Beach Street Lemon Chicken Linguine

This is the yummiest, yet healthiest pasta dinner EVER!! I have a lemon tree so I'm always looking for ways to use my lemons this time of year. I've tried other lemon chicken recipes, but they were too sour and the flavors were just off, but this one is perfect. My family LOVED it. It was so good the next day too, we had a little leftover and my daughter packed it in her lunch kind of as a cold pasta salad. She said her friend tried a bite and said "YUM! I need to come over to your house for dinner sometime!!" I got this recipe from Deals to Meals, an awesome grocery saving site! They are in several states now and they list all the best grocery deals of the week for you, and allow you to click on what you want to buy each week from each store and then you can even print out a shopping list, rocks my world since I'm not a coupon clipper.

**NOTE: I made this for my husband's 40th birthday and tweaked the recipe a bit, so I'm including that recipe after the first one. So if you came and ate it at my house, the "tweaked" recipe is the one you tried! :)

Beach Street Lemon Chicken Linguine
adapted from Deals to Meals
Print Recipe

1 lb. Linguine
2 tablespoons Olive Oil
Zest from one Lemon
Juice from one Lemon
1/4 cup Green Onions, chopped (white and green parts)
1/4 cup chopped fresh Parsley
Salt and freshly ground pepper
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Marinade:
½ cup olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 cup Green Onions, Chopped
1 tablespoon Cajun seasoning
2 Tablespoons Lemon Juice
2 tablespoons minced fresh Parsley
2 1 /2 tablespoons Brown Sugar
2 tablespoons Soy Sauce
1 lb. boneless skinless Chicken Breasts, cut into bite sized pieces

Combine the marinade ingredients in a bowl and whisk lightly before pouring into a tupperware bowl. Pat chicken dry and toss in marinade to coat. Refrigerate 3-12 hours.

When ready to cook, preheat skillet over medium heat and pour contents of plastic bag (both marinade and chicken) into the skillet. Saute over medium-high heat until chicken is cooked.

Combine juice of one lemon, lemon zest, olive oil, green onions and fresh parsley together in a small bowl. Set aside.

While the chicken is sauteing, cook linguine in boiling salted water until done; drain and return to warm pot. Pour lemon juice/olive oil/green onion mixture over pasta and mix lightly. When chicken is finished cooking, add chicken and marinade to pot of pasta with lemon sauce mixture. Stir in parmesan cheese, add salt and pepper to taste. (I didn't add any salt or pepper.) Serve warm.

**Tweaked Recipe:
Marinade: After cooking the chicken and marinade and before putting it on the pasta, add 1/3 cup heavy whipping cream and stir for 1-2 minutes. The rest of the marinade is exactly the same.

In the main recipe portion, instead of adding the zest from an entire lemon, just grate 2 teaspoons zest and add that to the cooked linguine. The rest of the ingredients are exactly the same.

Easy, Delicious Chicken and Dumplings

This is one of the ultimate comfort foods, and here in Arizona I love to take advantage of our very short but sweet winter to make soup for dinner. I LOVE soup, don't you? I first saw this chicken and dumplings recipe in a Family Fun magazine several years ago. I have simplified it a bit by using boneless, skinless chicken thighs (instead of whole chicken pieces you have to tear apart later) and I totally cheat on the dumplings! But if you want to make your own, I am going to include a recipe for those too! The ingredients for this are super simple, but you won't believe how good this tastes! Don't even think about skipping the step below where you brown your chicken, that's what makes this taste so amazing. You can have this delicious dinner on the table for your family in an hour, so let's get cooking!!

Chicken and Dumplings, serves 4-5. *I double this to feed my family of 8*
Recipe adapted from Family Fun
Print Recipe

2 Tablespoons Vegetable Oil
1 pound boneless, skinless Chicken Thighs
1 small onion, chopped
2 ribs celery, thinly sliced
3 cups + 1/2 cup water, divided
1 Bay Leaf
1 teaspoon dried Parsley
3 Chicken Bouillon Cubes or 3 teaspoons Chicken Bouillon Powder
Black Pepper, to taste (I use 1/4 teaspoon)
5 Carrots, peeled and thinly sliced
1/3 cup all purpose flour

Heat oil in a large saucepan. Add chicken thighs and brown them on each side for 2 minutes. Stir in the onion and celery and saute briefly. Then add the carrots, 3 cups of water, bay leaf, bouillon, parsley, and pepper to your chicken and veggies. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer the chicken for 30 minutes. While chicken simmers, "prepare" your dumplings~Yay! This is where I cheat.

Dumplings (please don't tattle tale to your grandma)
5 small refrigerated biscuits.
So you will just buy a package of 10 small biscuits like this:
I say "small" because you can buy a package of like 4-6 "grand" biscuits or just a package of regular sized ones, just buy the smaller ones. Ok so now you will take 5 biscuits and cut each one into 4 small pieces like this:
Once chicken thighs and veggies are done simmering, remove thighs from the saucepan and place on a cutting board. Whisk the 1/3 cup flour together with the 1/2 cup water, stir into to the soup. Cut chicken into bite size pieces and add back into soup. Simmer together for 1 minute and then drop in your dumplings. Cover and simmer for 15 minutes. Check your dumplings, they should be kind of soft and "dough-ey" on the outside, but on the inside they should be cake-like, like the inside of a biscuit like this:
If dumplings aren't done, just cover your pan and cook for a couple more minutes. Yum!

Homemade Dumplings if you don't have biscuits:
1 1/2 cups all purpose Flour
2 teaspoons Baking Powder
1/4 teaspoon Salt
2/3 cup Milk
1 Egg
1 tablespoon Vegetable Oil

Combine flour, baking powder, and salt. Make a well in this mixture and add milk, egg, and oil. Stir briskly to make a batter. Spoon rounded tablespoons of batter into your simmering broth and cook, covered, for 15 minutes.

**A quick note, I always buy extra biscuits when they go on sale and bake them while the chicken and dumplings are cooking to serve on the side!

Country Chicken with Gravy

I recently received a subscription to Taste of Home Magazine from my Mom, thanks Mom!! I pulled out a bunch of recipes that I wanted to try, and this was one of them. It was such a yummy chicken dinner and this gravy that you put on top of the chicken just puts it over the top! My husband and I both feel like this is a "keeper" recipe! I can't wait to make it again!

Country Chicken with Gravy
photo and slightly adapted recipe from www.Taste of Home.com

Print Recipe
3/4 cup crushed cornflakes
1/2 tsp poultry seasoning
1/2 tsp paprika
1/4 tsp dried thyme
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
2 Tbls evaporated milk
4 boneless skinless chicken breast halves (my kids like "chicken fingers" better so I cut my chicken into smaller chunks)
2 tsp canola oil

GRAVY:
1 Tbls butter
1 Tbls flour
1/4 tsp pepper
1/8 tsp salt
1/2 cup evaporated milk
1/4 cup chicken broth
1 tsp sherry or additional broth (I just used a little extra broth)
2 Tbls minced chives

In a shallow bowl (I use a pie tin) combine the first six ingredients. Place milk in another shallow bowl. Dip chicken in milk, then roll in cornflake mixture.

In a large nonstick skillet coated with cooking spray, cook chicken in oil over med heat for 6-8 min on each side or until a meat thermometer reads 170 degrees (so I hate cooking chicken like this because it never turns out good for me, so instead, I put mine in a 9 x 13 pan sprayed with cooking spray. I then cook it in a 350 oven for 45 min - 1 hour).

Meanwhile, in a small saucepan, melt butter. Stir in the flour, pepper and salt until smooth. Gradually stir in the milk, broth, and sherry. Bring to boil; cook and stir for 1-2 minutes or until thickened. Stir in chives. Serve with chicken.

Recipe Source:  Photo and Recipe from www.TasteofHome.com

Thai Honey Peanut Noodles with Chicken

You HAVE to make this dish! Seriously. It's like the best thing ever. Ever. If you have leftover turkey from the holidays just use that instead of chicken and you're pretty much good to go! The sweet and spicy peanut butter sauce is just to die for topped with yummy stuff including honey roasted peanuts--it'll get some "wows" from family and friends, guaranteed. Our family is big on ethnic food--think Mexican and Asian, and in the past few years we've cut back---like many families have, on eating out. So I have been on a quest to learn how to prepare authentic restaurant quality food at home. And I've found and created some awesome recipes I'll be sharing with you. This is one of them, and it's up there in our family's "Dinner Hall of Fame." This recipe is made super easy by throwing the sauce ingredients in the blender, method follows.

Another note here, I am so sure you will LOVE this recipe that I'm giving you a doubled recipe for sauce. Yup. This amount of sauce should feed roughly 4-6 people for 2 nights. Now because my little twins don't eat the sauce-just the noodles and chicken-this even feeds my family for 2 yummy nights. So here's the deal. I make this sauce and then after dinner, I freeze half of it in a tupperware container. Then when we want this again, I just pull the sauce out of the freezer, nuke it, cook some chicken and Wa-La, there's dinner again! Or of course there's always the option of eating leftovers the next night, or serving all of this to company, which I've done a few times!! **See note below about how much pasta to cook.**


Thai Honey Peanut Noodles with Grilled Chicken Sauce, put the following ingredients in your blender:


Print Recipe

1 cup Water
1 teaspoon Chicken Bullion Powder
1/3 cup + 1 Tablespoon Creamy Peanut Butter
1/3 cup + 1 Tablespoon Soy Sauce
4 Tablespoons + 1 teaspoon Honey
5 Garlic Cloves-just peel and throw into your blender whole
3 1/2 Tablespoons Fresh Ginger, peeled and chopped into tablespoon-sized pieces (see example below) Basically you cut segments of ginger to fit into your tablespoon, and throw it into your blender.
You'll want to make at least 1 of your tablespoons a heaping tablespoon, to make sure you get all the ginger in! Does that make sense? So since you're chopping ginger into your spoon, there will be a few little gaps, so like on your last one, put extra ginger in so it's flowing over the top, that way you should have 3 Tablespoons! The ginger makes this dish just amazing, so if there's a little extra, that's even better :)

Blend all this together til smooth, put into a saucepan and season with:

1-2 teaspoons Thai Hot Chili Sauce or if you don't have this then red pepper flakes to taste, or 1/2-1 tsp. Sriracha Hot Sauce (the hot sauce with the rooster on it-you can buy this at Walmart) Just add slowly and taste for spiciness.

Heat all ingredients together over medium or medium-low heat. The idea here is to heat up your sauce, but NOT to overheat or burn it, because once peanut butter scorches it is nasty.

Serve over 8 ounces Linguine pasta, cooked. NOTE**If you are having company or are planning on serving more than 6 adults, then cook 16 ounces of pasta and just plan on using all your sauce**


To Serve, place noodles on plates, bowls. Then spoon sauce over individual servings and top with:
Chopped Cilantro
Chopped Green Onions
Honey Roasted Peanuts
Fresh Cut Lime Wedges
1 pound Grilled or Cooked Chicken, Rotisserie Chicken, or leftover Turkey! Here are some easy ways to cook your chicken for this dish:
1.You can stir fry chicken with some fresh ginger and garlic and a little oil in a pan.
2.You could also use the marinade below and if pressed for time just put some foil on a broiling pan, spray with cooking spray, remove chicken breasts from marinade, and broil your chicken for about 12 minutes, depending on thickness. Watch closely!
3. You could use this Easy Grilled Chicken Recipe:
1/3 cup Soy Sauce
1/3 cup Italian Dressing
1 Tablespoon Sugar
Pour this mixture over your chicken, poke chicken with fork, and marinate in fridge for 30 minutes or several hours. Grill!

Grilled Italian Chicken with Basil Butter

This dinner is so easy a caveman could do it. I'm serious. And easy works for me this time of year, or pretty much any time of year. If you time this just right, you can present this chicken to your significant other when they walk through the door and say "hey I slaved over this delicious marinated chicken all day could you please grill it?" It worked for me.

I first saw the recipe for basil butter on Paula Deen, and she made it with chicken too but she just put like pepper on the chicken and grilled it, it was pretty tasteless. So I changed the recipe for the grilled chicken, but the butter is FABULOUS and we use it often!! You'll love the butter so much you'll want it on more than your chicken, so serve with french bread. I've posted a recipe for french bread you'll swear just came fresh baked off the shelf of your local grocery store, so you can use that if you want. It's easy too, but not really for a cave man. Unless he had a way to travel through time and use an oven.

Do you live in Arizona? Please listen up: go to Lowes, buy some basil seeds and plant them in your backyard where there is a drip line and an open space/dead plant. My basil plant is seriously out of control overgrown, pretty much all year round. I crack up when I go to the store and see a little package of fresh basil for like $2.85. I also think "Man, I'm missing the boat. I could be rich!" Friends of mine, you are TOTALLY WELCOME to come get some basil so you can make this delicious easy caveman dinner! Hope to see you soon :)

Print Recipe

Grilled Italian Chicken

1 pound boneless, skinless Chicken Breasts
1/3 cup Soy Sauce
1/3 cup Italian Dressing
1 Tablespoon Sugar
4 Basil Leaves, diced


Mix together soy sauce, Italian dressing, sugar, and basil. Place your chicken breasts in a large bowl or glass dish. Poke chicken with a fork. Pour sauce over chicken and marinate in fridge for 30 minutes to several hours. Grill chicken, discard marinade.
Spread Basil Butter on warm grilled chicken and serve with french bread with more Basil Butter. Oh yum. yum. YUM.

Basil Butter~recipe from Paula Deen
1/2 cup, 1 stick Butter, softened
2 Tablespoons fresh Basil, chopped
1 Tablespoon Parmesan Cheese
1/4 teaspoon Garlic Powder
1/8 teaspoon Salt
1/8 teaspoon Pepper

Mix all ingredients together in a bowl with a fork. Serve over grilled chicken and with warm french bread.