Winner, Winner Chicken dinner!

I was about to take the easy way out tonight. I've been exhausted and I see no signs of stopping. Ugh, kinda intimidating when I really think about it, but none the less...ONWARD and UPWARD! Todays agenda was house cleaning overhaul but dinner still had to be made and that's the funny part of being a stay at home Mommy that they never tell you.

Maybe I should enlighten you with the fact that I love to procrastinate. Although in recent times I have found that knowing that and then challenging myself to work to the bone has become such a great joy. Positive energy attracts positive energy and from my diligence this evening I was met with two more opportunities in my personal cook endeavour. I "Tweeted" tonight that I'm seriously in need of a bigger kitchen now, but that has always been the case. Along with my procrastination, I'm a "more the merrier" kinda lady, and somewhere along the line those two together seem to contradict themselves in my own head, but I love it.

Back to the simple dinner that turned into work:) I decided that just doing it is better than skimping out AND the health of my two favorite people in the world is more important than me being lazy. The Hunebee's Mom sent home an organic goodie bag for me this Monday. A bundle of flowing green onions, an over-stuffed bag of minty mint, perfect limes and randomly growing cilantro from her ever bountiful, organic home garden. I had a huge bag of roma tomatoes that I got on sale, 3lb.s for $1, and I decided that I wanted to do a fresh tomato sauce. I was about to add olives and then I remembered having dinner with Momma-Gina last week and that was one of the things she told me to stop eating(tooo much salt). The sauce was for a couple chicken breasts thawing in my sink. I was mulling over what to make with it but rice, potatoes, or pasta just sounded like too much. I was really trying to go NO-carb, so I opted for a Panzanella like salad...ha.

Prep time: 15 minutes
Cook time: 30 minutes
Servings: 4

Cost: $7 for the whole dinner

Ingredients for Chicken:

2 medium(on the large side) boneless, skinless chicken breasts, sliced in two(4 pieces)
2 Tbs. olive oil
salt and pepper

Sauce:

3 roma tomatoes, diced
1 large garlic clove, chopped
2 green onions, dice the bulb up to the dark green(set aside for salad and garnish)
1/8 cup carrot, minced
1/4 cup olive oil
Dash of dried basil, thyme, oregano and parsley
1/2 cup fresh chopped spinach
salt and pepper
1/3 tsp. white sugar

Directions:

In a small sauce pan, saute scallions, carrots and garlic in olive oil then salt and pepper. Add chopped tomatoes, herbs, salt pepper and sugar. Once the sauce has coked down a little add spinach, turn down the heat and let it simmer very low.

I like to rinse and dry my chicken before cooking it. In the oil, fry on both sides after seasoning. Tonight I added the juice from the chicken directly to the sauce, IT"S FLAVOR!

Ingredients:

1/2 cup pre-shredded carrot
1 roma tomato, diced
1 persian cucumber, partially peeled
1 cup of croutons (Garlic)
about a 1/3-1/4 cup of scallion leaves chopped

Dressing:

1/3 cup olive oil
1/8 cup red wine vinegar
1 tsp. yellow mustard
Salt
1 small serrano pepper, sliced thin, about 1 Tbs. (watch out!)

Toss the salad and dressing right before you are about to serve so it doesn't get soggy. Also be careful of  the serrano pepper, use less if you aren't familiar with its heat.

ENJOY!