Spice Rubbed Grilled Chicken Breasts

We usually marinate boneless skinless chicken breasts but I wanted to try a spice rub. I turned to my favorite cookbook, The New Best Recipe from Cook's Illustrated. Here's the link to the book on amazon. It's really an encyclopedia of cooking and it hasn't steered me wrong yet. Great gift idea for anyone who wants to learn the how and why of cooking.
http://www.amazon.com/New-Best-Recipe-All-New/dp/0936184744/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1307064795&sr=1-1

The key is brining the chicken breasts first. I trimmed and pounded 4 boneless skinless chicken breats (this works for bone in but the cooking time is different). Dissolve 1/2 cup Diamond Kosher salt in 1 quart water and pour into a ziplock bag (you can use 1/4 cup table salt but the Diamond Kosher is best). Soak for 1 1/2 - 2 hours in fridge. Drain, rinse well under running water,  then let it drip in a colander. Pat dry with paper towels.

Next make the spice rub. The cast of characters:

Mix:
2 TBS Cumin
2 TBS Curry Powder
2 TBS Chili Powder
1 TBS Allspice
1 TBS Black Pepper
1 tsp cinnamon

Coat chicken with spice mix and rub it in good (go on, get your hands in there, just don't rub your eyes afterward!):

Here they are ready for the grill:

Heat the grill over med-high heat, then brush with a little oil, and grill for 5-6 minutes a side (depends on the thickness). Here they are in all their grill striped glory:

Add a little steamed broccoli and cauliflower on the side and heaven on a plate:

Mr. H was concerned cuz he could smell the cinnamon and thought that's what it would taste like. But I'm tellin ya, the warmth of the spices, the delicate, crispy coating, the tender, juicy inside, was amazing. Delish!

Lo Mein

Dinner tonight was Chicken Lo Mein. I diced two boneless, skinless, chicken breasts. Added some minced garlic, minced ginger and a little tamari to marinate while I chopped the rest of the goodies:

On to the Shitakes....I love saying Shitake....Shitake....Shitake....ok, enough of that. But isn't it a great word? So take a bag of dried Shitakes and put em in a small microwavable bowl. Add 1/2 cup hot water, cover with plastic wrap, cut several steam vents with a paring knife, and microwave for 30 seconds. Let stand about 5 minutes.

Take out the mushrooms then pour the liquid through a small strainer lined with a paper towel into a measuring cup. Set aside 1/4 cup of the liquid in a bowl and add 3 TBSP Oyster Sauce and 3 TBSP Tamari (low sodium soy is ok but Tamari is better). Trim and discard the stems (kitchen scissors work great for this part) then slice the caps into strips (the kitchen scissors work great for this as well):

This is the first time I've used Shitakes (i know, I just want to keep sayin it). Aren't they pretty? And the mushroom juice is key for the sauce. So on to the rest of the ingredients. Clockwise from the upper right...the sliced Shitakes, a bunch of bean sprouts, 3/4 head of Napa cabbage sliced, minced garlic & ginger, sliced red pepper, 4 green onions (green parts only and the scissors work great here again):

Here is where you can put the water on to boil for the noodles. We used Dreamfield's low carb spaghetti noodles. Salt the boiling water, add the noodles and cook for 7-8 minutes (box says 9 but that is too long).

While the noodles are cooking, heat a large non-stick skillet over med-high heat for 3 minutes. Add 1 TBSP oil and swirl to coat. Add the marinated chicken and saute for a few minutes.

Remove from pan. Add the mushrooms and peppers and saute for 2 minutes. Add the cabbage and saute for another minute.

Move to the side and add the green onions, ginger and garlic to the center. Add another 1/2 TBSP oil. Cook about 10 seconds then stir it all together.

Add the sprouts and mushroom liquid mixture. Toss to combine.

Drain the noodles in a colander and rinse in cold water. Put the noodles back into the hot pan, drizzle with Sesame oil and toss to coat (i like to keep the noodles separate instead of adding them all to the skillet with the sprouts and sauce). Put some noodles in a bowl and ladle the mixture on making sure you get some of the delicious sauce with it.

 This was so good. Better than any restaurant Lo Mein I've had. Enjoy!

Taco Boats

I had a little helper in the kitchen yesterday making Taco Boats and Mexi-cauli-rice. The grandman was in charge of shredding the cauliflower in the food processor. He thought it was very fun. But when I asked him if he wanted to help me with the dishes after he said, "Gram, that's not fun." I tried.

For the rice I sauteed the cauli-rice with some diced white onions and garlic. Then added some drained Ro-Tel tomatoes. Yum.

For lower carb tacos we put all the taco fixin's in a romaine lettuce leaf. Again, yum!

I browned a pound of grass fed ground beef with diced white onion, diced red pepper and garlic:

I made taco seasoning: 1 TBSP chili powder, 1 tsp cumin, 1/4 tsp onion powder, 1/4 tsp garlic powder, 1/2 tsp oregano, 1/2 tsp paprika, 1 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp pepper, and added to the meat:

Added a can of tomato sauce, and voila:

Pile the meat mixture and whatever taco toppings you like (I added shredded cheddar, sour cream, diced onion, sliced avocado (guacamole is better if you have the time), lettuce, tomatoes) and here you have taco boats with mexi-cauli-rice:

As you can see I am one of those people that piles way too much on my tacos. I'll never learn. But it was deeelish.

Fried Zucchini Cakes

I wanted to add another side dish to the usual cauli/mash or cauli/rice that we often have so decided to try making fried zucchini cakes. They were actually very good. Had them tonight with the fabulous chicharrones oven fried chicken. And how!

The key is to get as much moisture out of the zucchini as you can. Shred 3 zucchini's in the food processor. Put it in a colander and sprinkle some salt to draw out the water:

Let it set for a while then squeeze it through cheesecloth or paper towels. You can see how much liquid came out of one small handful:

Put it in a large bowl and add 2 beaten eggs, finely diced red onion, some chopped italian parsley, some shredded Parmesan, salt & pepper (and whatever other spices you might like), and 3 TBS coconut flour (regular flour is ok but we are trying for lower carbs and Sprouts now has coconut flour in their bins):

Mix well and form into thin patties:

Heat some olive oil in a large non-stick skillet over medium heat and brown about 5-6 minutes each side:

I cooked them in 2 batches so there was plenty of room to flip. They were really good and a nice change from the usual.

Road Trip!

Road trip to Tucson with my daughter and sis-in-law. We had a great time. Just want to get in a PSA (Public Service Announcement in case ya don't know) to be careful if you are driving down that way of some kind of alien invasion....now I don't know what exactly it was but something was trying to get at us through the windshield:

They just kept coming at us full force but we made it through.

Stopped to visit the San Xavier del Bac Mission which was lovely. Saw a van full of nuns driving out as we drove in. Bless them. The mission was founded in 1692 and the church began construction in 1783. Beautiful..

It is the oldest intact European structure in Arizona, and the church's interior is filled with marvelous original statuary and mural paintings.

You can light prayer candles:

And there is this kinda creepy old dude in a box where people pin prayers and requests to his shroud:

On the way I was telling my daughter about the MISSION we were going to visit and she somehow got it into her head that it was a MAUSOLEUM......and kept asking if there were dead people at the MAUSOLEUM...So I had to indulge her and find a ghosty:

I think I captured one here on the way in. See it? And I won't even get into the Yarmulke/Yamaka debate....that's another story...

All in all a great trip and I, of course, had to take the obligatory "hurry and jump on the bed while I set my camera up with the timer" picture:

I love you girls!

Easter Fun

Another fun Easter Extravaganza at Rancho Holmes' this weekend. We started with the egg hunt. 60 plastic eggs filled with all kinds of goodies with some quarters and dollars thrown in. Each kid gets assigned their own number and they're off!

Daniel making good progress:

Collin quickly movin to the next hidey-hole:

A lot of the eggs were in obvious places. Athena, you are getting warmer, warmer....oh you are hot!

The kids kept walking past eggs that were hidden in plain sight so Mr. H jumped in with some clues:

The boys with Grandma Lucy and the booty:

Then it was on to the treasure hunt to find the baskets. I made a treasure map with clues to find the hidden eggs. Each of the 6 eggs had a letter inside. Once they found the 6 eggs and the letters they had to unscramble them for the word that would send them to the baskets.

The map is a drawing of the house and each written clue was on the map in the general area where the clue was hidden. They were so funny. The first clue I just drew a picture of lips (in the upper left corner). I have a big arrangement of Tulips there (get it, two lips, tulips?). They needed a little help with it so here's how it went:

Me: What is the picture?

Them: Lips

Me: How many?

Them: Two

Me: What two words did you just say?

Them: Crickets

Me: How many? Them: two. Me: What's the picture? Them: lips. Me: Put the words together.

Them: two lips. Me: Say it again. Them: two lips, two lips, TULIPS! TULIPS! FLOWERS!

Me: YEAH!!!

That got them on a roll and we ended up with the final clue. Except I froze the clue in a block of ice.

Their first thought was to put it in the sink to melt the ice.

That wasn't working so well so Tyler suggested they take it outside and smash it on the driveway.

So how'd that work out?

Oooooh, not so good. But, wait! Let's try that again...

Bingo! Mission accomplished. So now they had all six clues and the six letters. Now what I did not realize when I chose the hiding place (the shower-I needed a large space to fit all the baskets) was that there is another word that you can make out of the letters. SHOWER are the letters. So when the kids put the letters on the counter for some reason they were fixated on the word starting with WH. Here they are:

Here is a close look at the letters:

At this point they had the letters arrange as WHEROS. Both Mr. H and my Mom immediately saw a word that if you just moved the E and O around......OH NO! Stop the presses! Did you get it?? I immediately jumped in and told them IT STARTS WITH AN S!!!!! Whew....ok, so they figured out the word SHOWER and found their baskets:

On to the final event, egg coloring! Pretty Athena:

Creative Collin. He got a telescope for Christmas and has been using the planet Uranus in conversations as often as possible. So here is his egg. We ran out of room so the S is around the corner and we only had room on the front for URANU....you can see the S when you turn the egg:

And the always smiling Daniel:

It was a fabulous day and I'll finish with one last picture. Boys will be boys......magnets....nose....