I put extra chicken breasts in the slow cooker for supper Tuesday night. They were marinated in Italian salad dressing- yum! I loved watching Robin Miller on Food Network when we had cable and still love to check her out on
their website. Seriously, check her out. One of my favorite things, learned from her, is to cook extra and use it later. So, if you are gilling steak, grill extra, slice it up, and make it into fajitas later in the week. If you are roasting BBQ chicken breasts in the oven, make extra and chop them up for
empanadas. It takes only a few extra seconds and will save you so much time later in the week!
So, I made Creamy Italian Chicken Spaghetti. It was wonderful. Bear loved it too. Then we went for a walk around the neighborhood for about an hour- we still had calories to burn, but it was getting too dark. I had such a good feeling about this meal, that I measured things as I put them in! I rarely do that, but wanted to be able to accurately share. If you try it, you'll thank me.
You can cook up several chicken breasts, marinated in Italian salad dressing, or you can take my advice and use some leftovers. I had four chicken breasts. I used three in the recipe. Daddy ate the other one, microwaved with marinara sauce and cheese (he wanted no part in my experiment- his loss).
Shred her up! But not too small. It will continue to break up in the sauce, so leave it pretty chunky. (Meanwhile, boil up some spaghetti. I didn't take pictures, so I hope you know how to cook spaghetti. If not, look for directions on the box. I used whole wheat and recommend you do too, but if you haven't gone to the dark side of grains yet, the recipe will still work.)
Heat 2 T butter and 2 T olive oil in a large skillet. You are welcome to mix and match, but that's the combo I chose. Add 1 T crushed garlic.
Stir in 2 T flour. This is called a rue, now don't you feel fancy?
Let it bubble away for about a minute to cook the flour, so you don't have a raw taste in your sauce.
Next add 3/4 c dry white wine, 1/2 c Italian salad dressing, and 3/4 c heavy cream (or half and half, etc). Any dry white wine will work, but my preference is Gewurtzraminer- love it. I used 2% milk because that's all we had- and this was an experiment, but I'm telling you, at least use half and half!
Add the shredded chicken and 1/2 tsp dry rosemary. Let it bubble away for 3-5 min and get thick.
It's not rich enough- add 1 cup parmesan cheese. Stir in well.
I served this over spaghetti with a blend of veggies from the freezer. Fabulous, and it didn't take long to throw together when I got home from work.
This was my first layered cake with a column, so I did not have materials and was rather nervous. After waiting until the night before her birthday, at 8 pm, I searched Michaels and Walmart (the stores that weren't already closed) and did not find the column I was envisioning. I grabbed a cheap plastic cup from the cabinet and hot glued a cardboard cake round to the bottom. After frosting the base (9x13), I added forced the cup down into the cake. I piped a basic chocolate butter frosting onto the cup to form a tree trunk before placing the remaining 5" circle cake on top the base. Adding some extra green coloring to the remaining frosting before piping leaves with a large Wilton leaf tip added just the right contrast. Tinkerbell and other fairy figurines and a sprinkling of pastel flowers completed the cake.
