Homemade BBQ Chicken Pizza

     

        It was one of those days... We slept in until 11:30am (yes, my 18 month old loves to sleep, be very jealous), which led to a late nap, waking up around 6:30pm and panicking with thoughts of what's for dinner... I immediately ran to my freezer, and after gazing upon the last two lonely, frozen chicken breasts from last weeks stock-up sale, I had a vision.  No, I had a dream.  I had a dream that I could feed 6 ravenous carnivores with these 2 solitary chicken parts.

        I pride myself in 3 things.  1. My monkey feet - I can pick up almost anything with my feet - sans socks.  2. My cooking - and I'm not even Italian.  and 3. My frugality - I am a self-taught couponer, menu-planner, money-saving wonder woman, and if anyone can stretch a small amount of ingredients, you're looking at her - well, her blog...

        Anyway, back to the point.  After employing a basic pizza dough recipe (in my shiny new Kitchenaid *see right)  I was ready to go.  This recipe might seem intimidating, and it does take awhile because there are so many steps, but I made FOUR good sized pizzas from this, and it could be easily doubled, or tripled, and the ingredients keep well either in the fridge, or in a air-tight freezer bag, for long-term storage.  Pizza ingredients freeze wonderfully, and are great for a quick, last-minute dinner!  Enjoy!

Dough Ingredients (makes 4  10 inch pizzas):

2 C Warm Water

2 Tbsp Instant Yeast

4 Tbsp Sugar

4 Tbsp Olive Oil

4 Tsp Kosher Salt

5 1/2 C All-Purpose Flour

Instructions (you can do this without a stand-mixer, I did many times until last week!):

1. Fill the mixing bowl you'll be using with hot/boiling water, to get/keep the ingredients warm.  Let the water sit about 30 seconds, then dump it out and begin. This will help your overall rise.
2. Mix the warm water, yeast, and sugar together with a whisk, and let it sit about 5-10 mins until foamy.
3. Add in the rest of the ingredients and either set your mixer to 2 (lowest speed) for 5 minutes, or mix and knead by hand 8-10 minutes.
4. Grease a warm bowl and place your dough inside, and set it inside of a warm (not hot) oven to rise for about 1-2hrs.
5. After it's risen, flour your hands and the counter lightly, remove the dough and divide into 4 equal sections (or however many you designed the recipe for).
6. Form a ball with each section, by stretching and pinching the dough until smooth.  Roll/flatten each ball into a 10-12 inch circle.  The easiest way to do this is to roll it out as far as you can, let it sit several minutes for the gluten to settle, then roll/press it again to desired width.
7. Place a generous amount of cornmeal or semolina on your pizza peel (or flat cookie sheet) and transfer your dough to it to.
8. Place your toppings on.  Ingredients & Instructions follow =)

Ingredients:

• 2 Chicken Breasts
• Parmesan Cheese
• Salt, Pepper, Paprika
• Green and/or Red Bell Pepper, diced
• Corn Kernals (frozen, canned, or fresh)
• 1 small raw onion, thinly sliced
• Sharp White Cheddar
• Barbeque Sauce (recipe follows)
• Olive Oil

Instructions:

1. Preheat your pizza stone in the oven.  I crank my oven up all the way (500F) and let it preheat atleast 45minutes.  You want it HOT so that your crust starts cooking immediately.  If you don't have a pizza stone, GET ONE!
2. Using a filet knife, or something really sharp, make thin cutlets of the chicken.
3. Season the chicken cutlets with salt, pepper & paprika, and place it in a skillet preheated to medium-high.  The chicken should sizzle as soon as it hits the pan if the pan is hot enough.  Fry the chicken for 4-5 minutes per side, until it's nice and browned and cooked through.  Remove to a plate and set aside to cool.  After cooled, chop the chicken up into bite-sized pieces.
4. Add some olive oil to the skillet, and fry your diced pepper for a minute or two over medium-high heat aswell.  They should immediately sizzle, and brown/soften quickly.
5. Now you're ready to assemble your pizza.
6. Rub a small amount of olive oil over your dough, this adds flavor and also keeps the dough from soaking up too much sauce and getting soggy.
7. Place your toppings.  BBQ sauce first, then parmesan cheese, chicken, pepper, corn, raw onion, and cheddar.
8. Turn your oven down to about 450F, and dust your pizza stone with a bit of cornmeal, be careful it's HOT.  Slide your prepared pie off of the peel/cookie sheet and onto the pizza stone.  Cook for about 12-15 minutes, until the crust is slightly golden brown.  You don't want it to cook too long, or it will make the crust too hard!
9. I use tongs to slide my pizza off of the stone, back onto the cookie sheet when it's finished.  From there I just let it cool a few minutes, then slice and serve!  Yum!

Apple BBQ Sauce:

Mix everything in a medium saucepan, bring to a boil, then turn down to a simmer for about an hour or until thickened.  I actually ended up adding a bit of cornstarch to thicken it at the end, because I'm impatient, but you can let it cool and it'll thicken up a bit too.  

1 C of marinara sauce (or tomato sauce)

2 C freshly juiced apple juice

1/4 tsp kosher salt

1/3 C molasses

1/4 C cider vinegar

1/4 C packed dark brown sugar

2 Tbsp white sugar

1.5 tsp Chile Powder

1/2 tsp Celery Seed

1,25 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground cloves

pepper to taste

Cheesy Crock Pot Chicken

Sometimes the best things in life are surprises!  This can be extremely true or extremely untrue when talking about food!  I've made some delicious award-winning (according to my panel of judges - my family) creations by messing around in the kitchen with random ingredients.  However this has also occasionally resulted in some horribly, disfigured creations that our dog wouldn't even eat.

While the latter is a pretty rare occurrence, there's always that ping of fear as I wait with my finger on speed-dial to the nearest pizza joint, for my newest creation to finish cooking.

Luckily tonight's dinner was a pleasant surprise, and my husband (who I consider my biggest critic - damn Italians, spoiled by good family cookin'!) even said it was great!

PS: On a side note, I found French's Fried Onions in Cheddar flavor in the store last week, I was extremely excited to take them home and try them!  Yes I sometimes snack on them straight from the container while making dinner.. don't judge me!

Ingredients (2-3 servings):

•  5-6 Chicken Tenderloins (I used frozen)
• 1 can Cream of Chicken
• 6oz Whole Milk Ricotta Cheese
• 1/2 C. Milk
• 1 C. Frozen Broccoli
• 2-3 All-Purpose Potatoes, cubed
• Salt & Pepper
• Shredded Cheddar Cheese
• French's Fried Onions (Cheddar flavor!)

Directions:

1. Turn your SlowCooker to High, and add frozen chicken tenderloins.
2. In a small bowl mix: Cream of Chicken, Milk, Water, Ricotta, Salt & Pepper
3. Pour overtop of chicken tenderloins. 
4. Let this cook for about an hour, covered.
5. Turn heat to Low, add potatoes, and continue cooking, covered, another 2 hours.
6. Add Broccoli, and continue cooking, covered, another hour.
7. Serve with a spoon (You'll want to get plenty of that delicious sauce on your plate!)
8. Sprinkle generously with Shredded Cheddar & French's Fried Onions.
9. Enjoy!

Let me know if you tried this recipe and if you enjoy it =)  Also if you have any tips, suggesitons, or questions, feel free to ask!

Convert your baby swing from battery power to AC!

If you're like us, you've probably purchased batteries for a gadget/toy before, and probably more than once.... In this modern day and age, I'd bet that every single person has atleast one item in their home that requires battery power to operate... Remotes, radios, table fans, reading lamps, toys, the list goes on...  It literally blows my mind when I think about how much we've probably spent over the course of our lives on disposable batteries!  Luckily, I've lately been very frugal minded, and I've been getting my husband in on the action also!  Among my many projects (which I frantically and absentmindedly jump between like I have a bad case of ADHD) I have tried incorporating some cost/energy-efficient methods into our home life!  We slowly have been stocking up on rechargeable batteries of different voltages when we find a good sale, (I refuse to pay retail for anything!)  but in the meantime we find other ways to pinch and save!  We were looking to replace the batteries in our daughter's swing the other night, so we took a trip down to Target to see what we could find.  The cost of 4 rechargeable D batteries, AND a charger for said batteries was definitely not in our budget right now so we had to get creative!  Now I'll admit that using electricity isn't the most energy-efficient (obviously) path to take, but in comparison with upfront cost of batteries (rechargeable or not) and the charger, it seemed like our best bet financially.  Also take into consideration that rechargeable batteries need electricity to charge (although it doesn't use as much energy as a 5-6V transformer powering a swing would.... let's not grasp at straws here!!).  So we already had everything we needed on hand which worked out great!  I've included a video of the rundown, it's a very simple process, which I will also outline below.  Let me also mention that not having to change out batteries all of the time is a wonderful thing when your baby just wants to swing, and gets fussy when the party stops!

What you'll need:

• A baby swing that currently runs on batteries!
• A simple phone/bluetooth charger (anything 5 or 6 volts will work)
• A wire cutter/stripper
• Heat Shrink Tubing or Electrical Tape
• A screwdriver

What to do, what to do:

1. Remove the outer top shell from your swing, typically this will consist of removing anywhere from 8-12 phillips-head screws, then popping the casing off.
2. Find the red (+) & black (-) wires that run from the motor to the battery casing.
3. Cut both wires somewhere along their path (preferably an inch or two from the battery casing.)
4. Cut the phone-jack end off of your phone charger also.
5. Strip both the red&black swing wires & the red&black charger wires about an inch or two.
6. Slide a 3-4inch section of heat shrink tubing onto one of the red wires, and one of the black. (optional)
7. Match up the colors and do the twist. (red goes with red.... and - yea you got it.)
8. You can now cover the exposed wires with electrical tape if you didn't go with the heat shrink tubing.
9. If you used the heat shrink tubing method, go ahead and heat it up and watch it shrink! So magical..
10. Now make sure that the combined wires are aligned so that they aren't squashed when you replace the top shell (there's usually a small hole that the battery cover snaps into, you can just feed the wire out of there.
11. Replace the top shell, replace the screws.  Voila!