Monday, March 12, 2012

Pan-Roasted Chicken With Lemon-Garlic Green Beans

Like the majority of my posts, this one is about food! Surprise, surprise, that I found this pin appealing for its short list of ingredients of ease of cooking :) It just looked yummy too!

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 After reading thought the laundry lists of comments on this post, I followed most folks suggestions and skipped the first step altogether, arranging sliced lemons across the bottom of the dish. This was a good call, because 1 lemon's worth of juice gave plenty of flavor to this dish!!! It'd be overkill with the slices!

I also decided to use a shake and bake method for coating my ingredients, this was a good call. The recipe says use a bowl, this would be messy. I used a gallon zip lock and some tongs and it was quick, easy and no mess!

I used 2 large bone-in chicken breasts since it was only feeding two adults and a toddler, this also worked out great. My only change would be to use 4 or maybe 5 TBSP of oil, 6 was a tad much.

Overall, awesome dish, SUPER easy and I will absolutely make this again.

Happy Pinning! ~ Val

ABC Learning Board


Just like all good moms, I do try and create activities around the house that foster learning for my kiddo. I've seen a couple different alphabet learning posts on Pinterest that have sparked my interest, however this one more so because I already had the Fridge Phonics®: Magnetic Alphabet Set from Leap Frog.

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Being the anal retentive parent that I am, I dismissed the idea of hand writing the letters on a random piece of paper and wanted a more uniform look. I decided to check out my local Wal-Mart to see what I could put together.

I found an ABC Flash Card set and a poster board, perfect!! I went home, grabbed a letter from the Leap Frog phonics and double checked to make sure the magnet was strong enough to go through the poster board AND the flash card. It worked!! And I was thrilled. I glued each card around the edges and neatly stuck them to the poster board.

Once dry, I hung the board and got to putting each letter in its respective spot. Guess what...they don't stick! Apparently the FRONT of my fridge (where I tested it, but is a side-by-side therefore poster board was planned for the side of the fridge) is more magnetic than the SIDE of my fridge...

SO, overall, project semi-fail. The objective of the "game" is the same, just minus the magnets. I put the board on the floor and my son enjoys trying to match the letters. He then also enjoys picking up the entire board, dumping the letters on the floor, and running away with said board...boys!


Happy Pinning! ~ Val