Parmesan Chicken and Rice Casserole

A nice at home meal is what I had in mind when I picked Parmesan Chicken and Rice Casserole paired with Green Beans in Warm Bacon Dressing and Broiled Plum Tomatoes. It was all listed together in Cooking Light magazine. I began by preparing all the ingredents while the oven preheated to 450. I chopped a white onion and bulb onions and snapped and washed the green beans. I started the casserole by cooking onions and garlic in a skillet and then adding a bag of boil in bag rice. It is the type of rice you can cook in a pot of boiling water. It looked like whole wheat Rice Krispies. I emptied the bag into the skillet and cooked it for 30 seconds and then a splash of white wine. After the wine burned off I spooned the rice into the bottom of a casserole dish. I placed the chicken thighs on top of the rice and seasoned them with thyme and salt. then I poured a mixture of chicken broth and whipping cream over the casserole and in the oven it went.



I quickly sliced the plum tomatoes and placed the on a cookie sheet and they also went into the oven to broil. I began cooking the bean in boiling water and bacon in a skillet. When the beans were done I drained them and focused on the bacon. After the bacon finished I removed it from the pan and added my sliced bulb onions to the bacon grease. I need to stir them constantly as to not burn them. In the middle of cooking the onions the timer when off for the casserole and I had to quickly open the oven and sprinkle Parmesan on the chicken. When I returned to the onions they were burnt. I added white wine vinegar to finish the warm bacon dressing and and smoke rushed at me and quickly filled the whole kitchen. I continued to stir with gusto for thirty more seconds and finally added the beans to coat them. I served them with crumbled bacon on top.

The dinner came together very nicely and it almost did not all fit on one plate. The beans tasted great despite the overdone onion because of the bacon grease and the tomatoes turned out nicely. We will make it again and add a few changes to spice up the chicken a little bit and we will probably use white meat instead of dark.

4th of July Pie

What started as inspiration from the July issue of the Martha Stewart Living magazine ended in a beautiful creation between mom and daughter. Fourth of July has always been a fun holiday for my fmaily. Our usual tradition is to have a cook out nad then go see fire works. this year my paretns came to visti Brian and I and it was turn to host the Fourth. I planned a great menu; turkey burgers, corn on the cob, sweet potato fries, the PIE and home made vanilla ice cream.

We made the pie in the morning. In Martha's original recipe you make six mini pies and decorate them each differently. I decided to make one pie and make it look like the American flag. She also had two filling options Raspberry-Strawberry or Blueberry- Blackberry. I decided to make both filling and use the blue filling for the stars and the red for the stripes.



We started with a lot of berries. 1 1/2 cups of each berry. Mom washed and cut up the berries and I readied the other ingredients. We mixed the blue berries and red berries in separate bowls and added sugar, cornstarch and lemon juice.



Then it was time for the tricky part filling half the pie with each filling. We lined the pie tin with a Pillsbury roll out crust. I don't make pie crust, Martha. Then I held two spatulas in place over the middle section of the pie and mom poured in the first filling. Then I kept then in place and she poured in the second. I removed the spatulas and it worked. The blue stayed on one side and then red on the other. Now time to make the flag. I used my star cookie cutter to cut out stars for the other sheet of dough and we attached then to the outer crust and each other using an egg wash. Then Mom made strips using a pizza cutter and placed then across the pie. It looked so great. We then had to freeze the pie for an hour and then baked in for 50 minutes.



After the fire works we served it up with the ice cream. I had to microwave my piece because I cannot eat cold fruit pie, but everyone else enjoyed it as is. The verdict, delicious... lots of seeds.