Week 9: A chicken

I really wish that I had taken a picture of this one!!! It as just too good to wait though!
What did I make??? A chicken!!!

Betty Crocker can take the credit for this one. I followed her table as to how long to cook the chicken and i took her basic stuffing recipe (it tastes just like stovetop!!!!!!!)

For the chicken, I didn't do much. I just bought it and stuffed it.
The chicken was less than three pounds, so the meaturments for the stuffing gave me a little more than i needed-- so think accordingly if you are going to make this recipe. Betty Crocker says that you need about 3/4 cup of stuffing for every pound of meat.

for the stuffing I sauteed 1/4 cup of onion and 1/3 cup of celery (leaves included) with about 1/3 cup of butter

On the side, I sliced three cups bread cubes from normal sliced bread (i used cheap wheat bread)

when the onion and celery were soft, I added 1 cup of bread crumbs and cooked for about another minute, then i took it off the heat and added the rest of the breadcrumbs with
1/2 teaspoon sage
1/3 teaspoon thyme
and a little salt and pepper
I mixed it all up them put it in my chicken

I cooked the chicken at 190 degees C for almost two hours.

The last 1/2 hour i added my red potatoes.
For that, I sliced red potatoes (about 4 pieces per small red poatoto)
then i tossed them with olive oil, parsley and garlic, but them on a baking try and placed them in the oven with the chicken.

When the chicken was done, i took the leftover fat, added a little flour and had gravy!!!

It was really good and I think it was a good think for Yvan because one of the things that he looks foward to at his parent's house is their Sunday tradition of cooking chicken for lunch.

Week 9: Stuffed Peppers

For this, I decided to mix a few 'recipes.'
I wanted to go with n normal meatloaf in a pepper instead of adding rice or making Italian sausage.
So, I made a basic meatloaf recipe:

I mixed
about 1 lb of ground beef
2 eggs
a bunch of bread crumbs (i used whole wheat because that it what i had, but i don't think i makes a difference either way)
some seasonings: Oregano, basil, parsley, onion (about 1/2 fresh or some powder) and garlic (two cloves fresh or some powder)
the difference between this recipe and meatloaf is the eggplant and green pepper I added (this is kinda copies from Michele)
So, I actually broiled a green pepper and a small/medium eggplant so that it was soft but still a little undercooked and chopped them into cubes. I added about 1/3 of this to the meat mixture and left the rest off to the side.
Then I used two red peppers which i cut in half (cut the long way so that the stem is split in half, then remove stem and seeds)

So, I stuffed the peppers with the meat mixture and cooked them at 200 degrees C for about 40 minutes.

With the rest of the mixture and the rest of the vegetables I made a pasta sauce.
I started the sauce as soon as put the peppers in the oven. I cooked the ingredients on medium in a pot until the meat was cooked, then i added a can of chopped tomatoes and a can of tomato puree. (you can just use a jar of sauce) and i cooked it for the amount of time the peppers were in the oven

ENJOY

I'm back

I'm back from my short break AND WITH AN OVEN!!!!!!!! I have two recipes that I want to share, but I am not sure that I have pictures for them... but here they are!