Rachel Ray’s Chicken Vesuvio

I’ll admit, I’m a bit behind reading magazines lately.  On Sundays, I like to write out what I plan on cooking that week.  I may or may not always follow through, but I find that if I take the time to write it out ahead of time it helps prevent the what’s for dinner scramble at 5:30 every night.  I found this Quick Chicken Vesuvio recipe in the April issue of EveryDay with Rachel Ray and thought it was worth a try.  The ingredient list was short and sweet. Plus it involved some oven cooking, which meant I could play with the girls.  Score!

Like I said, short ingredient list:

2 baking potatoes. peeled and sliced 1/4 in thick

6 cloves garlic, thinly sliced

1 tsp dried oregano

Salt and Pepper

2 lbs skinless, boneless chicken breast, cut into chunks

Flour, for coating

1/2 cup dry white wine

1/2 cup chicken stock

1/2 cup fresh or thawed frozen peas

1/4 cup finely chopped flat leaf parsley

 

Peas are a tricky vegetable at home, and that’s a good way of putting it.  I think everyone, except me, would rather eat broccoli that eat peas!  I did not add them to the dish.  Also, if you would rather not cook with wine, just double up on the chicken stock.

You end up with two dirty pans, which for my husband that’s grounds for celebration!  First you cook the potatoes until browned.  In a separate pan, brown the chicken until golden.  Use the chicken stock and wine to deglaze the pan and mix everything together.

Into the oven it goes to finish cooking the chicken for 10-12 minutes at 375 degrees F.  Top with the fresh parsley, I had the curly kind so that’s what I used.

Serve with a big green salad and you are done!  The chicken and the potatoes were super tasty.  This recipe was easy and quick, but most importantly it was a crowd pleaser.

 

Do you have veggies your family refuse to eat?

What’s your go-to chicken recipe?

 

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Parkesdale begins planting Radiance strawberries

End of September is an interesting month around the farm/market.  All the preparations for planting the berries are almost completed and its now time to start planting.

Customers have already begun calling wanting to know when they can come by to purchase our bare root strawberry plants.  Other folks will ask us to ship the bare root strawberry plants.  Unfortunately we cannot ship the live bare root strawberry plants.  They are just too sensitive and need to be kept refrigerated.  At the market, we will have the strawberry bare root plans ready for sale in bunches of 25 very soon.

The market will be open 7 days a week starting October 1st.  No more Mondays off until May.  That’s how we now strawberry season has begun!

 

This year we’ve started planting our very own Radiance strawberries grown in our Georgia facility.  The Radiance berries made their debut last season and they were phenomenal.  Bright, elongated strawberry, red all the way through and sweet as can be!

 

As a child, I remember driving by pineapple and sugar cane fields.  In fact, I remember stopping on side of the road stands selling pineapples, coconuts or sugar cane.  While I attended UF, as part of the soil science program, we visited a mushroom and carrot farm in North Central Florida.  These are my early memories of farming.  It seems funny to me to have ended up in a farming family.

 

 

But for now, we wait…hope and pray for sunny days and cool nights, no droughts and no freezes.  That’s the life of a farmer.

 

How many of you have ever been to a strawberry field?  Or for that matter any type of agricultural land.

 

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Hooters 2 Hooters 10K

2010 was the year I ran three different 10Ks in three months: Midnight Run in Dunedin, Moss Park in Orlando and Ace of Clubs in Clearwater.  Out of the three events my least favorite was the Ace of Clubs.  The race course goes through the beautiful Ream Wilson trail, however I wasn’t a big fan of the hills.  I know what you are thinking, I live in Florida, there are no hills.  Let me tell you, there are hills or at least 10% inclines throughout this trail.  In addition, to start the Ace of Clubs you had to run on the Booth Mullen Road overpass.  I was not a happy camper.  As if that wasn’t enough, in order to finish, you once again go over the Booth Mullen Road overpass and while to your right you could see the finish line, you were instructed to go left for what felt like 3 more miles.  Maybe it was 1/2 mile, I don’t remember.  All I know is that I was so deflated after sprinting over that overpass only to be told I had some more miles to go.  Again, I was not a happy camper.

Fast forward to a few months ago I found out about the Hooters 2 Hooters 10K.  As I understood it, the race was supposed to be from the original Hooters location on Bay to Bay to another Hooters in Clearwater.  The concept sounded interesting.  The idea of eating chicken wings after the 10k was the extra push I needed to sign up.  Little did I know, this was just the old Ace of Clubs 10k rebranded.

I must admit, I was a bit skeptical at first, but decided to go ahead and sign up.  The Ream Wilson Trail is mostly shaded and it would be a change of pace from running around the lake at our community.  I convinced a friend of mine to sign up and got my family to come cheer us bright and early on Sunday morning.

The drive to Clearwater wasn’t too bad as there wasn’t a lot of traffic at 6:00 am.  There was a bit of a breeze so I was glad to have packed my Ego Girl hoodie, thanks Ericca!  Just like any other race, there was the line for the packet pick up, a line for the chip and of course the potty line.  I had planned on running with my camelbak and was debating whether I should keep it or not.  So glad I listened to Leigh!

The race started about 5 minutes late, which wasn’t too bad except my legs started to feel sore.  One of the best things about going to races is the people watching.  You get to see what other gear/shoes people are wearing.  And of course there’s always the people playing dress up.  When we noticed these guys running around dressed up like Hooters Girls it was hard not to laugh.

Even though there were still some hills, this new course was much better.  I’m not sure if I’ve become a better runner or just having run that course before helped me, but I got my first 10K PR of 59:41.  Sure, I didn’t win my age group, but I won my race.  I went back to a course I hated, and I came back with a PR.  Not bad for an early Sunday morning!

 

Have you or would you return to a race you didn’t like the first time?

 

 

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