Spice up your life!

Yesterday morning I was faced with three peices of chicken breast that needed to be cooked asap and zero enthusiasm. So I decided to go online, type in "slow cooker" and "chicken" and find a recipe that allowed my chicken to cook itself. Suprisingly I only found one recipe. And it was entitled, "Bob's Chicken Recipe". Now I am not putting down old Bob, but if I couldn't find anyone else that had slow cooking chicken recipes maybe a light should have went off in my head that people don't slow cook chicken breast for a reason.

His recipe just said to put the chicken in the slow cooker, add white wine and store bought tomato sauce and its a go. I decided to take a somewhat fresher root. Not able to make a whole sauce, in the ten minutes I had before work, I did however cut up some fresh tomatoes, garlic, and add it to a plain sauce, then mix in my own spices, parsley, oregeno, salt, pepper, red pepper flakes and basil.

Which i have to say was the FIRST time since this journey began that I felt comfortable mixing in spices from the top of my head and enjoyed the end result! I had previously tried months before and added way too much and ruined some stewed tomatoes to the point where the smell was unbareable. I don't know what happened but I think it was caused by an overflow of parsley mixed with something else. That experience left me scarred from ever feeling confident enough to do my own spicing in recipes.

Growing up, I only used salt. If you are also a spiceless eater,  you probably covered your food in whatever fat, butter, salt you could find to give it flavor. I am hear to tell you, you will get the hang of it! After you slowly adapt your palette to the spices, then you will know what you want to taste in your foods and will know how to add it properly. So, needless to say, this cooking milestone was a very sweet moment in my kitchen. So after combining everything, I put it on low, and headed off to work. I thought that with the over use of chardonnay and the tomato sauce that the chicken would be fine. I would cook up some angel hair and garlic bread and it would be done.

When I came home it smelled amazing in the house! I was excited! When I opened my slow cooker, it was burnt around the top. I was suprised since my food was on low. The chicken had a very dark color to it, like pork. The sauce smelled great, the tomatoes had a little bit of texture left to them but mostly had stewed into a mouthwatering melt. I cut up some italian bread, mixed a little chopped garlic and margerine and made a spread, and spread it on. When the angel hair was done I made up our plates. My boyfriend respectively delighted in everything even though I was curiously staring at the chicken. It was obviously very dry, and weird looking. Finally the truth came out. We decided that the sauce wonderful. We used the pasta and the bread to devour every last drop of it left in the slow cooker, but the chicken breasts probably shouldn't have been slow cooked all day while we were at work. Maybe full chicken's can withstand it, I don't know that fact yet but I will tackle that hurdle when it comes. But as for today, we still had a great filling meal without the chicken and I learned some valuable cooking lessons!  Tonight we are going to dinner with our friends. We are bringing Bruchetta, Melisa is cooking a meatloaf covered in bacon and I believe other people our bringing dessert and wine. I am not a meatloaf girl but I am on a journey of experimentation so cheers to new tastes! I'll let  you know how it goes! Here's a pic of the bruchetta I made last week. I tweaked a recipe and used a three cheese bread from Panera and it was a huge hit!