29 September 2010

what's cooking wednesday: the frugal gourment edition

did y'all ever watch this?  i remember my mother watching this when i was a little girl.  i preferred yan can cook.

the beau and i work for the same university which means we're on the same pay schedule.  and at our place of employment, that means one paycheck per month.  great for learning how to budget, terrible for everything else.  needless to say, things get pretty tight in the ole wallets for us during the last week or two of the month.

last week was one such week and we had to get creative one night for dinner, working with what we had and what we could afford.  fast food was NOT an option since we are trying to be much healthier and fast food ends up being quite expensive anyways.  we had a package of chicken breast tenders and a frozen bag of broccoli in cheese sauce.  we bought some uncle ben's ready rice.  i whisked together a marinade/sauce for the chicken out of dijon mustard, some of the previous night's white wine, extra virgin olive oil, garlic powder, italian seasoning, salt and pepper.  i didn't mesaure anything; i just added stuff until it was the proper consistency and taste.  then i put all of the chicken into the bowl with the marinade, tossed it around until it was all coated, and waited while the oven preheated to 350.

once the oven was ready, i put the chicken on a foil-wrapped baking sheet coated with cooking spray and baked for approximately 20 minutes.  meanwhile, we heated up the rice and broccoli in the microwave and then mixed it all together in a serving dish.  when the chicken was ready, i just served it on top of the broccoli rice mixture.  et voila!


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tres delicious!

definitely not a high-falutin' gourment meal, but it was healthy, budget-friendly, and really very yummy. this one is definitely a keeper.

bon appetit!

3 comments:

how i met your father blog said...

your picture of an ACTUAL chicken made me laugh right out loud. i needed that this morning!!

KatiePerk said...

Nice work! Usually when we get inventive it is the best meal!

icing on the cake said...

That does sound good! It's always so satisfying when you make something on the fly that turns out so well.