Are you calling me chicken??

One of my best friends and I have a running joke going about how we can be completely different people who are exactly the same.  For as much as we agree and are similar in our very stubborn, power-driven, old-fashioned personalities, we are just as different when it comes to the day-to-day items of decorating, spending money and most of all, in the kitchen.  She is my go-to girl for questions regarding anything to do with desserts or baking.  Half the time I don't have any clue what she is talking about when she is discussing varieties of salt and cooking utensils and macarons.  (For the record, I spent 6 months thinking she was obsessed with macaroons, the yummy coconut cookie which is still one of my favorite (and she thinks is just an average cookie).  She was, and is, actually obsessed with macarons, the tiny French cookie, which I find to be just so-so.  Again - we are totes different.)

Our style in the kitchen actually says a lot about our personalities as well.  She loves to bake and make deserts because it requires complete precision.  There is a recipe and measurements and everything must be followed exactly in order for the end result to be achieved. I, however, am a cook.  I love making dinners and side dishes,when given the time, because it requires none of that.  I rarely use my adorable Russian Nesting Doll measuring cups and spoons because the beautiful thing about cooking is that it's completely subjective.  I can open my spice jars and after a quick sniff know if it will work in the recipe or not.  I know what I like (lots of pepper and spices) and what I don't (mustard seed and balsamic vinegar) and cook accordingly.  

Now, I'm not saying my meals all turn out edible.  Anyone who claims that is a big, fat liar and you should run away before their pants engulf them in flames.  But I have a pretty decent track record and have managed to not starve to death in my entire adult life so...yea me!  But I realized the other day that I have fallen into a dinner rut. 

My rut is partly because of time constraints.  I work a full day and do an hour work out video (Thank you, Tony Horton.) when I get home and then I am usually starving and don't want to waste time making some elaborate dinner. It's way too easy for me to throw some BBQ sauce on some chicken breast and toss it in the oven before I work out so that it's ready the minute I peel myself off the floor drenched in sweat (again, thank you Tony Horton).  The other part of the rut comes from giving up exploring new foods.

I can't be the only one out there that has just sort of figured out what they like and said alright, this is it.  I don't consider myself bored with my diet most days, but I could stand to venture out into new vegetables and combinations.  And that has led me to my latest "lightbulb": I will actually make the recipes I have been tearing out of magazines and marking in cookbooks for years!  If it's good, I'll keep it and try to make it in the future. If it's not so good, or proves too hard to make, out the recipe goes!

Not only will I be widening my circle of food, I'll be cleaning and organizing at the same time! (Another of my favorite things (Organizing, not cleaning.  If I could justify having a cleaner come pick up after me, I totally would splurge and hire someone.  Especially hanging/folding clothes.  And cleaning the bathroom.  And doing the dishes.  And taking out the trash.  Okay, I hate cleaning everything, there I said it! Are you happy??)

Anyway, I looked around my kitchen tonight and found everything needed to make a recipe I read in the August 2012 issue of Fitness Magazine...Peach Chicken!  

Any meat eaters who make chicken know that it can be totes bland and boring after awhile.  Especially if you bake it.  I figured this might be a good recipe to help get me through the rest of the summer's chicken.  The recipe is as follows:

*Boneless, Skinless Chicken Breast, trimmed of fat

*Kosher Salt (I used sea salt because that's what I had on hand)

*Pepper

*1 Peach, skinned and sliced

"Sprinkle chicken with a pinch each of salt and pepper.  Place in baking pan and top with peach. Bake in a 375 degree oven for 30 minutes or until internal temperate reaches 165 degrees." 

*Nutritional facts (assuming 6oz chicken breast) are: 265 calories, 37g protein, 1g carbs, 5g fat, 2g fiber*

I sprayed my pan with olive oil first just to prevent the chicken from sticking.  While it was baking I made some brown rice with veggie broth (instead of water) and mixed in smoked paprika, 1 slice of red onion chopped, a handful of frozen, sliced peppers and 1 cube of Dorot chopped cilantro.

Have you guys ever had any of the Dorot products?  They are amazing timesaves!  You can pick them up at Trader Joe's (where I also happened to get my peaches this week) and they have lots of flavors.  What they are essentially are pre-chopped spices that you keep in the freezer until needed.  Each cube is a set amount of the spice (i.e. 1 cube of cilantro = 1 tsp.  and 1 cube of garlic = 1 clove). 

For me personally, the cilantro works out great because I like the taste but HATE (like dry heaving, gagging hate) the smell of wet cilantro, so I almost never buy it fresh.  

Final product.  The peaches are supposed to keep the chicken moist.

I think that the chicken probably was more moist than usual, but the difference wasn't noticeable.  The flavor also wasn't super different than if I had just baked a piece of chicken with salt and pepper on there.  I ended up going and grabbing some sauce to dip the chicken in, just to add some flavor.  

All in all, I felt it was successful first recipe attempt but as for the actual recipe, I would probably only give it a C.  It wasn't bad but it didn't really change anything from my normal baked chicken routine so really just ended up giving me some warm sliced peaches to add to my dinner, and that's never a bad thing!