Crockpot Ginger Chicken and Prunes

3 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
2 large onions peeled and sliced
4 cloves of garlic, minced
2 tablespoons of fresh ginger, minced
2 cups broth (I used vegetable, chicken would be good too)
1 tablespooon of olive oil
2 cups prunes (really however much you want, I used half a container, I guess it was about 2 cups), roughly chopped

Heat a heavy bottomed skillet.  Add a tablespoon of olive oil, add chicken breasts and brown on each side for a couple of minutes.

Transfer chicken to the crockpot insert. Add the onion, garlic and ginger to the pan and let it brown a little,

when it looks like it’s sticking, add the broth and scrape the bits of the bottom of the pan.  Allow the liquid to come to a boil.\

Meanwhile, put the prunes on top of the chicken in the crockpot.

When the liquid has come to a boil, carefully pour it on top of the chicken and prunes.  Set the crockpot on low for 4hours 30 minutes.  Check occasionally to make sure there’s still plenty of liquid.  Make sure that the chicken breasts are cooked through (they will be, but we all just want to stay safe, right?), plate and serve.

We served it family style with couscous and a tossed salad, but everyone was so hungry, that I never got a picture of a plate.

To be honest, I liked this, but I thought this was a little too subtly flavored.  I think next time I’ll use more ginger, maybe some sesame oil, or something with a heavier base note. My husband liked it very much, but saw my point, my son loved it and ate it up.  My daughter is currently a vegetarian, so she wasn’t in on the judging.

Six of My Favorite WordPress Plugins

Every so often I go through my plugins, upgrading, activating, deactiving, deleting. . . While I was doing it today, I thought I’d share with you some of my favorites. Most of them are pretty well known, but I thought I’d share anyway, just in case you might have missed one.  I have to tell you it took me forever to narrow it down this far and as always, I do reserve the right to change my mind.

I tried to skip the really obvious ones, but I couldn’t completely as you’ll see below.  So, here they are in no particular order, my current favorite WordPress Plug Ins.

1. Send It Really easy, yet robust newsletter subscription plug in.  Yes, it’s in Italian, but there are English instructions too.  I love this one!
2. WP Greet Box – Let’s you show a different welcome message to your visitor, depending upon the referring URL.  Very Cusomizable.  Change multiple messages, placement, etc.  Very easy to use.
3. Post Ideas – Some people keep them as drafts, but that seems messy to me some how, I much prefer this plug in that lets you jot down any ideas, relevant links, keywords, etc., till you’re ready.  Ranks by priority too.
4. Blog Icons – Makes it ridiculously easy to add favicon and icons for Ipod/Itouch icons to your blog
5. Follow My Links -  Prevents WordPress from automatically adding a “rel=nofollow” attribute.  Show your commenters Linky Love, which leads us to:  Edit! The gracious author of this plugin was kind enough to stop by and explain that this does not pertain to comments left by readers, only the “authorial comments (i.e., comments made by the post author)”. I took it to mean the author of the comments, because I don’t actually read documentation, I skim it and then just keep pressing buttons till it either works, or I break it completely.  You can see his whole comment below.
6. Comment Luv – Everyone is already using this right?  It goes without saying, right?

So tell me, what are your current favorites? Anything you think I absolutely have to know about? I’m all ears eyes.

Roasted Sweet Potatoes

I love sweet potatoes, don’t you?  But I’m sick of eating them the same way all the time and I wasn’t in the mood to prepare them with sweet ingredients, I wanted something a little less sweet.

Here’s what I did:

5 Sweet potatoes scrubbed and cubed
6 cloves of garlic chopped
About 4 Tablespoons of Olive Oil (approximately, I just free poured – you’ll need enough to coat the potatoes)
2 Tablespoons dried rosemary
Liberal amounts of kosher salt
about 20 grinds of black pepper
1 lemon

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Combine all the ingredients in a fairly large casserold dish and toss to coat and combine (I used my hands, it was more thorough then the tongs I tried first).

Start checking at 40 minutes, toss a little when you check.

I took mine out after 60 minutes, served with garlic sauteed broccoli and grilled chicken.  Squeeze a little lemon juice over the whole plate, it’s good on everything.

The whole family raved about them. They’re very filling too, so a little goes a long way.

The Room to Grow

Last week my daughter announced that she was going to give a concert at the park.  Ok, I thought, I’m just going to roll with this. She had put a couple of songs together and she planned that she would perform at the next park day.  She asked my advice about how to get started and I suggested that she just take out her guitar and start playing;  If people were interested, they’d listen and if not, she shouldn’t take it personally and to just regard it as practice.  She seemed ok with the idea and began to plan her “set”.

When we got to the park, it was mobbed!  We hadn’t realized that the public schools would be off that day and there were dozens of kids running all over the place.  We got out of the car to go play and she left the guitar in the car, she hadn’t counted on so many people being there and was unsure about whether she wanted to follow through.  Trying to give her the room to make more of her own decisions, I stayed silent.  She played with her friends and met some new children, we had lunch and then she whispered to me, “Can I have the keys?  I want to go get my guitar.”

She got her guitar and walked over to a picnic table that was just a little outside of the play area.  She opened it, set up and began to strum.  I stayed at my table so that I could stay out of her way and let her figure out what she wanted to do on her own.  After a couple of minutes, she started to sing.

Her friends were already gathered around her (we have the most supportive group, ever!), but then an interesting thing happened; more children started coming over from the play area and sat down on the ground in front of her.

At this point, I decided to set the camera to video and record a little bit:

She was so good and so brave that I thought my heart would burst!  After she was done the kids ran up to her and hugged her and told her what a good job she had done.

On the way home that day, she said, “Mom, I thought I was going to throw up, but in a good way.  Do you know what I mean?”
I do indeed sweetheart.  I do indeed.

Harissa Roasted Chicken

Are you familiar with Harissa? Let me tell you.  The always helpful Stacy suggested that I try this stuff and man was she ever right. It’s a delightful little paste made out of beetroot, carrots, chiles, cumin, and a couple of other things.  It’s got a little bit of warmth to it (so slight, I wouldn’t even call it heat) and I bought it to flavor my hummus, but it’s so good that I’ve been stirring it into a couple of recipes.

Tonight I was making chicken leg quarters (because they were $.99/lb!) and I decided to try something a little different.

Here’s what I did:

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

5 chicken leg quarters
1/2 c. Olive Oil
2 Tablespoons Harissa Paste
Juice of 1 lemon
Salt and Pepper
dried rosemary about 2 Tablespoons
6 big cloves of garlic, smashed and chopped

Place the chicken on a lipped sheet pan so that there’s enough space between them to cook. Score the skin in an “X” shape so that the marinade can seep in.

Combine the rest of the ingredients in a bowl and whisk.

With a pastry brush, or a spatula, deposit the marinate onto the chicken legs, really mush it into the places where you scored the chicken so that it flavors the skin and the meat.  Pour whatever is left over on top (scrape out the bowl, you don’t want to waste any of this)

Put it in the oven and cook for about an hour and a half.  Slice into the meat to make sure it’s cooked all the way through in the thickest part of the thigh.

I served this with roasted new potatoes and broccolli.

You’d never know that this was a budget friendly meal!

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