Pub Mix Chicken with Spinach and Balsamic Salad

Wow, it has been a while hasn't it. I guess I ran into kind of a slump, I have been making the same things over and over again. But tonight I had an idea for a good breading on chicken, and since the Bears were playing the Packers and dad was coming over to watch, I figured why not try it out. We but this mixture to snack on called Utz Pub Mix, it is a mixture of a bunch of snack foods, like pretzels and cheese crackers.
I took a bunch of this and put it in a food processor and ground it up to a powder. Next I took some skinless, boneless chicken breasts and dipped them into a some eggs I had beat together, then rolled them in the powder. I put the chicken into a baking dish I had coated with cooking spray. Put that in the oven at 350 degrees for 35 minutes.
I also made a quick salad, for this i used baby spinach leafs, sweet bell peppers cut into pieces, and cherry tomatoes from our garden, cut in half. For the dressing on this I tossed it with a little extra virgin olive oil and aged balsamic vinegar.
Any way that is about it for now, lets hope that it is not such a long time between posts again.

Char Siu and Pork Fried Rice

Char Siu is an Asian style of Bar B Que usually made with pork put on skewers and then marinated and roasted over a fire. I cant say that we enjoyed eating this, because honestly it was not very good. the marinade is made from cane sugar, dry soy powder, garlic and onion flavors, when we first prepared it, it smelled like cool aide. I was hoping that cooking would take away that taste, but it did not work . I ended up making a quick reduction of soy sauce, sesame oil, balsamic vinegar and ground mustard to break up the sweetness and make it some what edible. I made pork fried rice to go with this and that turned out pretty good. to make this i used 2 and half cups of long grain rice, and made that according to directions on the bag. After the rice was done I put it in a large bowl and added a tablespoon of sesame oil, a table spoon of soy sauce, and a half tablespoon of garlic powder. Then I added a small package of ham cubes, two bunches of green onions finely chopped and a package of frozen peas.
After I mixed that all up I put it in my counter top griddle and let it reheat for about a minute or so, then I pushed all the rice to one side and cracked four eggs on the other and scrabbled them.
After the eggs were done a mixed them in to the rice and dinner was ready.

Baked Ziti

Hey everyone hope you all are doing well. The other night I wanted to try something a little different from Spaghetti that we always have, and then I remembered one of my favorite TV shows "The Soprano's". Carmella always made Baked Ziti, and I had some Ziti Noodles in the pantry, how hard can it be. Well honestly the one I made was pretty easy. I had a couple packages of Hillshire Farms Italian Sausages, the ones with cheese inside. So i cut those up into bite size slices and browned them in a skillet, in another pot I made my usual base tomato sauce(here is a link), I left out the ground beef, but I suppose you could leave it in to make it extra meaty. I boiled the Ziti Pasta for about 7 minutes til it was al dente ( firm but not hard), this is important because we are going to bake this for a few more minutes and we don't want to over cook the pasta. I added every thing together and put it in a 13x9 cake pan, covered with shredded Mozzarella. Bake at 350 for about 10 minutes to finish off the pasta and melt the cheese. After I made this I went online and found a real recipe for Baked Ziti, and the only thing I did wrong was not put cheese in the mixture, I just had it on top. Oh well it was still pretty darn good, and next time it will be just that much better.