Smothered Chicken

There's a little place in Speedway called Dawson's on Main. They make smothered chicken so delicious, that we had out rehearsal dinner there. The only problem is that we live around half an hour from said chicken. So, I decided to try to copy it. Here's what goes into it:

Chicken Breasts
Bacon
Mushrooms
Green Onion
Dijon Horseradish Sauce
Shredded Cheese Blend (Mine had cheddar, jack, and something else, but it's up to you)

I think that's all, so I started with the chicken. I grilled two chicken breasts until they were cooked through but not overdone, because I knew I was putting them in the oven. You can totally slice open the tops of the breasts because we're covering it all up later. I didn't do anything to the chicken this time, but I think next time I'll pound the chicken to make it a little thinner. It didn't take so long to cook, but it would have been easier to eat.

Cook the Bacon. If I have to tell you how to do this, I'm a little scared. Put it in a pan...

Then Saute the mushrooms in a little olive oil. They should get just a tiny bit brown.

Ahhh, the sauce. It is a delicious thing. I'd looked up a bunch of recipes to make it online. I was shopping for the ingredients, when I saw this:
I know, premade, who know's what's really in it, but it tastes great, and it was guaranteed to work out, whick the homemade sauce was not.

Break up the bacon and get your other ingrdients ready, it's time to stack.

Put the chicken in an oven safe pan, or on oven safe plates.

Layer on the dijon sauce, and don't be afraid. It's really good. I have no measurements at all, because I just kept putting it on there until it "felt right". I would suggest doing the same.

Then the bacon. I considered just slapping the whole strips on there, but I broke it up in the end so it would be easier to cook.

Then mushrooms. I really loved these mushrooms. I think they have had a little bacon grease in them, because I only used one pan, and I don't know how well I did draining it, but wow. I really piled those on.

Then green onions. I dont' know if the original recipe called for those, but boy I love them.

Top it all with cheese, and put it in the oven at 350 until the cheese is melted.

Consume.

I would rather

This is my answer to yesterday's post, if you haven't seen it , look down. This week's would you rather was: Would you rather be 7'9" or 4'1"?

I think I'd go for 7'9" because then at least I could reach everything out in public places. Sure, some places would be a tight squeeze, but I think most places you could go. I'd thing the health issues involved with either end of the height spectrum are probably equally severe.

I do wonder if I could fit into movie theater seats, which if I were 4'1", wouldn't be a problem. I couldn't go on amusement park rides with either height, and driving is car is complicated either way too.

But, do really tall people have a convention? I've watched "Little People Big World", and I've seen what huge community they have. That would be nice. But, and this is shallow, we tend to admire really tall people, and degrade short people. So, my shallow decision is to be super tall.

Would You Rather

It's the return of the great weekend post!


Would you rather: Be 4'1 or 7'9"?



I'll post my answer tomorrow, in the meantime, let's hear yours!!!

POW!

No more guesses on the band name??? Come on peeps!

Great Band names

Night before last was LONG. Jason was out getting a friend from the airport until 4:30. I kept waking up wondering when he was going to get home. During one of these groggy moments, an idea occurred to me, as they ate wont to in groggy moments.

You know what would be a great band name?

Fines may be doubled

Wow, yes, this is what my mind said to me. When I remembered that this morning, I remembered a great thread on a message board that Jason frequents, and I visit from time to time. It was guess the band name. One person would post a picture, or series of pictures and then everyone else would guess. It was like rebus. However, I was not that great at it. I saw a series of pictures similar to these, the big difference being that the third picture was a man turning a hand drill against his temple (okay pretending to):

I yelled out "Couch Baby Crank Horse!" This is not, has never been, and will never be the name of a band. However, at that moment, I knew what I would call any bad I would ever be in. Including my guitar hero band. That one kinda got abbreviated, Couchbabycrankhor, but that was still awesome. So, can anyone out there guess what the band ACTUALLY was? I'll give you one hint. The guy in the original drill picture looked insane...

Garden planning

This week I'm working on planning my vegetable garden for this year. Last year it did okay despite the flood above, but I think it can be waaay better.

First, fewer cucumbers. They really overran the whole garden last year, and I didn't eat that many. Second, more tomatoes. I really liked the ones we got, but there weren't enough. Our corn didn't grow very tall, thanks to, I think not enough sun. Next, no lettuce. It was the bunny favorite, and therefore we didn't get much. Also casualties of the lupus were broccoli and peas. So this year:

Structure

I'm staying with the same shape, and the same cages for the tomatoes. I'm also going to see if we Jason can build or buy me one of these to grow the cucumbers on. (Surprise Honey!)


I want to wrap the whole thing in chicken wire. I really didn't want to do this initially, but everything go SOOO eaten last year, that I don't feel like I have much choice. I'm putting at least 4 stakes in the ground and making the fence around that.

Planting.
Last year I used mostly pre-sprouted plants. This year I'm trying to start from seed. I'm buying one of those seed starter greenhouses, and I'm going to put it on the front table in the living room. There's a dome to prevent cat eating. Wish me luck. I figure if it turns out really badly, I can just buy plants later.

Content
Here's what I want to plant:
Tomatoes 2 of each
Sweet 100's (cherry tomatoes)
Heirlooms of some sort
Beefsteak
Broccoli
Cucumbers
Zucchini
Radishes
Jalapenos
Parsley
Chives (I've already got some)
Green Onion


Has anyone out there got suggestions for me on what to plant where? The whole garden gets part sun, there's nowhere in our lawn that gets full, but this was a pretty sunny place. Any other suggestions?

One Year (only a month late)

I can't believe it. Time flies when you're having fun, and boy did it fly by in Jason and I's first year of marriage. On Feb 2nd, we celebrated the first of I hope many milestones. It's really been great, and I love him more every day. I know this is all supersap from the sappy tree in sappyland, but I really never thought it would happen. So, I'm happy about it. We know that we'll only have one first anniversary, so we decided to do it up big. We'd been saving since October, and were going to West Baden Springs.

I'd heard of this place before, honestly mostly in ghost hunting circles. I think it was discussed when the re-did West Baden and French Lick Hotels, that there was a reported haunting. This is NOT why we went there. Remember back in October, when I posted about our camping trip to Patoka Lake? On the way down, we passed West Baden. I'd never seen it before in person and it was AMAZING. We stopped in on the way home, and made spur of the moment reservations for our anniversary.

On Friday the 30th, we made our trip down with only one little stop at Bass Pro Shops. It was huge.
As we arrived at West Baden, there were 3 small deer foraging right in front of the hotel! It was really cool, especially for me, who had never seen a live deer until after I met Jason. When we asked about them at the desk, it turned out to be an extremely common thing.
The whole hotel was really amazing. One of my favorite things were these statues. This hotel had fallen into extreme disrepair, at the worst time one wall was missing. In pre-restoration pictures, one of the only identifiable things were the statues.

We checked into our beautiful balcony room. The room was wonderful. It was elegant and comfortable. The furniture was really pretty. The fronts of the dressers were inlaid with a picture of the hotel. The bathroom was huge! That afternoon we went swimming. That night we took the shuttle over to the French Lick hotel and had a look around. We were glad to be where we were. There was live music under the dome every night, and it was just amazing.


The next day I had a Spreudel bath in the morning. These hotels had been built to take advantage of a mineral spring whos water was said to be a cure all. I wanted to do something in the spa that I couldn't do anywhere else, so I chose the bath. I wish I could have taken the list of minerals that were in it with me, because, it was scary. It smelled a little funky, and had turned the tap black. But, it was a realxing bath, and I thought it was neat. Plus, it cured my scurvy.


We went to French Lick winery for lunch, and had a good pizza. I tasted the wine, and decided that I've been spoiled by Oliver. EVERYTHING at Oliver is good. After that we went to the casino. Neither Jason nor I had ever been to a casino. We were excited. We each took $20, and were going to leave when we'd spent it. It was mostly slot machines, and nost of those were penny slots, so they only took one or two cents. Nevertheless, in around half an hour, I'd lost mine, but Jason had doubled his! So, we broke even. Both of us could see how people could spend all day there, but we also agreed that it was kinda boring. I think I'd want to see how somewhere like Vegas would be before I ruled on the entertainment value of gambling.


That night we went out for a fancy dinner to celebrate our Anniversary. I dressed up, and we went to the fancy steakhouse, It was good, and our table was very nice, very private. I had a ymmy martini, and we ate the biggest asparagus we'd ever seen. We went back and had dessert under the dome. There was a jazz trio there that night, and we danced on our balcony.


It was really a great trip. every inch of that place is amazing. It was a great memory to keep.

It's March

And at our house it's the first ever week of clean out the freezer meals. Our freezer is so full, stuff falls out every time it's open, and I can't fit anything else in it. This includes freeze ahead things that I like to make, like chicken spaghetti (PW!) and other things.

With that being said, I have a confession. I'm a freezer addict. If I have it left over, anything, I'll try to freeze it. I have tried to freeze buttermilk. Yuck. I freeze refried beans (works well)! I freeze corn (not so good). Thing is, there's only two of us, and I don't want to be wasteful. So, instead of throwing it away then, I freeze it, then end up throwing it away later. I could probabl fill that walk in, but it reminds me of The Shining. It's a sickness.

I've decided, in order to avoid this delayed waste, I'm going to do something completely revolutionary( I know, I'm really leading the world into something new here). I'm going to plan meals weekly. This week's theme is make room. Althought I won't subject you to this every week, in the spirit of making myself really do this, I'm publishing this week's menu.

Monday: Frozen Pizza, I know, creative, but I work late.
Tuesday: Mexican, Tostadas (not bbq chicken), and taquitos.
Wednesday:Chicken Fingers and fries, and a veggie
Thursday: Popcorn Shrimp and mashed potatoes and a veggie


Every night we have a salad with whatever else. This should clear out enough room in the freezer for me to make a few new and interesting things.