Back to the Pioneer Woman's Recipes!

I saw this recipe a few weeks ago and had it on my "to do " list. It's fairly easy, doesn't take too long and is darn tasty. My choice for a Sunday dinner after working for 5 hours (yeah, I know, not long) was Chicken Parm.

I made a few changes to her recipe - but the heart of it was the same. Namely, I didn't use 1/2 cup olive oil! That's WAY too much. I only used the olive oil when cooking the chicken - instead of butter. I don't need no stinkin' butter (really, I love butter, but I definitely don't need to cook with that AND olive oil). Also, I used one BIG can of plum tomatoes. I got these at Trader Joes - they also had basil in them. They were whole tomatoes, yes, but I took out my immersion blender and pureed those puppies before putting them in the pan. What else... no parsley. Not a big fan. I used some Penzey's Tuscan Sunset in the sauce instead. It was AOK. Finally, last but not least, I didn't serve it with pasta. Don't hate me, I just didn't need to be weighed down with pasta. I just served it with some roasted broccoli (which, by the way, is great! Try roasting your fresh broccoli - a little olive oil, a little salt. Yum.).

I almost forgot my favorite part. Deglazing. I am in love with the smell from wine when deglazing. If I could deglaze every meal I would. Don't know what deglazing is ? It's takinga  liquid -- in this case wine -- and disolving all the lovely carmelized bits off the bottom of the pan to make a sauce. Try it. You'll love it.

Not serving with pasta did leave me with a lot of extra sauce, so I packed it up and put it in the freezer. I couldn't let all that beautiful sauce go to waste.

So, this was a winner. Definitely a future dinner. Both David and I had none left and we could have eaten more. the picture looks like the chicken is huge -- but no -- I serve my meals on small plates. I learned that your brain thinks you eat more when you have a full plate. It didn't work this time.