My wife and I live several miles outside of town and have never gone out to eat very often; the Virus has almost made not often—never.

We’ve decided that the real question of life is: What shall we have for dinner? Hell, I don’t know; what do YOU want?

There may be some value in a thread of dinner suggestions. Just some ideas for main courses that I (we) may not have thought of. We’ve got boneless/skinless chicken breasts thawed for dinner tonight, and neither one of us is exactly excited at the prospect. Recipes if you like, but just the menu suggestions help. BTW, not just chicken ideas...you got that right?

Italian meat loaf
Garlic mashed potatoes
Broiled asparagus with olive oil and black pepper

Ever had a Frito Chili Pie?

You already go through the 29 page illustrated guide to dinner??

What did you make for dinner?

Home made Chicken pot pie,

two pillsbury pie crusts in a can (yeah youse guys with all the tools make your own crust)
2 Cans of mushroom soup
pre-cook chicken we blanch the breasts on low
bag of mixed veggies or fresh pre-cut veggies

mix mushroom soup, veggies and cooked chicken
into pie crust in pan, cover top with other crust

Bake at 350 until the wife says its done.

Add that chicken to cream of whatever, cream of celery, cream of asparagus, cream of broccoli,
cream of chicken etc. Throw some veggies in it and put it on top of rice. Done

That spaghetti Carbonara that Para posted the other day- it is delicious.

There's always chicken marsala.

As for non-poultry ideas...

Grilled sausages with onions and peppers is a favorite at my house. The Cook's Country version is very good.

We have omelettes or scrambled eggs and bacon about once a week.

It's summer and local tomatoes are plentiful, so BLTs are on the supper menu.

Pasta salad is good in the summer. Your favorite local fresh veggies tossed with pasta, feta, and your favorite vinaigrette dressing.

A chili-lime marinade should help out those boring chicken breasts.

Makes for outstanding eating on its own, or even better fajitas.


Spice mix, to prepare first:
4 tsp chili powder
2 tsp salt
2 tsp paprika
2 tsp brown sugar
1 tsp black pepper
1 tsp onion powder
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp cayenne pepper

(Makes enough for a couple batches; store excess in an airtight plastic container.)


Then marinade:
1. Put chicken breasts (thawed not frozen) in gallon ziploc bag(s). I try to not put more than 3 or so breasts in each bag.
2. Into each bag, squeeze 1 lime per chicken breast, plus 1 additional lime.
3. Add one heaping spoonful of spice mix (above) per chicken breast to each bag.
4. Close bag with the bag half-filled with air, then squish the breasts around inside to distribute the marinade mix.
5. Reopen bag, squeeze all the air out of the bag, reclose bag.
6. Refrigerate at least several hours, and preferably overnight. Flip bag over at least once about halfway through.


After marinating, grill chicken breasts over charcoal until internal temp reaches 165.



The next day, with the leftover chicken, you can then easily throw together some Chicken Posole soup. Dice up a breast or two of the leftover chile-lime chicken and add to a 4 quart pot with a few cups of chicken broth and a can each of salsa verde, green chiles, white hominy, black eyed peas, and diced tomatoes, plus some cumin and chili powder. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 10-20ish minutes. Top with sour cream and cilantro.

I guess chicken parmesan is another idea. Thanks everyone. Hope all of you are getting some ideas too.

quote:

Originally posted by TMats:
My wife and I live several miles outside of town and have never gone out to eat very often; the Virus has almost made not often—never.

We’ve decided that the real question of life is: What shall we have for dinner? Hell, I don’t know; what do YOU want?

There may be some value in a thread of dinner suggestions. Just some ideas for main courses that I (we) may not have thought of. We’ve got boneless/skinless chicken breasts thawed for dinner tonight, and neither one of us is exactly excited at the prospect. Recipes if you like, but just the menu suggestions help. BTW, not just chicken ideas...you got that right?

I riffed off Marzy's egg drop soup recipe and made it something heartier to be a main course instead of a side. My modifications in red font.

Ingredients:

4 tablspoons of corn starch

32oz Chicken Broth

Three eggs

pinch or so of WHITE pepper

Either fresh green beans or fresh asparagus

1 lb chicken breasts/thighs

glurp of sesame oil

Directions:

Mix corn starch in 1 cup of COLD water. Mixed well and set aside in fridge

Brown the chicken in sesame oil and set aside.

Bring chicken broth to simmer and add 1 cup of water to thin

Cut the asparagus/green beans into ~1" lengths

Once the broth is simmering add the chicken and asparagus/green beans

Return to simmer and cook 6 minutes

Beat the eggs

Stir the chilled corn starch mix and add to pot

Reduce heat

Stir slowly, VERY slowly

While slowly stirring add 1/3 of the eggs at a time until all are poached.

Turn off heat and allow to steep for 10 minutes.

Protect and enjoy.

Use your chicken breasts here.


Stuffed Zucchini

Take a few LARGE zucchini and par-boil them sufficient to allow the spoon removal of the meat leaving intact squash shells halves.

Saute mushrooms, onions (or scallions, leeks, or shallots) and the cubed zucchini meat then set aside. Seasonings and/or extras are whatever floats your boat.

Stir fry sausage and cubed chicken breast meat. Other meat or seafood can readily be substituted

Prepare wild rice.

Combine zucchini mixture, meat, and rice. Then layer it over the zucchini shells. Top with medium sized cooked shrimp. Then cover with a healthy layer of mornay sauce (you can go with any number of grated cheeses here although the classic parmesan and gruyere seems best to me), with a sprinking of paprika. Toss in oven until sauce has light golden highlights and serve.

Key here is zucchini, rice and mornay sauce. Everything else ingredient-wise becomes quite flexible. That said I've found the sausage/chicken/shrimp approach to be excellent. Been making this for decades! And yes, it is quite rich.

We love to grill up chicken fajitas. As a matter of fact that is what we are having tonight. Taco Tuesday!

On the op. I prefer boneless skinless wings to breasts. If we do Chicken breasts i like to cut them in to strips and bbq.

Hot chicken salad with crushed potato chips and melted cheese on top.

Chili

Gumbo (last batch had smoked chicken, shrimp, and andoulee sp? sausage)

lasagna sp? (why can't I spell food stuff ?_

Poppy seed ham biscuits

County fried steak w/ gravy, mashed potatos, cream corn, and fried okra or some kind of peas.

Fish tacos with slaw that gives you gas.

hamburger helper

tuna salad

home made reuben sandwiches

corned beef and cabbage

Some excellent recipes here: https://damndelicious.net/

Jim

Fourth post from the bottom. Simple and easy yet very good meal. Originally posted by erj pilot. I seared chicken first on super hot grill for a minute or two per side for a little extra flavor, and heated ingredients in crock pot and mixed gravy before adding chicken to gravy mix.


SF dinner thread

Just trying to understand your recipe. How do you remove the zucchini meat with a spoon and end up with it cubed? I always end up with a pile of scraped zucchini flesh.

quote:

Originally posted by bald1:
Take a few LARGE zucchini and par-boil them sufficient to allow the spoon removal of the [zucchini] meat leaving intact squash shells halves.

Saute mushrooms, onions (or scallions, leeks, or shallots) and the cubed zucchini meat then set aside.

Chicken tacos/burritos.

Take you chicken breast and put them in a crock pot - 4 hours or so. Mix taco seasoning and your choice of chili verdes, canned salsa, tomatoes, etc.

In the mean time shred some lettuce (your choice of kind) have some sour cream, more salsa (your choice(s)), avocado and shells/tortillas.

To prepare, after 4 hours cooking, shred the chicken breast and mix.

Easy peasy, not a lot of work and plenty of leftover.

quote:

Originally posted by 229DAK:
Just trying to understand your recipe. How do you remove the zucchini meat with a spoon and end up with it cubed? I always end up with a pile of scraped zucchini flesh.

quote:

Originally posted by bald1:
Take a few LARGE zucchini and par-boil them sufficient to allow the spoon removal of the [zucchini] meat leaving intact squash shells halves.

Saute mushrooms, onions (or scallions, leeks, or shallots) and the cubed zucchini meat then set aside.

Okay, sorry if it isn't that clear.

You take the softened par-boiled zucchini and cut them lengthwise into halves. Then you take a spoon and separate or "scrape" the flesh from the skins leaving the skins and slight amount of remaining flesh thick enough to serve as a bottom layer of this casserole. The removed flesh usually comes off in one large strip which is then diced or cubed to be sauteed as indicated.

Hope this all now makes sense.