Recipe Round-up & Hunger Games thoughts

Not the best pic, but this is a really yummy & easy dinner that I learned how to make from my mom’s friend Caroline. It’s called Creamy Basil Chicken and you should most definitely make it as soon as you can get some fresh basil from your garden. I actually picked some sage and used it in my dinner tonight. That’s crazy! CRAZY! It’s March 25th in Wisconsin and I picked an herb from my garden and cooked with it. Thanks global warming!

Ingredients for 4 Servings

2 TBSP butter
6 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 cup finely chopped onion
4 large boneless skinless  chicken breasts, tenderized
1/4 tsp each salt, pepper, Italian seasoning
1 cup cream  (I sometimes use more if it reduces too much)
2 large tomato, coarsely chopped or a pint of grape or cherry tomatoes halved
1 – 1 1/2 cup mushrooms, sliced  (optional)
1/4 cup fresh basil, coarsely chopped

shredded Parmesan cheese to your taste

Instructions

In a large non-stick skillet, melt butter over medium-high heat until sizzling.  Saute garlic and onion.   Reduce heat to medium.  Salt, pepper and Italian season the chicken breast.  Add the chicken to the skillet; cook 8 – 12 minutes or until the juices are clear.  Remove from skillet and set aside.  Add cream to skillet stirring frequently.  Stir in tomatoes, optional mushrooms and basil.  Return chicken to skillet and cook 4 -5 minutes or until heated through.  Garnish with additional basil leaves if desired and shredded Parmesan cheese.  Serve over rice, noodles or vegetables. But seriously, who would serve this over veggies when you can have pasta?

This is by far the best mac & cheese I’ve ever made and I’ve made a lot of them, trust me. I found it in a borrowed issue of Food & Wine magazine while laying on the beach at Devil’s Lake and it is actually the reason I started my subscription. It’s that good. Make it the next time you feel really indulgent and need some cheese!

Okay, last pasta I promise! This Creamy Garlic Pasta is so simple and really flavorful! It’s great on it’s own for picky eaters but I’ve added lots of things to it, like diced tomatoes or grilled chicken breasts. I also like to garnish most of my pasta with chopped fresh parsley or chopped scallions. Things usually need a little green pop of color in my opinion.

Lest you think I was going to get healthy or something, I’m going to round this out with with a cupcake!

So these were super easy! I made them for my sister and brother-in-law when we went over to meet their new baby. You can use any kind of cupcake & frosting you want, then just separate a bunch of Oreos saving the un-iced sides for use in something else (or just eating them, whatevs) put two Oreos on each cupcake, then stick a brown M & M on each Oreo and a yellow M & M in between for the beak. Voila! I know this idea has been everywhere but it is so easy and so cute I just couldn’t help but share.

Okay now I will venture into Hunger Games territory. I went to see it last night and frankly, my hopes were pretty high. My sister-in-law and my cousin both saw it and said very positive things, but I don’t know if I was just expecting too much or if the story was too fresh for me because I re-read the books this last week but it left me a bit flat. It just seemed like the emotional content was so low. I didn’t really feel anything for the characters like I did in the book. The film style was a lot of show and not a lot of tell and for me, that didn’t work. I know it would have been hokey to have a Katniss voice-over throughout the whole thing but I felt like we needed to know what was going on inside her a lot more. In the book there are so many meanings behind her actions and there are so many mixed emotions and it made for such a rich story. In the movie, she just felt like kind of a cold fish. And I don’t think that this was the actress’s fault at all. In fact, I really liked her in the part, I just needed something more. **SPOILER ALERT** The most pivotal scene between Peeta & Katniss in the book is when he basically saves her from starving to death and though they alluded to it a few times in the movie they never delved into why it was so important and how it gave Katniss the hope and the inspiration to live. If there had been a scene where she told someone about it and why it was important to her I think I might feel differently about the whole thing. Is that weird?

Another thing that really bothered me was how anesthetized the games themselves were. I mean I know they needed a PG-13 rating to get the majority of the market but it was just so clean compared to the book. That makes me sound as if I love guts and gore but it’s supposed to be barbaric and terrible and the fact that Katniss and Peeta survive is a miracle because they both sustained pretty major injuries in the book. In the movie the injuries are pretty tame and are really easily taken care of. I could nit-pick more but honestly I think I’m going to see it again to really finalize my opinion. There were things I did like – Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss, Elizabeth Banks as Effie, the cool, modern look of the Cornucopia, etc. I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t love it. Yet. Who knows, I’ve been known to change my mind.

What did everybody else think? Don’t be afraid to disagree with me, like I said, I want to love it!

French Fridays with Dorie – Cocoa Sables

These little crunchy cookies came together in a flash on my day off, leaving me lots of time to continue rereading The Hunger Games in preparation for this weekend. Oh yes, I am excited like only a 13 year old girl (or me) can get over a movie. I CANNOT wait. I’m going to see it on Saturday night with Bek and I’m praying that it’s not a total disappointment. I hope I feel some Harry Potter-ish joy and not the sad embarrassment of Twilight. Don’t misunderstand, I love Twilight. But I am appropriately embarrassed to love it. I feel no such embarrassment about Harry Potter or The Hunger Games. Does that make sense?

Anyway, back to the cookies. I actually had all the ingredients on hand for them which was nice. I used regular ol’ Hershey’s cocoa powder because it is virtually impossible to find Dutch-processed cocoa powder in this town. We used to be able to get it at the store but our supplier quit carrying it and we haven’t found a replacement.

Also I usually always have a few bars of bittersweet chocolate on hand but my stock has been depleted of late so I just used some semi-sweet chocolate chips and threw them in my little food chopper.

As an afterthought I also chopped up some white chocolate chips and threw them in as well. Fooled you, didn’t I? I bet you thought those were nuts in that first pic didn’t you? Well true story – I hate nuts in all baked goods. I may have mentioned it before (ahem, Rugelach!) but it is a sure thing that I will NEVER put nuts in anything. I managed to get a somewhat decent shot of the creamy, dreamy butter mixed with sugar in the stand mixer though so I feel I need to share it.

Then all the good stuff got added to the bowl as well.

Then said mix got formed into two logs and wrapped in plastic to chill out in the fridge for a few hours. I was going to photograph this as well but, you know, it was just so brown and loggish….not very appetizing to look at. Brown food is sometimes difficult in that way, don’t you find? If you don’t know what I mean, head on over to Cake Wrecks and look at all the disgusting chocolate cakes she has found. My god, some of them are terrible!

After the chill time it was a simple process to slice and bake them and voila! Perfect little cookies to have with a cup of tea. Or a giant mug of coffee like I did the next morning.

Or you could make a Shamrock Shake for your husband because they are his favorite even though St. Patrick’s Day is over and use one to garnish it. I have to give my friend Dave credit for the assist in this next photo because he held up that stripey fiesta of a placemat to make a backdrop. Thanks Dave! In retrospect we should have used the matching beige placemat probably but that decision in no way lessens your contribution.

However you want to eat them, they are pretty tasty little buggers. If this post seems to lack my normal pizazz, it’s just that I don’t have much to say about these guys. They were good, no doubt, but I think they are just not my favorite type of cookie. Dorie is very adamant about the texture being the thing in sables and I’ve made a few batches in the last few months so I know I’ve got it right but I just have to come out and say that I like my cookies to be more ooey, gooey. Like the little drops of Oreo heaven that I made myself on my birthday or the perfect chewy chocolate chip cookie. I think sandy is just not my texture folks. I’ve got a fun recipe round-up post planned for the weekend and I probably won’t be able to stop myself from talking about The Hunger Games (good or bad) just a bit so if that interests you at all, come back to check it out! Oh and if you’re at all into The Hunger Games, check out this post that Kristan from Confessions of a Cookbook Queen did over on her site. She came up with some really fun things!