A One Dish Meal

Tonight I tried out a very simple and easy recipe I bookmarked off The Kitchn a few weeks ago, Chicken and Artichokes in Wine Sauce. With a last stop at the market for a lemon, it was a perfect night for a hearty but not time-consuming meal. The ingredients can be mostly found in your freezer at any time and this whips up in no time. On a slightly high heat, the artichokes brown up in just a few minutes, and don't need much tending to, so you can get the chicken cut and dredged in flour by the time they are done. Again, the chicken cooks up fast and the sauce thickens with just the bit of flour off the meat. All it is is wine and lemon (with a touch of butter I added myself).

A one-pan meal is the best.

The dish is a saute, but the artichokes really fill you up. I can imagine this would be really delicious over some orzo, as its origins are Italian. I recommend a heavy hand with pepper and definitely use a decent wine. There isn't much (or anything really) else in the sauce and you want to be sure to have good flavor. The lemon, added right at the end, provides a wonderful tart bite at the end.

The best part? It took barely 20 minutes to make. And, I can toss a bag of frozen artichokes in my freezer so I can make this almost any night. I'm also pretty sure I could use the same recipe with a different vegetable, and it would be equally good. What a great find!

Chicken and artichokes ready to eat.

Apple Crisp in Photos

Apple crisp is the perfect thing to make when you need to use up a lot of apples...and a lot of apples I have. This apple crisp off AllRecipes.com was excellent. It's not quite as gooey as some crisps can be, which I liked. It was heavy on what you really want in an apple crisp - the crisp part! The sugar-oats-flour-butter mixture gets layered on the bottom and top of the sliced apples. The only change I made was to add about a cup of water. This recipe uses virtually no liquid, just melted butter in the topping, and most of the way through cooking I thought it looked too dry. A little water was all it needed to melt together a bit. On a day where it actually snowed (yes, in October) it was the perfect end to a cold night.

Apple crisp, straight out of the oven.

Look at that crispy goodness.

It was so yummy! It didn't even need vanilla ice cream (though I would have loved to have it, there was just no way I was going out in the snow!).

It's Apple Week at The Dinner Blog

This weekend I took a wonderful apple picking trip to Red Apple Farm in northern Massachusetts. The foliage is beginning to peak and it was an amazingly beautiful trip. We piled into the car and enjoyed the drive out to the country. We arrived, parked, and made our way into the line for an open air barbeque that they do every weekend in the Fall. We had pulled pork sandwiches made with their own sauce and of course, a big cup of fresh made cider. It tasted like pure liquid apple and was so delicious!


After our hearty lunch, we got our apple picking bags and set off into the orchards. It was quite cold and very windy at first, but as the day passed, the sun appeared and warmed things up. The orchard was so beautiful and full of many kinds of apples.


I tend to like tarter apples, so I went mostly for the Macintoshes and Cortlands.


There were also red delicious - the kind of apples you give to your school teacher - and petite golden delicious, which aren't as popular but I like.


The foliage was out of this world. Some of the colors were so vivid. Mother nature at her best.


After picking more than enough apples, we headed over to the farmstand. Ken and I each bought a jug of apple cider. I got a big jar of apple butter, which I haven't eaten in years, and I can't wait to make apple butter and peanut butter sandwiches for lunch this week! And of course, I had to have some cider donuts. They were so delicious. There is something about cider that makes the donughts so moist and these were covered with cinamon and sugar. Just to die for. In the same veign, the first recipe I can't wait to make with my apples are these fabulous-looking apple cider muffins! They use cider in the batter and shredded apple in the muffins. They sound like a great breakfast.

I ended up with almost 40 apples! I am looking for ways to use them up, beyond obviously eating a lot of them plain or with a scoop of peanut butter! Sweet or savory? Ideas are welcome and I will certainly be posting up the results.


Orchard photos courtesy of Ken - thanks!

You Can Help - Teaching the Next Generations of Foodies

I wanted to post this great fundraising campaign called the Serious Eats Brown Bag Challenge. Via the website DonorsChoose.org, they are asking you to brown bag your lunch, and donate the money you save to one of these fabulous food and health education programs. You can decide which project to fund, and the money will be directly delivered to the school's hands to get what they need. Cooking teaches incredibly valuable skills and I think, helps to open the minds of young people to different things. Plus, it isn't hard to see how hard obescity hurts a child, so teaching healthy eating at a young age is imperative. We need a new generation of contestants for Top Chef!

http://www.seriouseats.com/2009/10/serious-eats-donors-choose-brown-bag-challenge.html