One Dish Saucy Chickin'

Y'all need your best Paula Deen southern drawl now....g'wan, trah iyit.....

This is the easiest, most crowd pleasin' dish you'll ever make. It's also a great weeknight idea if you've suddenly got company coming, or forgot to hit the shops on the way home 'cuz you've prob'ly got all these ingredients in your panty/fridge.

If you need to double the recipe, use two dishes; one for the taters and veggies, and one for the onions, garlic and chickin'.

( It's also a GREAT "first dinner" recipe cuz it's really, really, hard to mess up.)

This recipe is for two with leftovers for the next day.

There are hundreds of variations you can do, I'll put some at the bottom.

Ingredients:

5 or 6 big Potatoes - redskins or yellow flesh

2 small or 1 large Sweet Onions

7 garlic gloves, peeled

1 head of broccoli

3 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (butterfly them if they are whole)

1 bottle low fat Italian salad dressing

Drizzle of olive oil

Pepper, Granulated Garlic ,Italian Seasoning, water

Preheat oven to 400F. Wash potatoes, cut out yucky spots. Cut up into chunks.

Slice onion into 'rings, cut broccoli into florets, peel and slice garlic, or you can leave the cloves whole.

Tidy up chicken, (remove any gobs of fat) and butterfly.

In large glass baking dish, (the big one) drizzle olive oil to the bottom is nearly lightly coated. Add all ingredients but chicken breasts and broccoli, add pepper & granulated garlic liberally, stir all together in dish until lightly coated with the oil. Make a space in the middle of the dish for the chicken, place them in and drizzle lightly with oil, turn over to coat.

This was before I realized that you add your broccoli at the end. Otherwise, it's mush.

When all is in dish, take your dressing and liberally dump it on. Don't be shy now.

Use almost a quarter of the bottle, stir all in dish to ensure coverage.

Add enough water to cover the bottom of the dish, about 1/2 inch - one cm.

Place in oven, and check at 20 mins, and give it a stir.

 At 40 minutes, remove and stir, flip chicken, add another quarter of a bottle of dressing. 

Stir all and ADD BROCCOLI,  replace in oven, check tenderness of taters.

 Cook for another ten minutes and check doneness. Use your judgement on how soft you like your taters.

 Keep an eye on the level of the water and dressing, if you need more, add more.

NOTE: I did not add ANY salt to this recipe. I advise you not to either, the dressing covers most of the spices.

**Variations**

Don't like the salad dressing?

 Use olive oil to coat your ingredients, add a bit of OJ and water to the bottom of the pan.

Add garlic powder, chili powder and salt and pepper to taste.

Add strips of bacon overtop of the chicken breast, omit the Italian dressing. Stir in some ranch dressing at the 30 mins mark to make it creamier. You might want to reduce heat to 350 as the ranch will burn.

More ideas? Add in strips of peppers; green, red, orange, etc. Or go crazy.... try asparagus, or brussels sprouts!

Easy Cotton Infinity Scarf...and a tutorial!

They're everywhere.

Infinity scarves. Don't resist. You can't resist. You really shouldn't anyway.

As a former fashion consultant; let me tell ya. A scarf can really update your outfit, make a statement, and change your look in one of the easiest possible ways.

Check it out.

A simple 3/4 sleeve T is instantly updated.

As you prolly already know...I am in LOVE with the "Outlander" TV series.

It inspired me to knit up some infinity scarves like a maniac recently.

See? Look how happy wearing a scarf makes you.

You can see the post and mini-tutorial Here; or visit my Etsy shop Here.

But indoors it's sometimes too warm to wear a bulky knit; or you want something a little less...well, knitted.

So here's the solution - you'll see these everywhere in Blogland & also in the malls.

A super light, easy wear scarf, that still does the job of keeping you cozy.

You can use any light weight fabric you like; I recommend voile, cotton or lawn, or anything else you'd prefer. You could even use several kinds, get creative...make a patchwork scarf!

I chose two contrasting prints of fine Indian cotton.

1. Choose two fabrics.

2. Cut one of each fabric - 9 inch by 72 inches.

3. Placing RIGHT sides together; sew using a 1/4 seam along both sides. Sew one end closed, and stopping the seam one inch from the top on both sides of the other end.

4.  Press seams, then turn scarf right-side-out.

5.  Press seams flat; insert a long knitting needle, or coat hanger, or dowel rod or whatever else you have on hand ( I used my long Omnigrid Ruler)  to get that side seam nice and crisp.

Turn the scarf back right sides out.

"Pinch" the edges of the scarf tightly so you can get a crisp edge.

6. Once you've gotten nice crisp edges; on your flat surface, either iron down or finger press down a half inch hem on the ends you left open. Do this by folding down one edge and folding down the other, pressing overtop to ensure they are the same. You're going to tuck in the sewn closed end into your open end.

7. Fold the scarf in half, tucking the sewn closed end into the open end flap. Pin in place.

The pattern makes it hard to see; so I wrote on the photo for ya.

8. You can either whipstich the end closed or what I did - which is sew a narrow topstitch to close and then do a decorative stitch overtop.

Et voila! Your scarf is pret a porter and loops well; two or even three times!

Two loop!

Three Loop!

Now go! 

Go and accessorize!