Chicken and pasta with peanut sauce

This is another one from the ward recipe blog. We tried it and it was good. One piece of advice is don't be alrmed if your sauce looks more like paste before you mix it in; it should still mix up nicely! Oh yea, for the veggies I used broccoli and bell pepper. I would like to tr it with pea pods!

Almost every time I ask Jon what he wants for dinner (this doesn't happen very often--usually I just make whatever sounds good) he says, "That peanut butter pasta with chicken!" Invariably his eyes light up when he says this and he asks me about ten times when dinner will be ready while I'm making it. If you don't like peanut butter, don't make this, but if you do--give it a try! I got this recipe from my trusty Better Homes and Gardens Cook Book. The original recipe is quite a lot different from the way I make it, but the important part is the sauce.

6 oz. spaghetti or fettucine
1 cup cooked chicken, cut in strips
Vegetable of choice, in quantity of choice (I usually use broccoli or cauliflower or both)
1/4 cup chicken broth
2 tlbs. peanut butter
1 tlbs. soy sauce
1 tlbs. lemon or lime juice
1/4 tsp. crushed red peppers
1 clove garlic, minced

Cook pasta, adding vegetables for last 5-7 minutes. Cook chicken in pan with a bit of olive oil, salt, and pepper. Drain pasta and vegetables, and mix with chicken. For sauce, stir chicken broth into peanut butter in small saucepan. Heat and stir with a whisk until peanut butter melts. Stir in soy sauce, lemon/lime juice, red pepper, and garlic; heat through. Add sauce to the pasta mixture. Gently stir to coat pasta with sauce.

Crock Pot Chicken Cacciatore

I love chicken cacciatore, but found the other recipe I tried just a little too labor-intensive for my taste...This one is really simple, and still delicious!

2 lbs. boneless skinless chicken
1 c. chopped onion,
1 1/2 c. sliced mushrooms
1 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper
2 (6 oz.) cans of tomato paste
1 tsp. minced garlic
1 tsp. oregano
1/2 tsp. basil
1/2 tsp. celery seed
1 bay leaf
1/2 c. chicken broth

Place chicken, onion, mushrooms, salt, and pepper in crock pot. Combine tomato paste, garlic, oregano, basil, celery seed, bay leaf and chicken broth. Pour over chicken. Cook on low for 7-9 hours or on high for 3-4 hours. Remove bay leaf.

Notes: I used garlic powder instead of minced garlic, and it worked with the same measurement. I didn't have celery seed, so I omitted it, and that worked too. Also, the original recipe called for 1/4 c. chicken broth. I just happened to have 1/2 c. left over from a different recipe so I used it all, and it still was too thick to "pour" over the chicken, and turned out pastier than I expected. I might try using a whole can of chicken broth next time to make it more saucy, though it was tasty the way it turned out this time too. Also, we ate this with thin spaghetti, but I like chicken cacciatore with rice too.

Jumpin' Chicken Tai

Picture soon to come

Ingredients:
1 lb. meat - Chicken/shrimp/pork
1 bag Guilin Rice Sticks

Fish Sauce

Limes
1 bag garden salad
4 cloves garlic
2 Tbsp. soy sauce
butter
1 bushel cilantro

Sweet onion
1 onion
1/4 tsp paprika
1/4 c brown sugar
1/8 tsp salt

Hot onion
1 onion
1 tsp chili garlic sauce
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1/4 c sweet coconut

Directions:

Marinate Chicken/shrimp/pork in garlic, butter and soy sauce for a few hours. Make fried onion of your choice, sweet or hot. Cook chicken in a pan, meanwhile, cook rice sticks - they don't take long just 5 minutes or so.

Assemble:
On each plate layer in this order - Rice sticks, salad, meat, onion, cilantro, squirt of fish sauce, juice of 1/2 lime.