Sausage, Egg, Pepper, and Onion Breakfast Skillet

I believe I've mentioned it before, but Sunday morning breakfasts are a pretty awesome time in our house. It's one of two days when Aric and I can really spend time together, puttering around the kitchen, making toast and drinking coffee.

One of our favorite things to make is this hodge-podge of items we've always got in our kitchen: eggs (at 98 cents a dozen, how could you afford NOT to eat them), frozen diced green pepper (99 cents for a bag, and they last way longer than a fresh pepper would in my kitchen), onions, and bulk sausage.

First you want to start browning some sausage in a medium skillet. We started out using half a pound of sausage, but quickly discovered that not only was it expensive, but it was more than we could (and truly should) eat. So we've cut it down to 1/3 pound.

Brown the sausage about halfway and then add the chopped onion and green pepper. I like to let the green pepper sit out the entire time the sausage is browning because it's frozen, and I like to keep the cook time short. You could certainly use fresh, but I don't use them often enough to justify the cost.

In the meantime, crack and beat up four eggs. We used to do six eggs, in addition to the half pound of sausage, but again, quickly discovered that there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. Anyway, pour the eggs in and scramble them up. You can either season the eggs with salt and pepper before you add them to the pan, or afterward. I prefer before, but Aric prefers to season in the pan, and he's the one that usually cooks, so that's how we do it.

And if you're sitting there thinking to yourself, "What do you do with the raw sausage for two weeks until you use it up?" Well, we brown it all at once and then use it throughout the week. We're also thinking about portioning the sausage when we first get it home from the store and freezing the portions individually. I think freezing is going to work out for us much better, we just need to get around to doing it.

Adventures in Cooking - Glazed Chicken

It's about a week overdue, but I'm here to talk to you about honey glazed chicken. Aric and I had this with corn bread. I figured that with the amount of honey in this glaze, corn bread would be a nice match. And a nice match it was.

When I first read through the instructions, I was a little upset, because it said that I had to gaze the chicken every "five to seven" minutes while it baked. I thought to myself, man, that's too much work for tasty chicken! That and I don't have a basting brush.

Honestly, when chicken bakes for thirty, forty minutes at the most, it's not that big a deal. Also, I didn't need a basting brush. All I needed was a teaspoon, and it worked just fine.

HONEY GLAZED CHICKEN

INGREDIENTS
6 - 8 chicken tenderloins
1/2 cup honey
1 tbsp. cracked black pepper
1 tsp. balsamic vinegar

INSTRUCTIONS
1) Preheat oven to 350.
2) Place chicken in the oven.
3) Mix glaze ingredients together. Note: the glaze should be slightly runny.
4) Glaze the chicken at five to seven minute intervals.
5) Bake chicken until cooked through completely - between 30 and 40 minutes.

HELPFUL HINTS
1) I used chicken breasts, since I didn't have tenderloins. I don't think it made much of a different - just increased the cooking time. And, as a side note, the original recipe didn't include a cooking time, it just said to cook until done. I estimate that I baked my chicken for about half an hour to forty minutes, tops.
2) I lined a baking pan with foil, then put the chicken down. There was a whole lot of liquid floating around in the pan, and it kind of grossed me out, so next time I think I'll line the pan with foil, but then find some sort of baking rack to put the chicken on, so the chicken isn't sitting in all that fat..
3) Do not taste the glaze when you initially mix it. It will taste terrible. I assure you, however, that it will taste amazing once the chicken is done.