Author: Jo

Honey Chicken

If you’re looking for a chicken recipe, this one is amazing.  Steve’s mom, Toli, gave me this recipe per Steve’s request, and I have made it many times much to his delight.  If I can’t think of what to make for dinner, I usually go back to this since I know it’s a winner.

Here’s what you’ll need:

boneless, skinless chicken breasts

1 cup honey

1/2 cup yellow mustard

1 tbsp seasoned salt

1/2 tsp curry powder

1/2 (1 stick) butter, melted

Pre-heat oven to 375°.  As if you needed a picture to show you what to do. 🙂  Hey, what can I say?  I like to be thorough.

Fill a measuring cup with 1 cup of honey.  You’ll want a large measuring cup so you can add the other ingredients on top of the honey and still have room to stir it around.

Next, add the yellow mustard.  Oh, by the way, this is a portion size for about 2-3 people.  You can double or triple the recipe as needed depending on how much sauce you want.

Add seasoned salt….

….and curry powder to the honey and mustard.

Give it a good stir so that all the ingredients are thoroughly combined.

Next put a stick of butter in a coffee mug, or another microwave proof glass

and melt it.

Pour melted butter into a baking dish.

Then pour honey/mustard mixture onto the butter.

Mmmm, look at that heart attack waiting to happen!

Place chicken breasts into the dish and coat well with the sauce.  Don’t be afraid to get your hand nice and sticky.

Bake for 30 minutes.

During this time you can upload and edit the photos you’ve been taking throughout this entire cooking process, paint your toe nails, watch an episode of Friends, walk your dog, run around the block, go on facebook, check to see if your photo has been picked as a finalist on The Pioneer Woman’s Photography Assignment (which it hasn’t…yet), or snuggle with your significant other.

I’ll leave it up to your imagination to decide which one I chose to do. 🙂

When your timer starts beeping at you after 30 minutes, take the dish out of the oven, turn the chicken breasts over and spoon sauce over each piece.  Bake for an additional 10-15 minutes.  Then lay your finished chicken on a bed of rice.  Make sure to spoon a bunch of sauce over your rice as well!  Yum.  Make a side dish of your own choosing.  Enjoy!

Easy Peasy Spaghetti & Meatballs

When I was little, spaghetti was the first thing I learned how to make.  It’s probably one of the easiest meals you can make.  Just boil some water, add the pasta, and cook until al dente.  Back then I liked my spaghetti topped with only butter and Parmesan cheese.  Marinara sauce was nasty to my young taste buds.  Luckily I’ve expanded my palate since then, and I decided that tonight I should go back to the days of my youth and make spaghetti and meatballs.

Here’s what you’ll need:

spaghetti noodles

1lb ground beef (or your ground meet of choice…turkey is a healthy option)

3 cloves garlic, minced

1/2 cup bread crumbs

1/2 cup Parmesan cheese

2 whole eggs

salt & pepper

your favorite pasta sauce (normally I would have made my own from scratch, but Steve and I were super hungry, so I just decided on the quick store bought version)

Start by putting your ground beef (or meat of choice) into a medium bowl.

Add the minced garlic.  Garlic belongs in just about everything as far as I’m concerned….except dessert probably.

Add the bread crumbs.  I used Italian bread crumbs that were already pre-packaged.  You can make your own bread crumbs by finely chopping a few bread slices in a food processor.

Next comes the Parmesan cheese!  If you have freshly grated cheese that would be best, but since the only fresh grated cheese I had was cheddar, I opted for the store bought Parmesan in a can.  I love finding the large clumps and popping them in my mouth.  Yum!  Takes me back to the days when I was a youngster in my mom’s kitchen.

Add the eggs and the salt and pepper.

Then get your hands all grody and squish and mix that bowl’s contents until everything is thoroughly combined.  I always have trouble with this because the meat is so cold that I can’t keep my hand in there for long periods of time without freezing my fingers off.

Next pre-heat your oven to 400° and get out a large cookie sheet.  Roll the meat into 2 inch balls.  You can adjust the size depending on how big you want your meatballs.  Then pop them in the oven for about 20 minutes, or until they are golden brown.

Now boil some water in a large pot.  This was the pot that burned my wrist the other night!  Bad pot!  To see the picture of my burned wrist click here and scroll to the very last picture.

Toss in some spaghetti noodles.  In my case, Dreamfields Pasta, which is a low carb pasta.  5 net carbs per serving.  Can’t beat it!  For those of you on a low carb diet, this will really help with the carb cravings.  You can usually find at least a couple variety of pasta shapes in this brand at your local grocery store.  You  can also visit their website: Dreamfields Pasta

Here’s where we cheat and use pre-made pasta sauce.  Shhh…don’t tell The Pioneer Woman!

Heat sauce in, what else? — a sauce pan!

Drain pasta when al dente (when it still has a little bit of a bite to it….not completely soft and smooshy), and add it back to the pot.

Pour sauce over pasta, but make sure to reserve some to pour on top when everything is plated.

Toss to coat everything evenly.

Remove your meatballs from the oven.  See how the cheese is oozing out of them?  Yum!

Add spaghetti to a plate and place several meatballs on top.  Then use your reserved pasta sauce to cover the meatballs.  Sprinkle on some Parmesan cheese and you are good to go!  Enjoy!

The Pioneer Woman Book Signing

This weekend Steve and I drove 4.5 hours to Atlanta, GA for the Pioneer Woman book signing!  She was there promoting her book Black Heels to Tractor Wheels, which is the story of how she met, married, and started a life with her husband “Marlboro Man.”  It was a long drive, and I wanted to leave early enough so that we could get there in time to be towards the front of the line.  So I set my alarm for 9:00am.  Yes…what an early riser!!!  But that is early compared to our normal waking hour of 10:00 – 10:30am.  Now if you’re mouth is hanging open at this point thinking, “how can they possibly wake up that late every day?”, let me assure you that we make up for it by going to bed between 2:30-3:30am every night.

So anyway, I woke up at 9am, hoping to leave by 10am, but when I woke Steve up at 9:45 he gave his famous line of “give me a few more minutes.”  Ahhhhh!  Doesn’t he know that it’s THE PIONEER WOMAN we’re going to see!?  There are going to be hundreds of women there and we have 4.5 hours to drive….plus an hour time difference between Nashville and Atlanta.  WE NEED TO LEAVE NOW!!!

We finally ended up getting on the road around 10:45, and we had to stop by Barnes & Noble to pick up her cookbook because I didn’t want to get to the Borders in Atlanta and have them be sold out.  We also had to drop our house key off with Rustin, since he and Elizabeth would be taking care of the fur babies while we were gone.

For most of the drive to Atlanta we listened to Fox News on our Sirius XM Radio, listening to the news of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan.  After the president’s speech and Q&A it started getting pretty redundant so we switched to some tunes.

Then finally the country farms and pastures started diminishing and traffic and high rises started coming into view.  We were almost there!

Downtown Atlanta!  Woot woot!!!

When we exited the freeway, I noticed these beautiful blossoming trees and I just had to snap a picture!  Spring is finally here!  If only that horrible truck wasn’t there ruining a perfectly good picture.

I had always had these preconceived notions of Atlanta being super ghetto and dirty and unsafe.  But when we arrived, that was not the impression I got at all.  First of all, when we exited the freeway we had to drive through this multimillion dollar neighborhood with these gigantic stately homes.  Then, when we got to the main road the buildings were beautiful.  There were nice cars everywhere, and it wasn’t what I expected at all, which was a nice surprise.

Finally, we had made it!  And I wanted to be one of the first people to spot The Pioneer Woman, Ree Drummond!

Instead, I was the first to spot her husband, Marlboro Man, and her 2 sons, Bryce and Todd.  It was just about as exciting to see them as it was to see The Pioneer Woman herself!  They are in almost all of her pictures, so to meet them in person was really special.  I don’t know what I was thinking, but after Steve took this picture of us tons of women crowded in asking to take pictures and getting him to sign their books.  Why hadn’t I thought to ask him to sign my book?  He was, after all, one of the 2 main characters!

So I asked the boys to sign my book. 🙂

And then I waited…..

….and waited….

….and finally, it was my turn!   Again.

Yay!  Look at me!  My name is Joanna, and Marlboro Man is signing my book!

Thank you Romance Novel Cowboy!  It was so nice to meet you for the 2nd time in one day!

Here’s a close up of Bryce, Ree’s oldest son….but 3rd born child.  Look at his cute cowboy belt buckle!

Steve tried making friends with Todd, Ree’s youngest, but he was pretty shy.

Todd seemed like he was getting pretty bored.

So did Bryce.

How cute are these boots?  I had to take a picture of them!  And then I had to make everything else black and white so that they would stand out even more. 🙂  Boots are definitely a must for when I have kids.

This is Marlboro Man.  He is a REAL cowboy on a REAL ranch in the middle of nowhere in Oklahoma.

He is the cowboy that swept Los Angeles girl, Ree, off her feet so that she abandoned her plans to move to Chicago and settled down to be a country ranch wife instead.

These are their 2 beautiful boys (their 2 daughters were back home in Oklahoma).  Aren’t they cutie patooies!?

And look!  They’re holding hands!  So sweet!

Now back to business.  I was at the front of the line at this point, and had already been waiting for 4 hours.  There were still this many people behind me in line!  I can’t imagine what time they got out of there.

It’s almost my turn!  Only a few people in front of me at this point.  My back was really hurting by this time, but at least I had her book to read to pass the time.  Unfortunately when there was only one person in front of me, Ree decided she needed a potty break.  Sigh….why did it have to be right before my turn?  I know, I know, when you have to go, you have to go!

Oh my goodness!  I’m next!!!

Waiting patiently….or impatiently….I’ll never tell.

Then finally, it was my turn!  “Hi!  I’m Joanna and I’m your biggest fan!!!”  Just kidding, I didn’t say that.  But I was pretty nervous.

But she was SUPER nice, and gorgeous!

I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to think of anything to say, but she was very good at asking questions and keeping the conversation going….and actually seeming interested in what I had to say!  That had to be hard after meeting so many people in a row and still being able to make each person feel like they were the only one in the room.  Thank you for that, Ree.

Here I was telling her about our e-cigarette business and she said, “Are those those things they had on the Real Housewives of (insert city here)?”  And I was like, “Umm, I have no idea cuz I don’t watch that show, but I know you do!!!”  She mentions the Real Housewives show often in her blog.  We both had a good laugh about that. 😀

It was a great birthday weekend!  And I’m so glad we went!  Thank you, Steve, for making the 4.5 hour trek with me to Atlanta to see my favorite blogger, The Pioneer Woman!  You are amazing and I love you so much!

We couldn’t leave Atlanta without going to IKEA!!!!  We finally got a coffee table for the bonus room!  And several picture frames.  Oh how I love Ikea!  How do they offer all those items for such a good price!?

When I got home, these pretty buds were waiting to greet me.

Spring has officially come to Nashville!  Oh how I have waited for you!

Then I had to ruin the day by burning myself while making dinner that night.  I did this by lifting the lid off a boiling pot of water and allowing the hot steam to burn my wrist.  Sigh….