7:23 AM
Girls' Fashion
Have you ever felt that everyday food has a tendency to get boring after a while? I have!
On any given workday I'll get up at 5.20 AM. I'll get breakfast ready and prepare everybody's lunch boxes. Then it will be time to get the kids dressed and ready for kindergarten (the big boy will be starting school next summer). After driving the kids to kindergarten it's time to go to work. As much as I love my job after 8-9 hours (if we're not approaching a deadline) energy levels will be pretty much depleted. Thankfully, my wife will pick up the kids, but when I get home there's still dinner to prepare. More often than not there is neither time or energy to create a great culinary experience.
In the end it's usually a quick fix like pasta.
I love pasta, but even that gets old.
I would love something like oven baked chicken, a roast or something along those lines. That takes time, and a bit of dedication. That's without mentioning all the stuff you need to clean when doing a project like that.
The fact is, after dinner there are more chores. Even though we do our best to get the laundry done during the weekend we do have two active boys who (thankfully) don't think about how the dirt magically gets off the clothes overnight. The dishes also needs to be done. And there are a dozen other chores that simply need to get done on a daily basis.
Add the fact that we do like to occasionally like to do things that aren't related to chores and that definitely takes oven baked chicken out of the equation.
On the other hand, good food is one of the things that adds much needed spice (pun intended) to life. On the weekends we definitely go for what I have coined "project food". The stuff that adds that much needed spice to life.
The question is - do you have to make "project food" a weekend only thing?
Under normal circumstances the answer is definitely yes! With a full day, spending at least one hour making dinner and potentially an equal amount of time cleaning up ain't happening.
This has been nagging me for ages. As I said I don't mind pasta, but I do like a bit of variety in my diet. Sometimes the solution is pretty simple. And the solution to oven baked chicken breast on a weekday came from my oldest son.
There was an ad on TV about roasting bags for chicken with a spice mix. I realize all the professional chefs will be horrified by the thought, but I have a busy day and as such don't mind using premade spice mixes once in a while. My son really wanted us to try this product, so we did. The chicken breasts were juicy and tasty. Best of all though, there was very little cleaning to do.
For me, cleaning is the real killer. And I hate doing dishes with a vengeance!
So, any method that reduces the amount of cleaning I need to do gets a big thumbs up in my book.
Naturally you should still clean the dish you use to cook the chicken, but because you are using a roasting bag it will be much, much easier to clean. The real problem, from a cleaning perspective, when you cook food in the oven is that the pots, pans and dishes you use to prepare your food will be really hard to clean. Anything that makes that easier is something you should seriously think about implementing in your cooking.
Time spent cleaning is less time available to create delicious meals.
Having reduced the time I need to spend cleaning by using roasting packs to cook chicken breasts in the oven it is now actually something we consider doing even on a work day.
Because the chicken breasts are really tender and juicy when cooked in a roasting bag the kids really love to eat it. At times I find it difficult to get the boys to eat anything else than ground meat. These chicken breasts have proven to be a great solution to that problem.
We like to serve on chicken breasts with roast potatoes, carrots, celery and other vegetables. The vegetables can actually be prepared in the roasting bag alongside the chicken breasts. Or you can fry them in a pan with some garlic and thyme. I have found that my two boys, who are not fond of vegetables, love potatoes and vegetables fried in a pan with garlic and thyme as described above.
If there is a lesson to this story it is how important it is to listen to your kids suggestions when it comes to cooking. If my son had not insisted that we try baking chicken breasts in the oven with roasting bags cooking chicken breasts in the oven would still be something we would only dare attempt during the weekends. In my opinion, that would have been a huge loss.
The next time you're thinking about a cooking project during the workday and decide to scrap it due to time concerns do me a favor and rethink your decision. I'm happy that I did just that!
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