Friday, June 4, 2010

Oregano Chicken and Vegetables

A few days ago, after a frustrating experience finding only enough chicken to make dinner for my husband, I decided that it was time to come up with a dinner plan for the week. So, I went to the bookshelf and picked up the cookbook I bought from Borders a few months before I got married (over a year ago). It's called Healthy Meals, and I had never used it before. After a few minutes I compiled a list of meals to make over the next week. First, I looked through my cabinets to see which ingredients I needed to buy, and then I made a grocery list (I categorized the list into the different sections of the grocery store so that I won't have to back-track. It saves me time at the store).

So last night I decided to make Oregano Chicken and Vegetables. The ingredients (I bought them at Aldi), cost me about $7.75. This is including the dried spices I had to buy for my cupboard.

First, I thawed two chicken breasts, and sprinkled them with salt and pepper before putting them in a skillet over medium heat for 15 minutes.
Next I added 1 clove of minced garlic, half of a thinly sliced lemon, half of a chopped large tomato, 1/4 cup chopped onion, 1/4 cup parsley, 1 teaspoon oregano, 1/8 teaspoon of crushed red pepper, 1/4 cup white wine (you can use chicken broth instead, I happened to have some white wine in my fridge), and 3/4 cup chicken broth to simmer for fifteen minutes.

After fifteen minutes, I added 1 medium green sweet pepper and 1 red sweet pepper (oh my goodness, I love red peppers). I also added the rest of the tomato, and cooked it covered for seven minutes.


Ta-da! I served the chicken concoction over brown rice. My camera is not great, and I don't have good lighting in my kitchen; but I think it turned out okay. The food tasted great. I did add a little salt to the finished dish.

This meal took me about 45 minutes to prepare, but it's because I haven't cooked with vegetables in a while. I didn't think I could buy vegetables without breaking my budget, but I found that if I bought as many of the ingredients as I could at Aldi, I could afford to buy good vegetables (from Kroger).
This is my first post, so please forgive the boring monologue. I'm very excited about this blog, and I hope you'll enjoy it too.

2 comments:

  1. yay Jessie! I am looking forward to see what all you create!!

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  2. I am gonna love this blog...can't get enough good recipes; and the tips that go along with them are awesome. Keep on posting!

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