Delicious Dinner

It's been a while since I've posted any recipes. I've sort of been in a new recipe slump, but lately my motivation to cook and get food storage more organized has been rejuvenated. I tried a great recipe of chicken fingers that I have to share because it was just too good. I'm always looking for better/good/different ways to cook chicken and here it is courtesy of allrecipes.com with a few minor adjustments:

Lemon Chicken Tenders
Takes about 35 minutes-ish

1/2 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1 cup Italian Season bread crumbs (I used Stove Top stuffing-I buy the big canister since we use it a lot with chicken pillows too)
3 boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into 2-inch pieces (chicken finger size)
2 eggs, slightly beaten

1/2 cup sugar (I only filled up my 1/2 cup about 3/4 the way)
1/2 cup lemon juice (same ratio as sugar, but I had plenty of sauce to drizzle)
1 1/2 tsp curry powder (not a huge fan, so we didn't even put this in at all)

1. Preheat oven to 400.

2. In a small bowl stir together paprika, salt, & pepper. Sprinkle seasoning over chicken pieces. Dip pieces in egg, then dredge in bread crumbs. Arrange chicken pieces in a single layer in an foil-lined (make sure you grease/spray it, I forgot and the chicken stuck) cookie sheet.

*What I did to make it easier and more like "shake and bake" I stuck the bread crumbs (stuffing), paprika, salt, & pepper in my blender and pulsed it a few times to combine it all into a more shake and bake like consistency. Then I put all my chicken in a bowl with the egg, put a lid on and shook it all up, you could probably just stir it though, it was a little messy when I took the lid off. Then I drained the excess egg and dumped my powdery crumb mixture, secured the lid and shook it up again. It worked great at coating the pieces and was a lot less messy than dipping them one at a time. Then I put them on the cookie sheet.

3. Bake in pre-heated oven for 15 minutes turning once.

*Since I can never remember, I just set the time for 7 minutes, turned the chicken, sprinkled a little more pepper over the top to make it a little more like lemon pepper chicken and put it back in for another 8 minutes.

4. In a small saucepan over medium-low heat, stir together sugar, lemon juice, and curry powder, stirring until sugar dissolves, about 5 minutes.

*Yep, except without the curry. :)

5. Drizzle lemon sauce over chicken, return to oven, and bake 5 minutes more.

*Even using about 75% of the called for sauce it was just perfect so it wasn't too sweet or too tangy and we had plenty to just take a spoon and pour almost a spoonful over each piece of chicken.

Damon hasn't been too keen on food lately, he's been watching his older brother no doubt, but tonight he ate all his chicken. We had it with a side of risotto, which I put way too much Parmesan in, but it was still edible-we'll try again another time, and some orange jello with mandarin oranges in it. (The jello was about to expire, I had to make it eventually even though we're not all super jello fans, well except Logan, who did eat that). I think Logan would have liked it if I would have waited on the jello and bribed him with it while he was still hungry, but we'll definitely put this recipe on a once a month schedule. It's a great recipe to figure out some more good rice side dishes. So, I hope you enjoy! One recommendation though, unless you have another set of hands in the kitchen, I don't recommend trying to do the risotto and the chicken at the same time, luckily Morgan was home in time to help, but risotto is a pretty constant thing, so next time I'll just do one at a time, it got kind of crazy.