Garlic Cheddar Chicken

Yesterday turned out very anticlimactic. I had been planning to make my jam for a couple days, and I was really excited when it went off perfectly, and then after eating it with biscuits for breakfast and having it taste magnificent...nothing happened. I need a new challenge. Made the flan, lotion bars, hand scrubs, jam...now what? In the meantime, I decided I would continue cooking up stuff. Today is Julia Child's 100th birthday, so in honor of that I added 7 new recipes to my box (the 7 most recent ones I've posted about here). Furthermore, today I made some garlic cheddar chicken, and it turned out fantastic. Definitely going in the box. I found the original recipe here.

1/2 c. butter

4 cloves garlic, minced

3/4 c. dry breadcrumbs

1/2 c. grated Parmesan cheese

1 1/2 c. shredded Cheddar cheese

1/4 tsp. dried parsley

1/4 tsp. dried oregano

1/4 tsp ground black pepper

1/8 tsp. salt

8 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves pounded thin

Having only four chicken breasts halves on hand, I halved this recipe (except for the garlic--I love garlic so I used all four cloves anyway). Start off by melting your butter and cooking your garlic for about 5 minutes. 

While your butter is melting, combine your bread crumbs (I had Italian seasoned breadcrumbs and used those), Parmesan, Cheddar, parsley, oregano, salt and pepper in a shallow bowl. 

Dip your chicken pieces in the melted butter/garlic, coating thoroughly, and press your chicken into your bread crumb mixture. Top your chicken off with any remaining garlic butter and/or seasonings.

Place your chicken in a baking dish (9x13 if you're making the full recipe) and bake at 350 for 30 minutes or until chicken is no longer pink and juices run clear. 

It looks and smells fantastic cooking in the oven :) And once again, that's it! I paired it with some Carolina yellow rice (in a package) I had left over from when I made Chicken Lazone, and it went nicely. I always try to cook four servings so that there are two servings left over for lunch the next day. 

Nothing much new has happened with me these last couple of days. I haven't really found need to leave our apartment (it is just hot enough outside that you really start sweating if you walk around for a length of time, and I hate having to take multiple showers a day just to clean off), and Josh has been busy doing proofing work through my mom's business and prepping for the start of law school. He has an incomplete list of books for school that we will buy soon, and he desperately needs a new computer--I don't trust a computer that's had a blue screen of death at least 4 times, if not more--so we will probably order one in a couple days here. I love my Mac. I've had it for four years now and haven't had one single issue with it, besides the keys getting a little dirty from use. Josh also found out that he will be required to take a winter session class--ick--this year, meaning he will only have the 22nd of December to the 6th of January off (which will still be more time off than he got last Christmas). 

Yesterday I finished up a book on which I have been collaborating with my (maternal) grandmother. She writes speeches for a well-known barrister in Ireland, named Ercus, who she met while living and working there. Yesterday, I believe, would've been Ercus's mother's 100th birthday, but she passed away in 1976. Ercus had her diary from when she first got married in the 1940s and asked my grandmother to go through it, as well as a ton of family pictures, and create a memorial of sorts for his mother by typing up the contents of her diary, as well as her songs (his mother was a prolific songwriter and playwright and had many of her songs professionally recorded), and an essay about her life. My grandma needed help getting the book published using a self-publishing online company called Blurb, so I helped her. It was a REALLY labor and time-intensive endeavor: I had to upload every page of her diary, put the contents of each page into the program, center the contents of each page so it all fit, and proofread everything. The book ended up being 120 pages, but we finally finished everything up yesterday. You can see the finished product here. Three people have purchased it so far!

In other news, my friend Shea (Corey, you will always be Shea to me, sorry, I've tried) had her baby! His name is Liam Nathanial Wingate, and is absolutely adorable. I'm afraid Shea may get hurt later in life trying to beat the girls off him :)

  I first met Shea when I started junior high at Tempe Prep 10 years go (oh wow--that long! feels like yesterday) and we sat next to each other in Mrs. McGuire's English class. I forget who it was who noticed, but one of us realized we wrote our "a" the same way. And who knew that would be the beginning to a lasting friendship? lol. I want to give her a call and she how she's doing post-birth, but I'm afraid my phone call might wake up baby or something. So if you're reading this, Shea, and you have a minute give me a call :)