I cook with chicken fairly frequently, tending towards chicken thighs since they have a lot more flavor and are generally cheaper anyway. Last night I decided to go with my old standby of oven-fried chicken, based on this recipe I found a number of months ago although I’ve made a few changes to it (because that’s what I do, and I don’t have all the seasonings). The chicken always comes out very tender and juicy!

I also served a red cabbage salad that I got from blogger Molly Wizenberg’s book, “My Homemade Life” (a great read, by the way). It’s very simple, cheap, and as I discovered last night, delicious.

Lastly, some simple mashed potatoes on the side (because ”fried” chicken without a potato dish just seems so wrong to me).  

Oven-Fried Chicken, adapted

Ingredients:

• 4 chicken thighs (or whatever cut you like)
• ½ cup of breadcrumbs or panko
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp freshly-ground pepper
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tsp sage
• ¼ cup butter

Preparation:

 Heat oven to 450°.

 Line a pan with heavy duty foil, then put your butter in the pan, placing it in the oven just until it melts.

 In a food storage bag or a bowl, combine breadcrumbs and seasonings. Coat your chicken pieces in this mix, making sure you get any little crevices.

Place chicken in your prepared pans in the melted butter. Bake, uncovered, for 30 minutes. Turn over and bake 15 to 20 minutes longer, or until tender and nicely browned.

Molly’s Red Cabbage Salad

Ingredients:

• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 2 tbsp lemon juice
• 1 small clove garlic finely chopped
• ½ tsp salt
• 1 small to medium red cabbage
• ¼ cup parmesan cheese (freshly grated if you can)
• Black pepper, to taste

Preparation:

Discard the outter cabbage leaves. Cut the cabbage into quarters, discard the white core. Slice each quarter as thinly as you can and put into a large bowl.

Into the bowl over the cabbage goes all your other ingredients. Mix well until everything is evenly distributed. Now add more pepper than you anticipated, because black pepper is delicious.

Quick and Easy Mashed Potatoes

Ingredients:

• 5-6 potatoes, scrubbed clean
• ¼ cup butter
• ½ cup of milk
• Salt, to taste
• Pepper, to taste 

Preparation:   

Fill a stockpot about 2/3 of the way with water, and put on high to get boiling.

If you like, peel your potatoes. I prefer more homestyle myself, so I leave them on. Dice them and put them in the pot, letting the potatoes boil until soft.

Drain off the water, add your butter and milk. Mash away until as smooth or chunky as you like.

Season with salt and pepper.

This is an incredibly easy and tasty soup to pull together. Serve with some crusty garlic bread and a green salad for a rounded meal.

Ingredients

• 1 lb Cannellini or Great Northern beans, soaked overnight and rinsed
  
• 2 Smoked ham hocks or ham shanks, thawed
  
• 1 large onion, diced
• 4 carrots, diced
• 6 cups of water
• Tbsp black peppercorns
• Tbsp Worcestershire
• 2 garlic cloves, minced or put through a garlic press
• 1 tsp garlic powder

From here, all ya do is put everything in your crockpot and let it simmer on low for 6-8 hours, or if you’re in more of a hurry, you can put it on high for just a couple hours.

Then, take out your ham hocks or ham shanks, separate the meat from the bone and skin. Cut up the meat into smaller pieces, then add it back into the soup. You’re ready to serve!

If you want to add some other stuff, I’d suggest chopped celery, additional ham (especially if you’re using hamhocks and want more meat), or chopped spicy kielbasa that’s been lightly browned.

You’ll come to see that I love using my crock pot… It’s easy to prep a meal the night before, dump it all in the pot and put in the fridge until morning. So easy, and so tasty. You can get away with buying some tough (ie cheaper) cuts of meat since it’ll be simmering all day and falling apart by the time you dig in for dinner.

One thing I love about cooking, is that once you have a good base recipe, you can build variations off of it. Want a more robust stew? Swap the wine for a dark beer, maybe throw some barley in. More depth? Toss in a bit of good tomato sauce. How about spicy? A greater variety of vegetables, herbs? Go for it!

So, here’s my basic recipe. Once of these days, I may get around to making some beef stock, but until then, I do occasionally buy seasoning packets for stuff like this…

The recipe:

1 packet of beef stew base
1 lb stew meat
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
4 carrots
4 medium-sized potatoes
1 cup red wine
1/2 large yellow onion
2 tsp garlic powder
Salt
Pepper
1 cup water

Note: Vegetable amounts are estimated; once I add the meat, I just pile ‘em in my 5-quart crockpot until it’s nearly full.

Brown meat over medium-high heat. You’re not trying to cook it through, just get it looking tasty on the outside. While it’s browning, season the meat with salt, pepper, Worcestershire sauce and garlic powder. Once it’s done, pour the meat and juices into the bottom of your crockpot, then mix in your stew base, red wine and water.

Chop up potatoes, carrots and onion to your desired size. I recommend that you don’t cut them too small; they’ll nearly disintegrate (especially the potatoes) in the lengthy cooking process. I generally quarter the potatoes lengthwise, then chop them into about third-inch pieces. Carrots just get sliced into about quarter-inch thick chunks, and onion into about half-inch pieces.

At this point, you can put what you have in the fridge to start in the morning.

When you’re ready to get it cooking, turn your crockpot on low, and let the whole lot simmer for 6-8 hours. If you can, give it a stir once every couple hours, but this is not necessary.

I served it for dinner this evening, with some homemade wheat bread that I made last night.

You can also toss in some (thawed) peas or chopped green beans, corn, whatever floats your boat. I tend to hold off on that until just before serving so they don’t get mushy …and who likes mushy peas?

Thought I’d start sharing my recipes, and gosh, why not start off with my lamest one? Hey, it’s a tuna casserole… it’s what you make when you don’t have a lotta time on hand or any meat defrosted.

I made this for dinner last night. It was that, or macaroni and cheese, and I needed some protein. No, there are no pictures. I’ll admit, this recipe is not so photo-worthy!

Hendersons’ Tuna Casserole

2 cans of tuna in oil
1 can cream of mushroom soup (do not add water or milk)
3/4 cup sour cream
1/2 pound egg noodles
2 tbsp breadcrumbs
salt
pepper

* Optional: 1 cup frozen vegetable like peas or corn

Preheat your oven to 350°F.

In a large pot, boil water and cook noodles until they’re al dente. Be sure that they don’t get too soft–few things are a bigger food turn off to me that mushy noodles, especially in a casserole.

* If you’re adding a cup of frozen vegetable in with the casserole, you can add it to the noodles during the last five minutes that they’re boiling.

Once done, drain the water out of the pan and add your two cans of tuna, oil and all. Mix it up until the tuna is well integrated, then add the soup and sour cream. Season with salt and pepper to your taste.

Take a casserole pan (lightly greased if it’s metal) and spread your casserole out, then top with the breadcrumbs as evenly as you can.

Pop it into the oven for about 25 minutes, then you’re ready to eat.

Many of you have likely heard me go on about the sessions I started with 5 Rings Fitness back in JulyMy 90 days will be up in early October, and the results have been pretty fantastic so far. My range of motion, strength and stamina have all gone improved significantly and continue to do so. One of the most wonderful things about everything James has been showing me, is that it’s super easy to do at home and keep up with. All I need is a kettlebell and the knowledge he’s given me, and I’ll continue to improve.

While my diet has been tweaked a bit, it hasn’t required me to make any significant changes. He’s shown me a lot about nutrition (it’s almost creepy the amount of information he has in that head regarding all these topics).

The only “downside”: needing to buy new clothes because some of what I own is starting to get a bit too roomy (jeans especially… I’ve gone from a size 15 to 10 already). POOR ME.

Another couple of points on James and 5 Rings Fitness:

1. He never, EVER, sets you up for failure; he’ll work with you no matter what you’re starting point is — just listen, follow through and you’ll certainly see results.
2. Pain is bad — if it hurts to do it, stop and do something else. This is different from what you see on TV, kids. More “work smarter, not harder”. Mind, you’ll sweat, but you’ll love doing it.
3. One of my ultimate goals, and one that James has for you as well, is to strengthen the body’s “core”, not just build muscle tone everywhere hapazardly. And let me tell you, he’s got a great method that combines fun strength and cardio workouts combined with amazing body stretches that’ll get you loosey-goosey from head to toe.

Believe me, I could go on and on… and I will, but I’ll save more for another day. If you’re at ALL curious about 5 Rings Fitness, feel free to ask me questions or contact 5RF directly. A great way to get started would be to sign up for a Basic Membership, and that’s just $50 a month. There are classes in the morning, and some evenings/weekends as well (schedule; the Saturday morning class is an excellent starter).

Misc links:
Video: Hannah V Reviews 5 Rings Fitness
5 Rings Fitness on Twitter; on Facebook.

I’ve been pretty disconnected from the interwebs as of late (ok, for me, I’ve been disconnected… I always have my Palm Centro on me for Twitter, Flickr & FB). I gotta tell ya, I love it… Being in front of a computer for pleasure just doesn’t have much appeal for me anymore.*

So what have I been doing with all my free time? Reading in the park. Going to shows with my boyfriend. Checking out more movies, and restaurants (not just Nick & Eddie, though it’s certainly a favorite spot of mine). I’ve really enjoyed reconnecting with friends, and making new ones. Soon, I’ll bring you up to speed on 5 Rings Fitness, which has, quite honestly, changed my life (thus, deserving of it’s own post).

It’s been fun getting into a lot more local music… I’ve seen most of my faves like Solid Gold (I think we’ve been to every local show of theirs since Grand Old Day early this summer), Doomtree, Cecil Otter… I’ve met the incredibly talented and beautiful Maria Isa, and just last night saw P.O.S.’s punk band Building Better Bombs over at the Turf Club (great show by the way, and he’s SO NICE).

So where am I going now…?

I’ve been thinking about going back to school next semester… I still have a LONG way to go before I even have an AA Degree, but gotta start somewhere! I’d still be working full time obviously, so it’d likely be just a couple night classes to get going. More than anything, it’ll depend on how I’m doing financially and what kind of loans/grants I can get to help with the costs… I don’t have a nestegg right now and would certainly like to have some padding before commiting to another ongoing cost (as beneficial as it is).

I’ve also been toying with the idea of moving to the Oregon coast (thinking Newport, Lincoln City, and my soft-spot lil’ dot town of Depoe Bay–where you can get the best saltwater taffy EVAR). Obviously there are drawback to this plan… The bigget being that I’d have to find a job where I could make enough money to cover rent and bills, which is of course a lot more difficult to do in small towns. Regardless, this would be a way off yet and requires a lot more thought and research.

That’s all I got just now, back to work for me! Hope to see ya’ll soon.

* Ok, except for Mob Wars on Facebook a couple times a week.

On Monday morning, I was checking Facebook briefly while getting ready for work. I came across some, well, disturbing posts from a good friend of mine, Mikael Rudolph. Heartbreakingly, it turns out that he has Therapy Related Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML).

In January 2008, he was diagnosed with colon cancer, but beat it. Then his sister passed away late last year. Now this. When they’re able to get it into remission, he’ll be up for a bone marrow transplant. He checked into the hospital this afternoon for a three- to four-week stay.

I know most, if not all of you, have had your lives touched by cancer… be it yourself, friends or family. While there will certainly be a benefit coming up for him, if you want to help out, his favorite charity is RESCU (Renaissance Entertainers, Services, and Crafters United). You can donate either in his name or to the foundation itself to help others in similar situations (donation page is here).

Additionally, if you haven’t already, sign up as a potential marrow donor on the Be The Match Registry. Thousands of people with leukemia and other diseases are in need of matches, and you could help. If you happen to be a match for someone, it doesn’t cost you a thing to donate.

If you want to get in touch with Mikael and are on Facebook, here’s his page.

He’s one of the most determined people I know and is surrounded by loving friends so I know he’s not going to take this lying down. If ya have some good vibes or prayers to send, I’m sure he’d appreciate them.