After the Bread is Made

So before the bread is gobbled up, let me show you what we did with it. First of all, and most importantly was the torturous 20 minute wait between the time that the loaves came out of the oven and the husband got home from work. We stood salivating over them, dreaming of how delicious they were going to be, my son begging me to just cut off the end so we could taste the glory of it. "Nope. Got to wait for Dad to get home. It's his birthday week. It wouldn't be fair."  (more begging and pleading) We waited. A long wait.

The wait was worth it. He loved the surprise, loved hearing the tale & loved - most of all - that we waited for him and that we all shared the moment together. Holy moly! It was good.  So we each had a couple of slices.

To me, that was dinner. But a couple hours later, there was grumbling among the troops about hunger. I really didn't want to cook, but I had taken some chicken tenders out of the freezer that morning so I pressed on. I figured I'd just cook them, no frills, so the boys could eat.

I dragged myself to the kitchen, put my grill pan on the stove, half-heartedly drizzled olive oil into the pan (a couple laps around the pan) & pulled out the chicken. While the oil was waking up, I sprinkled a pinch of dried basil, a pinch of oregano, a little kosher salt & some freshly crushed black peppercorns that were standing by in my mortar & pestle. If you don't have one, please invest. They bring all kinds of things to life. I have two & I use & love them both.

I scrounged around the fridge and found half an onion, saw the mushrooms & thought I may as well throw them in there too. Hey! I still have roasted tomatoes! Mmmmmm...now the creative juices are flowing & I've forgotten I had decided not to cook that night. Once the desperately dried spices were somewhat rehydrated by the oil, I threw in the other veggies. By the way, those crunchy little herbs could have come back to life if I had decided to crush them in my mortar & pestle to bring their oils out - but remember I "wasn't cooking tonight" when this all began.  After the veggies had sweated like they'd been running in the Arizona heat,

 I added the chicken tenders and put a lid on the whole shabang - although not a tight lid since I was putting a round lid on a square pan.

So I let this cook until the chicken was done & everything was nice and juicy.  It took maybe 15 minutes - the longest part of the whole process. During all of this, I had put salted water on & dumped some rotini in to cook. Now normally I follow the Alton Brown rule that "water brings nothing to the party" but again - when I started, I "wasn't cooking." I usually cook pasta, rice or anything else possible with chicken stock instead of water. Make your own, it's easy, delicious and you know what's in it! Watch for a later post. Anyway, back where I started. Add the rotini to the chicken & veg & turn off the fire.

Toss it around really good until everything is beautifully coated in the juicy goodness in the pan. Now, just because I love it, I added a little pat of butter to the top and let it melt away while tossing.

Then dish it up, sprinkle some feta on top, slice up another piece of the bread you made earlier (I used the one I had topped kosher salt & garlic.) Bon' Apetite! Dinner, I wasn't going to cook done in less than a half hour. Probably would have taken less time if I hadn't stopped to photograph every step! HA!

Let me know if you try it and what you think!  Thanks for stoppin' by!