Jealousy Factor?

On Sunday, I didn't make it to the church service itself because, although I woke up -and got up -in time, my body decided to be very uncooperative with me.

What happened was I got what I can best term as "sneezing fits" and when they began to somewhat subside, my sinus decided now was the time to let loose on me too. Suffice it to say that my nose was running faster, I think, that our old leaky faucet in the kitchen sink was doing up until the new faucet was installed right after Christmas. And trust me folks, that was a whole lot of leaking going on then.

I did however, have my chicken almost completely cooked and ready to take out to the pot luck dinner that took place directly after our congregation's annual meeting finished up. Thankfully, Mandy (the kids too) and I did make it there in time for the meeting. Really, it should be thankfully, my nose finally dried up after about two hours of time spent wiping it, blowing it and going through about a half a box of kleenex in the process. Initially, I feared I might be coming down with a cold -like the one Maya has right now -but after things began to clear up a bit, I'm now convinced I must have had some sort of allergy type attack.

So, anyway, I took my chicken out to the dinner and I have to say that I got a lot of compliments on it as well as several requests for the recipe too. It's one of the easiest dishes I've ever prepared and is very, very tasty. It's called Glazed Apricot Chicken and here's the recipe for it, just in case the name sounds enticing (and my bragging about how good and how easy it is to fix too) gives you the notion to fix it.

APRICOT-GLAZED CHICKEN

Boneless chicken breasts -I used 6 today. Sliced them down in the fattest parts and then, cut these pieces into smaller servings so I had roughly 18 smallish servings.

I used a 9x13 inch baking pan -lined with foil and then, sprayed with a baking spray.

Make a rub using 1 tablespoon each of rosemary, oregano and basil. I put the seasonings all in a small ziplock bag and used the rolling pin then to crush them as much as possible. Rub the blended seasonings across the chicken. Place the chicken in the baking pan and bake at 350 degrees for about 20 minutes.

While the chicken is baking, mix together 1 tablespoon each of honey and mustard to 1/4 cup of chicken broth (used the instant crystals to make the broth) and blend that into a cup of apricot preserves. Brush the chicken then generously with this sauce and bake for another 20 minutes. Apply more of the glaze and bake yet another 20 minutes or until juices run clear.

Serve! See? Can't be any easier than that to have a really yummy chicken to feed family or friends!

Mandy had a dinner invitation of her own today too so she and the kids didn't go to the pot luck dinner. The kids Dad picked them up at the church just before the dinner began to take them to spend the day with him and Mandy went off to her dinner invite too. When she came home though, she brought with her baked chicken breasts, homemade stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy and even dumplings! Wow! Chicken all over the place -or so it seemed to my stomach today!

As I sat this evening eating a nice portion of the chicken dinner leftovers Mandy had brought home, we got to talking about various things and for some reason, chicken seemed to be the predominate subject tonight.

Actually, we got talking first about people losing weight and I mentioned that the guy I went with oh, about 28 years or so ago (was even engaged to him, as a matter of fact) had a bit of an issue with some excess weight and I had commented that he sure must have loved chicken because that was all he ate when he went on a diet! He fixed it with a little bit of pepper and even less salt and then cooked a boneless chicken breast in the microwave for virtually every meal.

And boy, did he drop the pounds too! He also drank water -lots and lots of water.

I have no idea where he got this diet from but he claimed that. for openers, men's metabolism burns off pounds faster than does a woman's (I do believe this is true, cause I saw it with my own eyes) but he also said that fixing -and eating -just chicken cooked this was was one of the best mens fat burners you could ever find!

Now this kind of diet may have worked well for him, but although I never tried it, I don't think I could handle eating nothing but cooked chicken breast and drinking gallons and gallons of water! I would be really tired of the chicken after, I'm sure, the first day, maybe I could last two days on just that for sustenance but I'm quite sure my system would rapidly become bored, even develop a downright hate in the long run for chicken!

Heck, after having chicken fixed -with seasonings -and with other foods too not once, but twice today, and both types of chicken were very, very tasty, to be honest, I really don't think I'll be wanting to eat chicken breast now again for at least 2, maybe 3 weeks!