Two Weeknight Dinners

Finally feeling better.  Last week, we ended up with more sandwiches for dinner and then by Thursday night, I felt well enough to cook a bit. 

Here are a couple of quick weeknight meals.

We had leftover buttermilk from the waffles I'd made Sunday.  What do you do with buttermilk?  Make fried chicken, of course.  :-) 


Buttermilk pan-fried chicken breasts

Soak chicken breasts in buttermilk, salt and pepper
Remove chicken from buttermilk and coat in flour (I had some panko crumbs, and added those because I didn't have enough for a full recipe and didn't want to waste them)
Heat butter (about 2-3 Tbs) or oil (but not extra-virgin olive oil) in a skillet until hot
Fry the chicken on both sides until golden, and then put into an oven at 350 degrees and cook until the internal temp gets to 165 (about 20 minutes for thick chicken breasts)

While you're waiting for the chicken, you can use a bit more buttermilk to make ranch dressing for salad.  Just whisk together about 1/2 cup of buttermilk, 1/2 cup of mayo, the juice of a small lemon, a clove of garlic (minced), salt & pepper, and then whatever herbs you want (I had chives in the freezer from our garden and they are perfect).  Flat-leaf parsley is also good.  The dressing is great over a simple lettuce salad.  We had a head of romaine.  Making your own dressing is easy, tastes better than store-bought, and you know exactly what is in it (I know...I need to start making my own mayo...baby steps). 

That's it- chicken and salad for dinner.  Yum.  Dinner #2 was even easier (and inexpensive). 


Baked Potatoes with broccoli, cheese, and cubed ham

All I did was bake the potatoes in the oven, chop the broccoli, and then cook it with the ham and some minced garlic on the stovetop until the broccoli was tender and the ham had some crispiness.  I opened the potatoes, buttered them, and topped them with the ham and broccoli mixture and grated cheddar cheese.  They went back in the oven for another ten minutes until the cheese was nice and bubbly.  So simple, but still homemade.  I've been instructed to make this again.  :-)  I'm lucky that my oven has a baked potato setting, and a delayed start.  So, I could set things up to start the potatoes before I leave the office and have dinner ready nice and early.  But this is also something I'd feel comfortable teaching teenage boys.  I'm sure they could throw potatoes in the oven for me.