes below had to boil about 10 minutes longer than usual because I left them so big.

To cook:

Dump all your cut up ingredients and the shrimp into a pot of water. 

Bring water to a boil.

Wait about 15 minutes.

To check to see if your food is done, pull out a potato wedge. Cut a portion off. If it is extremely soft, it is ready. You can also taste it. It should have the texture of...a potato. What's so great about this recipe is that the only portion that is not cooked is the potato and onion. You really only have to boil the ingredients as long as it takes to soften those two things up. The rest is already cooked--you're just heating it up!

Waiting for the food to boil. 

Once the potatoes are cooked all the way through, drain the pot into a colander.  Put all the food back in the pot. We still have to add butter and seasoning!

Add the half stick of butter and seasoning. I have no exact measurement for the seasoning--it's just to taste. I like to lightly cover the whole thing with a thin layer of seasoning. Then add a pinch of salt and pepper.

Finally, mix it all together, serve, and enjoy!

It's warm and delicious for these cold winter days. My husband hates soup so this is a great alternative for when I'm feeling like cozy foods!