Foodie Friday! - 7-Up Chicken

If you're wondering who has taken control of my blog and writing I wouldn't blame you!   I  hope to get back to posting at least occasionally before long.  Getting our business up and running has taken a lot of time and when we're not working, eating, or in a zombie-like state  - we are sleeping.  It is hard to believe we have been in business for almost 4 months already - the time is flying!  We love working at our store and seeing our business grow.  It's hard work and long hours, but we couldn't be happier!

 

Last weekend I decided it was time to clean out the freezer in the kitchen.  It obviously takes a 2-day retail weekend (due to the Memorial Day holiday) for me to make time to accomplish a task like this.   We've come home from grocery shopping trips and simply shoved things in the freezer wherever there was space, so for the last few months I had no clue what was in there. 

 

Here's the conversation we have had repeatedly at mealtime:

 

Michael:  "What's for supper?"

Me:  "I don't know, what do you want?"

Michael:  "What do we have?"

Me:  "I have no clue."  (sigh)

In unison:  "Let's just order a pizza."

 

It's hard to put a meal together when you don't plan ahead of time and don't know what you have to work with. I used to have a shelf for meat, another for side dishes, another for vegetables, etc.  Just shoving things in at random wherever there was room is not like me and I got frustrated by the chaos... which would result in the above conversation 

On other nights I would open the freezer, my eyes would gloss over at the disarray and I would say, "Pancakes?"  I KNEW where the pancake mix was! (kinda sorta... but at least I could narrow it's location down to two shelves to look through - the pantry was just as bad as the freezer when it came to being unorganized).

 

Michael offered to help clean the freezer (it must have been driving HIM crazy too!) so I took him up on it.  When we started sorting through things we weren't a bit surprised to find some things that had expired and needed to be tossed.  So that led us to wonder what was outdated in the fridge... and the other freezer... then the pantry.  What I had intended to be a quick 20-minute cleanup of the freezer turned in to several hours of going through everything edible to make sure we didn't have any major science experiments on our hands.  Other than finding an item with an expiration date sometime in 2013 (eek!) and limp celery, it was a pretty routine cleanout.

 

As we came across things that needed to be used soon we made a meal list for the next few days.  What a thought!  We were actually planning ahead as to what we were going to eat!  Needless to say, because of the list we have eaten better in the last few days than we have in months.  We had some pork chops and unbreaded chicken tenders that needed to be used before long, so we put them in the fridge to thaw.  (I always find myself saying, "I don't have anything thawed out" - so this eliminated that excuse.) 

Wednesday was Michael's day off and I came home  from work to this chicken in the oven.  It was a recipe we had never tried before. Michael has fun finding a new recipe to try once in a while which is a treat for me, especially when I have been at the store all day.  The chicken was really moist and tender... and maybe it's just me... but anytime I don't have to cook it tastes even better!

 

 

7-UP CHICKEN

 

1 stick butter or margarine

3 T. flour

Salt and pepper to taste

2 T. Worcestershire sauce

1-1/2 cups 7-Up

1 small onion, sliced

1/4 cup catsup

Chicken (he used chicken tenders)

 

Melt butter.  Combine flour, salt and pepper in a separate bowl.  Roll chicken pieces in butter then flour mixture to coat.  Place in a 9 x 13 pan that has been sprayed with Pam.  Combine catsup, Worcestershire sauce, 7-up and onion.  Pour over chicken.  Bake at 350 degrees for 1 to 1-1/2 hours.  Turn once during baking. 

 

 

Happy Friday!