How to Cook Chicken

This is my favorite way to cook chicken for recipes that call for cooked shredded or diced chicken breast. It always comes out so moist and tender. This is also one of those recipes you can read once and remember - you don't have to refer back very frequently.

1. Place frozen chicken breasts in pot of water at fill with water just to cover.
2. Add a handful of onions and celery roughly chopped (the inside stocks of celery with the leaves especially). Also season the water with salt and pepper. I just scoop a small handful of salt - maybe 1-2 tsp.
3. Cover with a lid and cook on medium heat until boiling, then reduce heat to low.
4. Leave the lid on the chicken and simmer on low for 5 minutes. Then turn heat off and let the chicken sit 20 minutes with the lid still on.
5. Shred or dice accordingly.

Chicken gets really tough and dry with too much heat so that is one reason this cooks so well.

Let me add a note that 95% of the time I am too lazy to thaw chicken before I cook it and since it turns out so moist and delicious every time, it makes me even lazier. For thawed chicken, you would do everything the same except, just bring it to a boil and turn it off.

French Bread

I made my very own French Bread today! It turned out WONDERFUL!!! The recipe was for 3 loaves, so I am freezing the other two. (what was I thinking cutting up the pretty one for a picture ;-) If you would like the recipe, let me know. It took about 3 hours start to finish but that includes lots of rise time and cooking. If time weren't a factor (and messy dishes of course), I would never buy it from the store again.

Fried Baked Zucchini

The link:
Fried Bake Zucchini

I was inspired to make this because of the part where she says "we did the crouton thing'. I thought that flavor would make these incredible! So, I did "the crouton thing" and they turned out pretty good. The text of the squash was spot on, but the texture of the croutons wasn't quite what I wanted. I did end up eating an entire squash by myself however. I am going to experiment with the batter and see if I can figure out something better.