I made food: Mediterranean chicken en papillote

Today I was faced with cooking the dreaded chicken breast, which I normally hate because they tend to be dry and tasteless. My husband suggested trying to cook them en papillote (apparently he heard about it on NPR), which just means you wrap the food in a parchment paper packet so it steams in its own juices.

I followed this recipe from Martha Stewart, except I omitted the artichokes and olives for budgetary reasons.

First you mix up a mustard vinaigrette.

Then in the middle of a piece of parchment paper, you make a little bed of asparagus and top it with a half chicken breast, some vinaigrette, feta, basil and tomatoes.

Then the chickens all go to sleep in their little beds and into the oven...

...and here's what you get when you open the package! (We ate it with penne and homemade marinara.)

Because it cooks all sealed up, the chicken stays moist and tender. It's relatively low-fat (unless you drink all that leftover dressing at the bottom...) And it's very flavorful thanks to the mustard vinaigrette. We both agreed this recipe needs to go into my chicken breast recipe rotation!


Everyone ready for the 31-Day Challenge starting tomorrow? I am!!

I'm finally back! (plus a recipe)

Hey there, readers! Did you forget about me? It took us a few weeks, but we've pretty much completed our move to the Boston area, and today we finished unpacking the office so I have my computer back!

It's been a pretty big adjustment moving from a small college town to a huge metropolitan area, but our new apartment is pretty nice and the doggie has a backyard to play in. Oh, and can I just say that Boston traffic is THE WORST. Absolutely nuts. I keep getting honked at because apparently in Boston you're not supposed to wait for a gap in traffic before turning...you're just supposed to GO!

But enough complaining! I had to cut my nails down to stubs since so many of them broke during the move, but I'd like to get polishing again soon! All I wore for the past two weeks was Julep Oxygen Nail Treatment, and I must say it held up pretty well to all the beating it got! Oh, and also in nail news, I got a Helmer at Ikea!

Here's my nail setup. My polish collection occupies five of the drawers in the Helmer, although with a lot of extra room in each drawer for more. Sadly, my lightbox was a victim of the move, so I'll have to make a new one, but that's no problem since we're swimming in cardboard boxes!

Finally, I'll leave you with a good pasta recipe I made up tonight. I didn't manage to take a picture, so you'll just have to imagine...

I cooked some whole wheat penne and set it aside. In a pan I put a healthy amount of olive oil and sauteed some minced garlic; after a minute I added some cherry tomatoes and frozen kale. Once the tomatoes started bursting open I turned off the heat and added salt and pepper, lemon juice and fresh basil. The result tasted really fresh and summery, and had beautiful, vibrant red and green colors!

We're trying to cut costs when it comes to groceries, so it'll be interesting trying to come up with new recipes I can make on a budget!

OK, I'll be making sure to blog regularly again--I've had a language-related post planned for a while now, so I'll try to get that up tomorrow. And if anyone has any suggestions for fun stuff to do in Boston or good restaurants to try, let me know!