When Life Hands you Lemons make.... Lemon Chicken?

Mondays are tough for anyone; It's the first day back to work after a nice relaxing weekend. But, for me  I spread myself pretty thin on Mondays. Monday is, generally, my late night to work in my classroom preparing anything I may need for the week and now I head off to church at 6:30. So the thought of cooking a nutritious meal just isn't even feasible. That's why I have decided to make Mondays slow cooker nights. It is easy to throw it all in the pot before I leave for work and have a great meal when I get home.  Whenever the hubs and I are looking for a quick meal we head to the local grocery store and pick up a rotisserie chicken from the deli section. He always asks for a lemon pepper chicken, but I like a little more kick to my chicken and he usually goes along with my whines and demands and agrees to getting the mojo chicken.  Ahhh I digress, back to the slowcooker Mondays.  So this Monday I decided, being the great wife I am, I would find a recipe for lemon rotisserie chicken for the slowcooker. After searching the internet, I came to the conclusion there was no recipe for lemon rotisserie chicken any where to be found therefore, I needed to come up with my own recipe. I had committed to my idea of slowcooker lemon chicken and I was sticking to it! I did have another recipe for a slowcooker chicken and thought I will use this guide my way.   If I do say so myself, the chicken was awesome! I  don't really like lemon chicken (but I don't hate it either), but I would make this again in a heartbeat. When I took it out of the slowcooker it was cooked to just the right temperature- it was juicy and just fell right off the bone (so needless to say there is no beautiful display picture).  I truly recommend this chicken recipe as it was pretty easy and makes a great meal or two depending how many you are feeding.  So here's the dish:

You will need: 

• 1 broiler/fryer chicken
• 1/2 tsp of oregano
• 1/2 tsp of basil
• 1/4 tsp of parsley
• 2 sprigs of rosemary and one peeled/plucked sprig
•  1 minced garlic clove
• red pepper flakes to taste (optional)
• salt and pepper to taste (like my cute salt and pepper shakers of me and the hubs, a gift from my sister-in-law?)
• 3 lemons

Directions:

 First clean chicken and remove the insides. Then dry chicken and place inside slowcooker.  

Next, in small bowl combine oregano, basil, parsley, peeled/plucked rosemary sprig, minced garlic, a shake of the red pepper flakes, salt, pepper, and the juice from one lemon. Stir until it makes a sort of paste substance.

The paste mixture in the small bowl.

 Next, scoop some of the paste and rub it on the inside of the chicken.

  Then, rub the remainder of the paste on the outside of the chicken.

The inside and outside of the chicken coated in paste.

 Once the chicken is coated inside and out, using the second lemon, squeeze lemon juice over the chicken.

 *Tip: roll with slight pressure the lemon on the counter before cutting or squeezing this makes it easier to get the lemon juice out.*

 Next, place the two rosemary springs in the slowcooker (I broke my sprigs in half so the rosemary was spread out more in the slowcooker). Then clean and slice the last lemon and place the slices in the slowcooker.

Finally, put the lid on it and cook on low for 8 hours!

Ready to top with the lid!

What it looks like in the slowcooker after 8 hours.

Like I said, it  cooked  to just the right temperature -fall off the bone- so this was the prettiest picture I could get of the finished product.

 

First Post, First day of Fall...

 It's that time of year again. My favorite time- the kick off to the holiday season. I know it is a little early to start thinking about the holidays, but I love all things fall/ winter and  the holidays that go with the seasons. A couple of years ago I started meeting with my mom on the first day of fall and doing something "fallish" The first year my mom cooked a fall-inspired meal and then last year I cooked a fall-inspired meal. After my recent wedding and all the fun my mom and I had with the crafting involved I thought it would be fun to change up the annual first day of fall gathering and create something. I decided this year would have a theme "welcome in the fall with a fall inspired welcome wreath". Anyone who knows me knows all events I do have to have food! So, even though my first day of fall gathering was supposed to inspire and kick off a season of crafting I had to have some "fallish"dishes as well.  It was a crazy week in my household- the hubby started a new job, work, and I started to teaching a religion class at church on Monday nights so, unfortunately. the usually planning I put into things sort of took the back burner. Friday rolled around before I even knew it and I hadn't even thought about what I was going to make to eat.  I decided on something I already had the ingredients for. The main portion of lunch would be slowcooker potato soup and then I would just pick up some pumpkin bread mix at the store add some buttercream icing and a salted Carmel drizzle. Unfortunately, it is a little too early into the fall season and my local grocery store did not have pumpkin bread mix on the shelf. So while standing in the middle of the sweets aisle at the grocery store 45 minutes until kick-off I did the only thing I could think of.... I phoned mom and told her we needed sweets. Lucky for me, she had just popped some cookies into the oven.  Okay, enough with the back story! In the end mom arrived and we started the crafting extravaganza the best way I know how- with food!! The main dish, like I said before, was creamy  slow cooker potato soup. I had found a recipe from this blog to make the soup but, realized after I started I didn't have all the ingredients like I thought I did. Ooops! So, I had to come up with my own recipe.

Now, since this was my first post. I didn't think about adding pictures of all the steps on how to make this just a picture of  the final product. The soup was SUPER easy to make, uses zero milk and/or cream, but was super creamy and delicious. I created a little dressing bar for where my mom, hubby, and myself could put as little or as many toppings (bacon and cheese) as we wanted on our soup. 

 Here is the recipe in case you want to try:

You will need:

•  4-6 potatoes cleans and cubed (you can leave the skin on)
• 2 minced garlic cloves
• 1 yellow onion chopped
• 32 ounces of chicken broth
• 1 1/2 cups of water
• salt and pepper to taste
• 8oz of cream cheese 
• chopped bacon for topping
• shredded cheddar cheese for topping
• sour cream for topping (didn't do this, but bet it would be good)

Place the potatoes on the bottom of the slow cooker. Then add the minced garlic, onion, chicken broth, salt, pepper, and water and cook on high for 4 hours.  After the 4 hours tear the cream cheese into chunks and use an immersion hand blender to puree the potatoes and blend the cream cheese to make the soup thick. If you don't have a hand blender you can use a regular blender by scooping the soup in the slow cooker out and putting it in the blender adding the cream cheese and blending until the soup is thick. After this it is ready to top with you choice of topping and then eat!  *Disclaimer- I am not a fan of cream cheese, at all, so I was a little hesitant to add this to my soup, but I did any way.I thought it was such a big pot of soup and such a little amount of cream cheese. You couldn't taste the cream cheese at all once it was blended together.*

 Mom created cookies from this blog that were just as easy to make as my soup. You could defiantly say our focus was truly on the crafting. She was slightly disappointed with how the cookies turned out but, I thought they were delicious. It was like a bite-size piece of cake! According to mom all she did was use spice cake mix, a can of pumpkin and decorating sugar.  She placed the spice cake mix into cookie form on a baking sheet and sprinkled with decorating sugar and baked for 10 minutes. They were nice and soft (like a little piece of cake), but she would have preferred them more crunchier. After she took them out of the oven she added a Hershey's pumpkin spice flavor kiss in the middle. She did warn that these melt easy so they didn't all keep their shape.

 After we were full of soup and sweets our focus could really be on our wreaths. ( I  was still focused on those delicious cookies as well.) I had spent a couple weeks preparing for this. I searched the web looking for inspiration and "pinned" several ideas. I finally decided on a wreath with fall berries and fall-color felt flowers. 

This is my finished wreath.

This was pretty easy and a lot of fun to make! It was  great for a first project to get me inspired to craft more (and my first wreath project).

Here are the steps on making the wreath.

The supplies you will need: a wreath $4.99 from Joann's, felt squares $.34 from Joann's and a two strings of fall berries (mom had these, but I would estimate they are around $5 at Joann's but I have seen them at dollar stores) and a hot glue gun. The Wreath is about $12 to make and looks so much more expensive than that!! Mom was using leaves and covering a letter "M"

Cut felt square into smaller square.

Felt square cut smaller.

Cut the corners with scissors to round them.

The square once the corners are round.

Cut the square into a spiral  shape. Start narrow and get bigger as you reach the center.

Roll the spiral. Be sure to keep the bottom flat.

The bottom when you are almost finished rolling the spiral.

Put some hot glue in the center.

Press the small circle shape at the end of spiral on top of the hot glue. ( Be careful not to burn your fingers it really hurts!)

The final product.

Ready to assemble! I had about nine different sized flowers. The smaller the square- the smaller the flower. The larger the square- the larger the flower.  Combining colors on a spiral or rolling two spiral together on top of each other will give you two-tone flowers.

 First, I placed and then hot-glued the felt flowers to the wreath.

Next, I placed the berries on top of the wreath and then wrapped floral wire around the wreath  to attach the string of berries.

The final product on the front door!

All in all, it turned out to be a fun day (and I have to say I was pretty proud of my wreath).

Remember, all things worth remembering are in the details.