A Tale of Two (More) Chicken Breasts

You know something that I've discovered? A real big surprise to me? The difference between taste and texture of never-been-frozen boneless, skinless chicken breasts and purchased-frozen chicken tenders. It's a delightful difference, let me tell you. Of course, those of you who already know this may be chuckling in a mannerly fashion at my naivete. That's OK.

Earlier in March I bought my first ever fresh chicken breasts, two of them, from the meat counter at Freddie's. I figured I could do something nice with them. That day I also bought some carrots, potatoes, onion, zucchini, yellow crook neck squash and chard. You can see what I did with all of that, here in this photo. Much like what I had on the blog on Monday, I baked the chicken breasts first, sprinkled with sea salt and pepper, drizzled with an olive oil, canola oil mixture. I forgot to say that on Monday, about the oil mixture. In a big pot, I cooked the potatoes in chunks, the carrots in disks, after I had sauteed the onion in bits and pieces, in that same olive oil/canola oil mixture. I added a little bit of water, too.

After the chicken was done, I called Lamont and asked him, "Can't I put my chicken breasts in pieces into my pot with the carrots and potatoes and onion, then add the squash and later on the chard?" "You sure can," he replied.

So I got the chicken out of the oven, let it rest a couple of minutes, then cut it into chunks. Once the potatoes and carrots began to get tender, I poured the chicken chunks and liquid into the pot, added a little bit of water, and turned up the heat for a few minutes. Then I poured in the disks of both squash and stirred in the chard which I had cut in the manner of chiffonade, as in finely cut. Well, finely cut as well as I could do it, not teensy but narrow. Anyway, it all cooked for a while on lower heat and smelled great. Right before I turned off the heat, I stirred in some leftover Green Giant Steamer Shoe Peg Corn. Oh, and as I added each new ingredient, I sprinkled some sea salt here and there in the pot.

Needless to say, I had me some more great leftovers. In fact, Lamont came over one night that week and ate a bowl of it, proclaiming it "chicken stew." He liked it! I hope that I can cook this again and have it turn out just as tasty.

You say Aga, I say Frigidaire, and we're not calling anything off!

In honor of Mr. and Mrs. Nesbitt’s Aga I feature our Frigidaire. Please forgive my pitiful paraphrase of Fred Astaire's "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off."

Not that I'm a jump-up-and-down fan of an electric stove, but it came with the apartment. And we put it to the best use we can.

Here's our dinner from last Thursday night. Corn on the cob, steamed broccoli, sauteed Walla Walla sweet onions and yellow squash and zucchini, and browned already-fully-cooked boneless smoked pork chops.

Look closely and you can see the steam coming from the Dutch oven and the boiler which I had removed from the eye of the stove--I didn't want the broccoli to get mushy.


I should have paid similar attention to the sauteed veggies--I over-salted them. I have to take responsibility for that, but I did have a new box of sea salt which for a novice sea-salt-user like me takes some practice. Since I ruined it, it seems fitting that I didn't get it in focus in this photo.

See Mama's cute little had in the upper left of the photo? She's digging in, ready to enjoy it all--then she tasted the veggies. I've learned my lesson.

Finally, I want to encourage the curious and the creative--that would be all of y'all--to click on the link to Mrs. Nesbitt's blog so that you can read about the Aga. Then, for all of you pet lovers out there, look on the right side of the blog for the photo of the German shepherd on the beach--it's the link to Wilma's blog. Wilma is the German shepherd, Mrs. Nesbitt is her mummy.

Now, I'm off to NASCAR where the Hanna-delayed race is about to begin in Richmond, Virginia. Go Junior!