When it's springtime I can't get enough strawberries. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the fruit year round (it is my favorite), but spring just screams strawberries! (How'd you like that alliteration?) And you really can't go wrong with anything that has strawberries in it. I don't do a lot of baking in warmer weather because it makes my apartment hell hot and me a cranky sweaty evil person, but I had a craving for muffins. Chocolate Strawberry Muffins to be exact.
So first thing in the morning, while it was still pretending it was going to be a cool and comfortable day, I preheated my behemoth of a hot beast oven and got to work on cranking out some delicious muffins. I hoped I'd get them done and the heat blasting, house heating, make you feel like you were in the seventh level of hell (which is awesome in the winter) oven turned off and the apartment cooled back down before it got unpleasant outside and even a little less so inside.
Yeah, that didn't work.
And while it feels like summer in my apartment instead of spring, the muffins are more than worth it. They got picky family seals of approval and 4ft wanted to take not only one for snack at school but one for his lunch too. He pretty much told me he wants to eat them for every meal. If that doesn't mean good eating, I don't know what does!
Who doesn't love a chicken salad on a spring day? Or any day for that matter. Can I get an, "Amen!"?
Stop drooling. I've already had to wipe up the drool puddle I made.
Now it used to be that I could cheat and use the canned chicken, toss in some "everything but the kitchen sink" type stuff into it, add some mayo and call it a meal. Don't judge. I knew it was cheating and I did it anyway... So there! Anyway, since my surgery I cannot stomach that swill out of a can anymore (which really does hurt my feelings because it was quick protein fix on days when I didn't feel like cooking or eating leftovers, you know?) So now anytime I grill chicken, I grill extra. Which was what I did for dinner the other night. On top of that, I accidentally (on purpose) grilled too many asparagus spears. At first, I thought, well I've got dinner leftovers for tomorrow night so I can make the Husband and ankle biters (Okay so 4ft could totally bite higher than that, but you know what I mean) a no dietary restrictions dinner. Well as I was slaving away on Sloppy Joe's (which are delicious but too much sugar and bun for my poor tummy) I was uninspired with just leftover grilled chicken and asparagus.
Then lightning struck:
Booyah! Chicken Salad. Even better chicken salad with ASPARAGUS (I kid you not when I make chicken salad I raid the fridge and throw anything that looks delicious into the mix) Heck to the yeah, hook that up. I could've had a sandwich (who am I kidding? just half a sandwich) as I can fin-a-lly eat bread again but spring days and sunny weather just make me want to eat salads. And with the lettuce boats as a vehicle, I could eat MORE of the crunchy, sweet, mayo-ny, chicken goodness without filling up on the bread so fast. Oh yeah, bonus!
So yeah, these happened by accident. I wanted a barbecue chicken sandwich. Kind of like the charbroiled chicken sandwich from Carl's Jr. Which always looks so delicious but is always such a letdown when you get one and eat it. So I tried slicing my chicken breasts lengthwise, you know to make them thinner. All I can say to that fiasco is I need sharper knives. Yeah, I mutilated the chicken.
No problem. We'll just have loose meat barbecue chicken sandwiches except we didn't have any bread.
No problem. We have sandwich wrap spinach tortillas. That'd be delicious, except we only have one wrap in the bag. Yeah, that's not going to work there are five of us.
No problem. We have flour tortillas, except for they're taco sized so they won't really do wraps.
No problem. We'll just have quesadillas. Barbecue chicken quesadillas should be good, right?
So I grab an onion except as I slice into it, I realized I grabbed an apple instead. Oops. What the heck, let's throw that in there. So I actually pay attention and grab an onion and slice that bad boy up too.
4ft looked at me like I was crazy putting an apple inside a quesadilla and expecting him to eat it. I don't know why he still doubts me. Why wouldn't it be yummy? Absolutely no reason why it wouldn't be. It was splendiferous. The entire fail turned into one heck of a WIN! I'd make these quesadillas next time on purpose. ON PURPOSE I TELL YOU!!!
I could only eat half of it (the front one in the picture) and I had to beat my family off the other half (and they looked at me like I might be feeding them poison) because I'm eating that one for lunch!
I love baking. 4ft loves baking. So when we bake together we usually do quick breads. There are a lot of things to measure, which 4ft loves, and mix, which I love. And quick breads are one of my favorite things to bake because they're so versatile. You can eat them at breakfast, have them for a snack, and they work for dessert too. It's a three-in-one-delicious food. How could it get any better than that? It can't and your brain will explode if you try to come up with something. So stop trying.
Quick breads are also very good for experimenting because as long as you have a couple of key ingredients -- flours of some sort and lifters -- they're very forgiving and the results are usually splendiferous. Which would be the case with this bread. It's seriously delicious and my new favorite and 4ft's too.
This bread was the brainchild of trying not to waste food. I had some ricotta cheese in the fridge that was going to go bad if it didn't get used and I didn't have enough for like a lasagna or something. So I tossed the 3/4 cup I had left into my basic quick bread recipe and then threw in some cranberries too -- because hey, they're delicious and why not. 4ft was a little apprehensive putting cheese into a bread meant to be sweet but I explained that cheesecake was made with cream cheese and that was pretty good so why not give it a shot. So he agreed. We did. And the rest is taste bud history. It's absolutely splendiferous.
I love Mexican food, not as much as Chinese food (but I think that's because I never get authentic Chinese and always have access to Mexican -- family actually eats that) and Carne Asada is one of my favorites. So when I had a couple steaks thawed in the fridge and didn't feel like having straight steak (cuz Mexican steak is crooked?), I threw a bunch of spices together that scream "Mexican food" flavors to me and did a spice rub. And of course nothing says Mexican food like onions and peppers so I had to throw them in as well. 4ft and the husband won't actually eat the onions and peppers (well except for on the Turkish Pizza because they didn't know they were there) but they both like how it flavors the dish (which is cool cuz more for me -- I love onions and peppers).
I love how versatile this dish is. While I ate it like steak, smothered in onions and peppers with lettuce, tomatoes, lemon, and sour cream, the boys sliced their steak up and melted it into quesadillas with a salad on the side. The Littles just had cheese quesadillas of course because heaven forbid they eat meat that didn't come from McDonalds. The meat would also be great as fajitas as well, but I didn't want all the extra filler from the tortilla as I'm still struggling to get my protein needs met for the day, otherwise I totally would've gone fajita on it's butt.
It's even better the next day (and the day after that) and I know, because I've been eating on it for three days now.
