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Panko Crusted Stuffed Chicken

Who doesn't love a quick dinner on a Friday? We all have better things to be doing tonight, am I right?

Unless you're me, then you're blogging and working on a Friday. Touche.

This is a super quick dinner you can mix up and throw into the oven and be done with it. It's tasty, it looks great and you can make a little, or a lot!

The filling for the chicken is super easy, it's just ricotta, chopped cherry tomatoes, chopped spinach and some seasonings.

To stuff the chicken, use a sharp knife to split the breasts length wise, creating a little pocket. Don't split them all the way through. Stuff them until you're just able to secure them with a couple of tooth picks so they don't fall apart. Then, roll them around in a mixture of panko and regular bread crumbs, so they're well coated.

Heat a skillet with some oil over medium high, you're going to want to fry these babies so you get a nice golden color on the outside. Only about 4 minutes per side.

When they're nice a brown, transfer into a baking dish and into a 400 degree oven for about 20 minutes or until they're cooked through.

 Enjoy!

  

P.S.,

Don't forget to check out (and like!) my new Facebook page for my personal cheffing/bartending/event business!

The House Wife

Happy New Year!

2015 really sailed by with force, but here we are in 2016 and i'm ready!

This little blog has been pretty neglected as of late, but i'm happy to still see visits. I started a new little venture late last year and for any of my local readers, I thought i'd put the word out.

After posting all this yummy food over the years, giving away my secrets and growing in my cooking, i've decided that it's time to feed others. I'm getting into the personal cheffing world, trying my hand at some basic cooking lessons and offering meal preparation services.

So, if you're in the Phoenix/Scottsdale area, contact me at housewifefood@gmail.com and let's get cooking!

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DIY Wedding Bouquet

That title is so vague. And I didn’t realize this until I started on the Google-nets, looking for the best way to tackle this project.

Most, use real flowers, I have silk. I didn’t know what length stem I was looking for, and most of the silk flower tutorials use wires to extend the stems of the flowers to the length needed to be secured into the bouquet. Wire. I forgot to buy wire! Well, I figured enough purchasing had gone into this project and I was determined to make do with what I had…

What’s a little wire?

I haven’t been to many weddings, only been in one and really, am just no good at this kind of stuff. But, it was important to me to do this myself. So, I did my research, filled my head with ideas and went for it!

First, I ordered my flowers from AFloral. I found some pretty bad reviews of them online, but it’s easy to weed out the women who obviously ordered the wrong thing, women’s who’s expectations were too high and women who just apparently thought they were ordering real flowers, out, from the rest of the reviews.

I, was pleased.

The flowers, everything, total was about half of what I’ve heard brides spending on just their bouquets.

I was able to get mine, my toss, 5 bridesmaids bouquets, 7 boutonnieres, 2 corsages and still had flowers left over for the cake. Boom.

 

 

 

I received my flowers really, really quickly! I was SO surprised. I opened the box and let them breathe for a few days, as most ladies complained they were “squished”. Duh.

 

I felt they were gorgeous. The colors were on point and the quality was to be expected.

 

I kept a glue gun on hand to handle any buds that happened to separate from their stems in the brutal bouquet making process.

 

 

This proved to be a really smart move. I even took it with me in a bag to the venue, just in case a crucial flower popped out of a bouquet. And, can I say, I preferred this, because, you can’t fix a real flower.

 

Am I right?

 

 

 

 

 

 

I separated the flowers and made a game plan as to what I wanted in what.

This process took me about three days, but I did it a week and a half in advance… So make sure that you have an area that’s relatively undisturbed. This happened to be the corner of my dining room table that’s home to a broken chair.

Always craft with wine. It’s very important.

Originally, I was going for a satin wrapped, pearl draped bouquet, with a few charms hanging off with photos of my Mother, Grandmother and Papa in them, then a brooch at the top.

However, when I finished, it became this overly done, thing that I just wasn’t into. So I started tearing stuff off and ended up with a simple bouquet I was REALLY happy with.

Another reason I loved doing it myself. Had a florist brought me, what I THOUGHT I wanted, I’d have died.

 

Now, besides flowers I needed:

SUPPLIES:

Floral tape. I feel like I had the cheapest kind they make, and that was fine. It takes some getting use to using if you haven’t before. Be patient.
Toilet paper rolls. Why? Because, when the bouquets were assembled, they felt a bit thin, the ends were not to be exposed and they weren’t uniform. Not cool. The rolls helped to conceal and unify. Haller.
Hot glue gun
Pliers/Wire cutters. I have a snazzy combo, or that’s just how they come. I’m not Tim Taylor, I have no idea what’s going on.
Scissors.
Wired ribbon. It’s MUCH classier, can be made into fuller bows and is easier to make an end on. <--- What?
Floral pins. I chose pearl headed ones.
Any additional accessories you choose to glam up that bouquet!

 

Let’s get started! (Excuse my photo quality, I was trying to assemble quickly and remember to take photos of each step, but with hot glue drying up or oozing onto my fingers, it proved challenging.)

Start by holding, in your hand, what you want in the middle of your bouquet. Maybe two or three flowers and start wrapping floral tape around and around and around. You’ll find a rhythm once you figure out how much wrapping you’re about to do.

I didn’t have wires, like I said earlier, to attach to flowers to elongate the stem for incorporating them into the bouquet. I prefer my method however, as I can’t imagine wrapping wires tightly enough to not be seen.

If you have shorter stems, hold them at the appropriate height on the stem to be as tall as your other flowers and tape, tape, tape. Chances are, you won’t be seeing that small amount of tape on the inside of your bouquet. So don’t stress.

Continue adding and taping, making sure to go all the way up and down the stems for support and uniformity. You don’t know who’s gonna be swinging their bridesmaid bouquet around the dance floor when “SHOUT!” comes on and you don’t want your guests with a face full of faux flowers.

 

Once you’re done, it’ll look something like this…

 

 

I chose a bouquet for the bridesmaids to start with, off the website that was already assembled. I took it apart, fluffed it up, rearranged it and added some Dusty Miller around the outside.

 

 

 

Next, you’re going to want to cut a strip out of the toilet paper rolls, to make them smaller, if your bouquet is thinner.

 

Wrap it around the stems, like so. I made sure I was as close to the bottom as possible, since I wanted a completely wrapped bouquet, flat on the bottom.

 

 

 

Tighten it, like you’re rolling it up (no pun intended, jeez) and glue inside the flap, hold closed until the glue is dry!

 

Please excuse my gorgeous nails….

 

If you wrapped it well, you should be able to carefully slide the roll down as close to the bottom of the stems as you can.

 

Use your wire cutter to snip the excess wire clump that might stick out.

At this point, my flowers have a little more fluffing to do. But, you get the gist of the look.

Now, onto the wrap. I didn’t get any photos of this part, because, well, I only have two hands. Ssshhhh….

First off, if you’re finishing the bottom of your bouquet with ribbon, kind of capping it off like I did and got no photos of, it’ll look nicer. I’ve seen the bottoms filled with floral pins, creating a cap of pearls, but with so many thick wires in this bouquet, it didn’t work.

So, to start off, you’ll want to cut a piece of ribbon long enough to wrap in a U shape, to conceal the bottom wires. Hot glue the ribbon long ways, wrap under the bouquet and glue tightly onto the other side. Wired ribbon helps in this step because you can pinch the ribbon flat against the stems to start the wrap and it doesn’t show.

A lot of tutorials say to start the ribbon in the back, pin it and start wrapping. This didn’t work for me because, where does the pin go? It just hides in a lump under the satin. Nope.

So, I positioned the end of the ribbon in the same spot, on the back of the bouquet (there’s no front and back, just choose a side.) at an angle. See how my wrap is at an angle? It keeps the ribbon from bunching. You don’t want to make the angle as steep as you want to end up with, you’ll be covering the top of the floral tape with ribbon so you’ll need a straight wrap around maybe twice, then start angling down as you wrap.

I held and spun with one hand and made sure to keep the ribbon as tight as possible to prevent bunching and slipping. It’ll still bunch a teeny bit, nothing’s perfect.

Once you reach the bottom, you’ll kind of repeat what you did at the top, leveling off the wrap until it’s even at the bottom. Give yourself about an inch or two and cut the ribbon off and fold it over, in towards the bouquet to create an edge. This satin ribbon frayed like a mother, so I folded twice, really tiny folds. Hold it tight and pin.

If you have too heavy of a hand, you’ll crush the end of the roll. Too light and the wrap’ll be loose and slip. Be careful pushing the pins into the wires, make sure to angle up, then at the top, angle down. Don’t force the pins, they’re pushing against wire and they’ll break, into your finger. Not fun, trust me.

 

This is the finished wrap on my bouquet. I crushed the paper towel roll I used to wrap it, at the bottom, a little. But, you can’t really tell. Yay!

A little sneak peek of my bridal bouquet. I’ll post more after the wedding, of course!

Next post I’ll cover boutonnieres! They’re simple…y…. frustrating.

Pardon the delay…

But, I’m getting freakin’ married!
I’ve been busy planning my wedding from top to bottom while also working and raising a pre-schooler. It’s been insane.
Hopefully, after the wedding, I’ll create some free time and get back into “The Good Life”.
I’m SO far behind, I have folders of posts ready to get written, I just lack the time. Well, my laptop has been on the fritz (I’m REALLY turning into and old Danish woman) lately and I can’t move it from it’s sweet spot, where the charger and the internal non-sense of the battery align and there’s power. Sweet power.
Then comes my kid, wanting to play on the other laptop, but I can’t say no, because, well ABC Mouse is amazing. So, my blog, life, soul, ect…
Has been suffering. Jk.
By the way, my gremlin is getting to the age where I’m going to start blogging about parenting more. It’s just fun and such a learning experience that I can’t pass up letting another woman in my situation know, that she’s not alone, in the way she feels. We’re humans, and we need to relate to other humans as often as possible. That’s partly why I write this blog.
I’m also going to be writing a cook book, full of recipes that are not featured here. So, stay tuned for that. Yay!
Thank you all for keeping up with my blog so far. This little ditty means the world to me.

Happy New Year!

We let our little guy party with his Grandma and took off for the snow on New Years Day and it was just gorgeous.

Arizona is known for their dry, hot ass summers and gorgeous desert, but northern Arizona is a whole other ball game. It’s, to me, reminiscent of where I am from in California, without the 6 hour drive!

Prescott is not only a cool town, but they’re known for their beer as the Prescott Brewing Company is a popular producer. Tasty suds and some fresh snow? What could be better?

Hope everybody has an amazing year. Happy 2015!

Tulloch Mill at Knights Ferry

While adventuring around our road trip destination, Oakdale, California, we took a long winding country road out to one of my favorite spots.

Knights Ferry is a little town that’s about 40 miles east of Modesto, Ca, right on the Stanislaus River. It’s a tiny town with a lot of history and even more to look at. Little House on the Prairie and Bonanza were filmed here and it’s home to the longest covered bridge west of the Mississippi. The town was literally sprung from this guy, William Knight, who thought the area was a good spot to cross the river during the Goldrush of 1849.

Anyway, it now makes a great spot to take a little walk, explore and grab some cool pictures while seeing an interesting piece of history.

There is a picnic area right before the bridge, with river access to either fish or swim. It’s SO peaceful.

The drought has taken all the water levels way down in California. This photo was of the bridge and river, looking towards the mill, which is the brick structure in the left center of the photo.

“The hills are alive with the so-” Wait, the hills aren’t alive with anything, it’s SO dry!

This is the path to the bridge, it’s just around the side of the picnic area and when you approach the bridge, there’s a gap in the fence with access to these huge boulders that over hang the water. When there was more water, you can jump into the river from there or swing from a rope on the bridge, which is gone now.

The two pictures below are from about the same view point, four years apart. I know the sepia tone doesn’t help in the bottom photo but the loss of water and vegetation is pretty obvious. It’s still so gorgeous to me though!

The bridge is old. And I mean creaks in the wind, loose boards and freaky shit abounds. I can’t imagine being out here at night and I don’t know how it’s still standing after all these years. It use to be open to cars until the 80’s and I’m feeling like soon it’ll be closed to foot traffic as well.

The photo on the right is from 2010 when there were no restrictions and the left is now with the rope walkway.

I would DIE have done a photoshoot in the bridge before they ruined it.

Once you cross over the bridge, there’s a few trails for hiking and then to the left is Tulloch’s Mill.

It’s old, it’s abandoned, it’s a great piece of California history and worth seeing.

The place, to me, is just gorgeous. I love the old wood and stone, it’s so intricate and interesting. The graffiti is sad, but it’s not he most prevalent thing.

The brick work and the oak trees make for such striking pictures. Maybe it’s my love of the place, but I can never take enough photos.

Across from the mill is the office. I just want to go inside!

You can really get up close and personal with this old, heavy duty equipment. It’s kind of awesome to think that this is what supplied people with power. The detail and everything is just so beautiful.

Behind the mill, around the back is where the water intake area was…

You can tell that there’s more “visitors” around the back. There’s a lot more graffiti. BUT, I couldn’t resist heading underneath to see what was in there. It’s crazy to think the water was ever high enough to make this all under water. There’s even moss on the walls still.

The photo above, with all the windows and the sunbeam, that room is the one in the photo below, but from the back. The water would come in this back side and get made into power by the big-ass pipe in the photos above. This was also, at one point a flour mill. Apparently the two required the same type of set up to be created.

It’s pretty creepy around the back. There’s nothing for miles on that side so you never know what could be out there. I’d love to do a ghost hunt or something like that here one night. I can’t imagine what you’d find! All that construction, years of dangerous conditions, just the fact that the area was a river crossing for so long… We’ve all played Oregon Trail and lost someone forging the river. lol.

Back in the car and back onto the road, we follow the sign that leads to the town of Knights Ferry. Well, what is there isn’t much, but again, worth seeing and another place I’d love to take a ghost adventure to. I mean look at it!

This is the mechanics shop… Riiiight.

Little church on the rocks….

The. Jail. Bet you don’t wanna get caught doing anything bad in this town…. What the HELL is in there?!

Aaaaand what I can only imagine is a residence.

That was it.

There was only a few streets in the town. No lights, but a cool little hotel thing that looked like it might have something worth a mid-night check-out to scare you stiff.

All in all, it’s a cool little place to check out and if you’re on a summer road trip to Yosemite, you might just have to drive right through it anyway!

P.S, if you want to use any of these photos, just ask! My contact is in the headers.