What a name! I feel really inclined to say ‘people pleasing chicken’ but then I feel terribly cheesy. When I pinned it, that’s what it was called and it went on my kitchen recipe card like that! For the record, the only ‘man’ that ate it was my 12 year old who declared it ‘boy pleasing chicken’.

There are times when I feel like spending the whole afternoon in the kitchen dicing, stirring, mixing and washing. This meal is for those afternoons when I don’t – or when I can’t. The sauce has just three ingredients (four if you count the black pepper) but sometimes that’s all you need and in this case, these three ingredients play off each other so well it tastes like there is more to it than that. It’s a little sharp but has a sweetness to it and is very juicy, it just falls apart with your fork. The best part about it of course is that you can pop it in the oven and get back to whatever else you need to do before dinner time!

I served this with basmati rice and green beans. The rice was a great combo with this chicken because the sauce works well with it as well. We poured the leftover sauce on the rice. Wee One #1 loved it and the other two liked it enough to eat most of it – which is pretty rare around here.

2-4 chicken breasts
1/2 cup of dijon mustard
1/4 cup of maple syrup
1 tablespoon of rice/rice wine vinegar
2 teaspoons black pepper

Just whisk together the mustard, maple syrup and rice vinegar and pour over the chicken breasts in a casserole dish. Sprinkle with black pepper. Cook for 45 minutes at 350.

Super, super easy weeknight dinner (or super lazy weekend dinner 😉 ) that tastes like you worked a lot harder than you did. My favorite kind!

We have had a pretty laid back but still busy holiday season. It was different spending the holidays with just the 5 of us (and some wonderful local friends) but there were a lot of pluses to it. At the end of some nights, meals like this were all I was able to muster. Thankfully, my husband and the littles loved them. Phew!

3/4 cup breadcrumbs
3/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
4 chicken breasts, halved
salt & pepper to taste
1 large egg, beaten
2 cups pasta sauce (homemade or jarred)
1/4 cup olive oil
6 ounces mozzarella cheese

Heat oven to 400 (or broiler). Mix breadcrumbs and Parmesan cheese. Season chicken with salt and pepper. Dip chicken in beaten egg, then in crumb mixture, making sure it’s coated all over.

Pour the pasta sauce into the bottom of a baking dish. Heat the oil in a frying pan and cook the chicken breasts until golden (just a couple minutes each side). Then place the chicken on top of the pasta sauce.

Top each piece with mozzarella and bake for about 20 minutes or so. I always serve this with a plate of garlic penne because it goes so well with the pasta sauce, but really, you could use whatever side you like.

Chicken Pot Pie is one of those meals that pretty much all of us are happy with, though Wee One #2 still picks out the corn. What’s with that? Corn is the hardly-even-a-vegetable vegetable that kids actually eat! Anyhoo, so she ‘hates corn’ but otherwise is happy with this and the rest of us eat it up. I try to make more than one at a time and stick one in the freezer so I can come to my own rescue a couple of hours before dinner and I’m not finished with the kid’s school for the day and my husband is on his way home – insert your own dinner time stress here.

However, I have sometimes used that extra chicken pot pie and am left with the ingredients and no time to make the actual pie. So, enter Bisquick. I will post a proper recipe for homemade Bisquick but essentially it’s just flour, baking powder, salt and either butter or shortening. Also, as far as I’ve read (will need to experiment before I actually post about it) the recipes that include powered milk are the best. So, if you have some Bisquick on hand or the ingredients for homemade Bisquick on hand this recipe is crazy easy. The only painful part (and it’s only painful if you’re dealing with a time crunch) is the rolling out of the pie crust. With this recipe, you mix up the batter, make the filler and then layer it all into a muffin pan. Genius, right? I know! After about 15 minutes or so of prep and then 20 minutes (ish) of baking while I clean up the kitchen, and dinner is done! Which is great because it takes about 35 minutes from the moment my husband signs out of Skype to when he arrives at the front door. So win-win!

You’re welcome.

2 chicken breasts, cooked and chopped
1/2 – 1 cup corn (depending on how much you love or hate corn)
2 teaspoons black pepper
2 teaspoons rosemary (I chop mine a little so they’re not so ‘pokey’ as Wee One #3 would say)
2 – 3 potatoes, chopped and boiled
1/4 cup chicken stock
2 cups chicken gravy

It’s so simple it’s silly to even call it a recipe. Mix the chicken, corn, pepper, rosemary, potatoes and chicken stock in a bowl. Prepare the Bisquick batter (usually just Bisquick and water). Fill each muffin cup about 1/4 full with batter and add filling. Not so little that they’re diet pies, but not so much that they explode in the oven. Then top with the rest of the batter. Voila!
Bake them at 350 for about 20 minutes and clean your kitchen! Kidding. Well, you probably should but I’m not going to bully you into cleaning. At the very least make a simple (cheater) side to go with it – and heat up your gravy! We usually break them open at the table and pour gravy over them. This is pretty obvy one of the kid’s plates and yes, it was attacked by some kind of gravy monster!

I first saw this recipe on my girl Sammie’s blog, The LaMay Bakery, and it looked amazing. We are total kitchen soul mates and our families tend to like the same meals so I went with it and it was as big of a hit here as it was at her house! The not too cheesy, just crunchy enough combo did it for my husband, the butter was a serious win for Wee One #1 and the other two are head over heels for pretty much any variation on breaded chicken.

It’s very similar to the chicken strips I make, except this is cooked in butter and there is shredded cheese in the bread crumbs. It’s arguably much easier and faster than the strips because with this recipe you’re working with half a chicken breast per person in a single piece instead of about the same amount of chicken, pounded out and sliced into eleventy billion smaller pieces. Both are now requested on the regular, so similarities aside, it’s always nice to add another meal to the list of things everyone around here loves.

Cheddar Baked Chicken – via Allrecipes

1/4 cup melted butter
1/2 cup flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 egg
1 tablespoon milk
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
1/2 cup Italian seasoned bread crumbs
1 cup crispy rice cereal
3 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves – cut in half
2 tablespoons melted butter

First prep your bowls, you’ll need three. In the first one mix the flour, salt, pepper, and garlic powder. In the second one, beat the egg and milk together and in the last one combine the bread crumbs cheese and cereal. I totally spaced on the cereal so I made mine without it!	Coat your baking dish with the 1/4 cup of melted butter and dredge (aka plunk) each chicken piece first in the flour mixture…
…then in the egg mixture and finally in the bread crumb mixture before moving each piece to the baking dish.
Bake for 35 minutes or so at 350! So so so good!

Today I am linking up with Kate Says Stuff, Obviously Marvelous and Saved by Love Creations.

This is one of those lunches that you MUST serve with a salad or else you’re staring down the barrel of a seriously sad meal, nutrition-wise. Taste wise? I hear it’s amazing! I’m going to defend myself a little here and say that when I do make something like this these days, all the ingredients are as healthy as I can get my hands on. So the chicken is local and grain fed, the bacon is low sodium, the cheese is local and rBST-free, the flatbread is all multigrainy and the ranch is homemade. The entire family gobbled these down and that pretty much never happens.

Chicken-Bacon Wraps
4 pieces flatbread
2 chicken breasts, cooked and chopped
4 strips bacon, cooked and crumbled
1 cup cheese, chopped or shredded
1 green onions, chopped
1 batch ranch dressing

So painfully simple. Lay out the chicken in the middle of the flatbread, top with cheese and bacon.
Then drizzle on some ranch dressing and sprinkle the green onion bits over top. Roll them up and baket at 350 for about 15 minutes (so the bread is crispy and the cheese has a chance to melt).
Each wee one asked for a second wrap when they were done! Miracles!

This week, I’m linking up with Organizing Junkie’s Menu Plan Monday and The How To Mommy’s Meal Planning Monday.

My kitchen is so confused. Silken tofu and dairy free cream cheese in the morning, buttermilk fried chicken at night. What can I say? I cook what makes me happy and then I do my best to cook for my family the things that make them happy. There is a lot of dish washing going on around here.

I first found this recipe in February and bookmarked it to do it, but I’m not a huge fan of frying (or more specifically, the splashy mess it makes of my stove top) so I put it off. Once we got down to LA I thought it was time to actually cook up some of these dusty bookmarked recipes and away I went. I’m not going to lie, it feels so wrong to pour that much oil in a pot and have at it, but I’ll keep the honesty going and admit that it was actually a fun recipe to make.

Super simple to do, as long as you make sure your oil doesn’t get too hot (but gets hot enough) and you have some patience with it. Everyone loved this meal, I served it with wedges! I will not be making this again this week, but it did rank really high with the fam so I will likely make it again soonish and thought it’d be a fun addition to Menu Monday! This week I will photograph all of the recipes as I do them so I can link back to them!

This Week’s Menu:

Sunday – Mini Chicken Hot Pockets with Potato Rings for the fam, Chick Pea Salad for me and Salty Sweet Butterscotch Brownies for dessert

Buttermilk Fried Chicken – via Allrecipes

Before you do anything, mix all of the ingredients in the left column with the buttermilk, plunk your chicken in it and soak for about 6 hours. Then get your oil heating and theeeeeeen, mix all the ingredients on the right side and use that to dredge your chicken pieces in.
So you just shake off the buttermilk coated piece of chicken and place it in the seasoned flour. Roll it around a bunch to make sure it’s totally coated. Pile them all up and wait for your oil to heat to about 350 degrees.
Now add your chicken to the pot, with 2 1/2 quarts of oil you should be able to cook all of the chicken at once. Leave it in there for about 10 minutes, then poke at it and turn all the pieces around and leave it for another 10-15 minutes. Dry the chicken on pieces of paper towel for at least 10 minutes. Serve with wedges and a salad!

Today, I’m linking up with Kate Says Stuff, The How To Mommy and Obviously Marvelous

There are those recipes for 11 layer cakes that wow a room full of friends or a seriously huge batch of stuffing with all the random stuff in it that makes your entire extended family reach for seconds on Thanksgiving, and those recipes are wonderful and certainty have a time and a place (you know, like a going away party or, um, Thanksgiving). But what about like, Wednesday night dinner?

Enter this recipe. This not only always pleases my crowd (all of them at once even!) but if you’re feeling lazy short on time, you can make the filling over a bed of rice for a no hassle, no dough involved meal and make them just as happy. Wee One #1 loves this so much he requests it for lunch on the regular, and I always have to make a separate ‘lunch batch’ because there are never any leftovers. Never.

Chicken Hot Pockets
1 batch pizza dough (or something similar) original recipe used a can of Grands biscuits
2 cups cup cooked chicken, chopped
2 cups condensed cream of chicken soup
1 tablespoon milk
1 teaspoon dried onion, minced
1/2 teaspoon thyme
1/2 teaspoon rosemary
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 teaspoon poultry seasoning

First, deal with the dough, however you choose to do that. Then heat your soup and add all the other ingredients to the pot.
However you make the dough, you’ll need to divide it up into individual amounts.
Then with a little flour (or parchment paper), roll out each pocket and fill with about 1/4 cup of filling.
Fold it up as carefully as you can and bake them seam side down for about 30 minutes at 375F.
Super simple, serious taste punch. I swear it’s the poultry seasoning + thyme combo combo, but really the overall combo of all the spices together with the chicken is a real winner.

Don’t forget about our giveaway with Keeley Behling Studios! Like the Keeley Behling Studios Facebook page and leave a comment there about something in her Etsy shop to enter. It wouldn’t hurt if you liked the So Very Domestic Facebook page too. 😉

Today, I’m linking up with Six Sisters’ Stuff, Mom’s Bookshelf and Beauty Brite

I’m not the only one that makes random fancy meals for my kids, am I? I mean, I make random fancy meals to enjoy with my husband after the kids are in bed, but I suspect that’s less weird than cracking open the new issue of Food & Drink Magazine for inspiration for my kids’ dinner. I know at least one other mommy who perfects fancy food on her little one before serving it to her husband. Oh Sammie, how I adore you so.

This is yet another one of those recipes that only appear like a lot of work but look really impressive. The only concern with this dish is the cheese leaking out of the chicken. As long as you secure the chicken breast closed with a few toothpicks and bake it seam side down, it’s not going to leak.

As with a lot of recipes that only have a few ingredients, you really have to use the best quality you can find – for each of them. In my case, the mozzarella at my local grocery was better than the swiss. If the swiss had looked better I would have gone with that – some people would prefer the swiss over mozzarella either way! You could also go with prosciutto instead of ham. The Wee Ones are not big on prosciutto or I would have used that.

Corden Bleu

2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
2-4 ounces mozzarella cheese
2 slices ham
1 egg
1 cup breadcrumbs
2 tablespoons parsley
toothpicks

Butterfly the chicken breasts and pound them out nice and flat between two pieces of plastic wrap. Slice the cheese into strips and place them in the middle of the breast.
Layer the ham over the cheese and fold the chicken over so it’s almost a roll. You will probably have to use toothpicks to secure the chicken shut. Now beat the egg in a shallow bowl and coat the chicken with it.
Mix the breadcrumbs and parsley and toss the chicken breasts in it. Bake for about 25 minutes at 350F – with the seam side down on your parchment paper lined baking sheet.

I am still crazy distracted by this adventure we’re plotting. We are planning to be away for six months and I don’t want to drone on about it too much before we go because I have no doubt that it’ll be all I’ll be able to blog about the whole time we’re away. During the road trip, it’ll be what we are eating and where and hopefully some car and hotel knitting, but once we are settled in our temporary home away from home, it’ll be back to cooking and baking and crafting – just somewhere else! And yes, I do have plans to finally get the new oven and dining room set when we get home! Is it crazy to bring Christmas cross stitching with us? These stockings are not going to sew themselves! Ha! It’s especially funny because I’m not kidding at all.

In the meantime, it’s like Ontario doesn’t want us to leave, giving us some seriously southern weather this week. I’m typing this outside and contemplating firing up the BBQ tonight!

Mango Marinated Peach BBQ Chicken with Hassleback Potatoes via The Naptime Chef

2 medium mangos, peeled and cubed
2 medium peaches, peeled and cubed <- this was my addition 4 garlic cloves, peeled and chopped 1 teaspoon chili powder 1/2 cup spicy ketchup (add a pinch crushed red pepper flakes you don't have any spicy ketchup) 1 teaspoon kosher salt

Pour all of the ingredients in a bowl to mix it up and then pour into a large zippy bag. Add the raw chicken breasts to the bag, let all the air out and seal it. Then rub the marinade into the chicken through the bag. I left it in the fridge overnight, and just sort of massaged it through the bag whenever I went in there for something. That sounds so wrong! The next day, when I fired up the grill, I made sure the chicken breasts were covered in the marinade and I used the BBQ brush to smooth it out. They cooked up great! The back deck smelled sooooo good! The potatoes are not really much of a recipe. You just make several thin slices in a washed, unpeeled, uncooked poatato and stuff it with herbs of your choice. I just used very thinly sliced garlic. I wrapped each potato in tin foil and set them on the top rack of the barbecue while I was grilling the chicken and the corn. Corn in the husk cooks so so fast and simple on the grill. My girlfriends called these Hasslehoff Potatoes all afternoon! This is a great little menu for when you have friends over and you’d rather spend your visit hanging out with them than prepping food. All of this can be done ahead, so you can be outside with your guests and manning the barbecue!

I found this recipe over at Life as a Lofthouse forever ago and bookmarked it for ‘later’. This recipe was originally posted in September of 2010! I finally made this for my dear friend Brigitte, her brother Mike and her husband Hal when they came for a visit around Christmas. Brigitte was with me in the kitchen when I made it (hilariously typical) while the guys were, where else? In the garage (omg what a horrible poster group for stereotypes ha). Anyhoo, later when we served this, along with a few other tasty apps I’ll post about later this month, Hal totally thought the sauce came from a jar! Not like ‘this sauce is so bland I bet it’s from a jar’, more like ‘omg this sauce is so good, as if you made it yourself’. It’s always a super rad feeling to be able to whip up something that family and company loves, but to do it with such basic ingredients that we all have on hand? Super mega rad, my friends.

I also just noticed that Life as a Lofthouse has a Menu Monday!! I will link up with her next week!

Preheat your oven to 325F, rinse the chicken in water and then cut into chunks. Season with salt and pepper (or not, your call).

Dip each piece into the cornstarch first.
Then dip into the eggs! Mix the sugar and the ketchup in a medium sized bowl.
Add vinegar, soy sauce and garlic salt. Mix, mix, mix!
Transfer the cooked chicken chunks to a baking dish and pour the sweet and sour sauce over it. Bake for about an hour and give it a stir once every 15 minutes or so.