Happy New Year!

Ok, Ok, I know...  it's been a LONG time since I've last blogged.  I could offer you lots of excuses, my faithful readers.  But if you're my faithful readers, you know what's been going on in my wild and crazy life.  (For those of you who aren't my faithful readers, I'll give you a recap of my wild and crazy life.  Military wife.  Mama.  Full time grad student.  'Nuff said.)  After thinking about all of the excuses about being too busy to blog, I've come to the realization that I really haven't been too busy.  Sure I'm busy, but after all, I have a thriving farm on Facebook!  And if I can harvest crops, well...  I can blog.  So here I am, blogging...in the midst of studying for my preliminary exams.

http://phandroid.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/farmville.jpg

So what's been cooking at Jen's house?  Before Christmas, it was lots of goodies (peanut butter balls, bourbon balls, poor man's turtles, apple cinnamon chex mix, and batches and batches of carmel popcorn.)  If you'd like any of the recipes of these goodies, let me know and I'll post them!


Now that the new year has started, I'm trying to cook more healthy (that means no more peanut butter balls for breakfast...well, until December 2011!)  Here's what I'm making for super tonight:  Orange Glazed Chicken, broccoli, salad, and some sort of potato.

Orange Glazed Chicken


4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 T. of  dry Lipton Onion Soup mix
1 T. dijon mustard
1/4 c. Italian salad dressing (I like Ken's Lite Northern Italian)

1/2 c. Marmalade (apricot preserves work well if you don't care for marmalade.  And you don't have to use Dundee brand, any brand will do!)


Mix the soup mix, mustard, salad dressing and marmalade together.  It will be a little chunky...you can put it in a small saucepan on low heat and it will be easier to mix, but it's not necessary.  Place the chicken in a 9x9 inch baking dish that's been sprayed with cooking spray.  Pour half of the marmalade mixture over the chicken and place in a 350* preheated oven.  Bake for 20-25 minutes and pour the rest of the marmalade mixture over the chicken.  Bake 5-10 minutes longer, until chicken is done and juices run clear.

This is also good with porkchops!

Enjoy~

When I wrote the post this afternoon, I had decided on having broccoli and potato.  However, reality was a bit different.  I did make a potato dish (pan fried leftover potato for Jeff,) brown rice pilaf, (for me and JP) corn (for Jeff again) and salad.  It was yummy! 

I only had 1/4 c. of marmalade, so I combined marmalade and apricot preserves to make 1/2 c.  It was a great combination! 

If you're getting tired of rice or potato, the Near East brown rice pilaf is a good variation.  It's "a blend of whole grain brown rice with toasted orzo pasta."  I omit the oil/butter it calls for on the directions.  Without the oil/butter for 1 cup (which is a lot!) it's 1 g. of fat, 3 grams of fiber, 5 grams of protein and 600 mg of sodium.  I usually don't like prepackaged spice mixes that come in rices, but this one is pretty good.