Trying New Pickling Juice Recipe..

Mr. Crafts4others and I decided to make several different jars of refrigerated veggies with different spices. For the first time we tried to pickle cucumbers, cauliflower, and jalapeños. The jalapeños were all for Mr. Crafts4others and he said they ended up being really spicy, so he had to eat them with cucumbers or a blue cheese dressing. In the cucumber and onion jar we just mainly put in peppercorn and a small amount of cumin.

So far one jar of the jalapeños are gone, the cucumber and onion, as well as the cauliflower, cucumber, carrot and onion. So the only jars left in this photo are the big jars.

We previously ate some of this with leftover meatballs and roasted cauliflower.

Great Leftovers...

Last night we had the left over chicken and baked it in the oven, as I didn't think it would be good reheated in the microwave. It turned out great and I couldn't taste the extra olive oil that was on it previously. We ate all of the cauliflower and onions, so I made two different side items. I cut up two large size potatoes and just added salt, pepper, butter and baked it until cooked. Last week I had made some more refrigerated pickling juice and never used some of it, so Tuesday night I added some baby carrots to it. Tonight the carrots were ready to eat. I didn't make the bread it was store bought french loaf.

Valentine's Day....

I had a great Valentine's Day and hope everyone had a great day (wether you celebrate it with a significant other, friends, etc. or even not at all). I received a package from my Dad and flowers from Mr. Crafts4others.

Mr. Crafts4others and I went out for breakfast and then later on cooked dinner together. Normally, I do the cooking by myself as I love to cook. We made two new recipes and besides a few tweaks on some of the ingredients, we will definitely have it again.

I didn't get a very good picture of the side dish, which was cauliflower, onions, garlic, shredded parmesan, thyme, olive oil, salt and pepper. We accidentally put the parmesan on too early, we were supposed to cook everything and then towards the end add it. We used a whole mini package of fresh thyme, but we couldn't taste the flavor at all. Next time we plan on not adding the thyme at all, less olive oil, and making sure the cauliflower and onion pieces are bigger.

The chicken breast (we had two fairly good size breasts and I cut it into 4 pieces) we baked had olive oil, minced garlic, crushed dried rosemary, salt and parmesan. It also was supposed to have chives but we didn't have any on hand. It was really easy to get too much olive oil on the chicken, as per the recipe it says to add all the spices together with the oil. Next time I will just brush the olive oil on both sides and then sprinkle on the spices. The parmesan then only goes on the top. 

We have leftover chicken so we will see how it tastes.

Slow Cooker....

I love using a slow cooker, normally to make soups but have been branching out a little bit lately. Recently I came across a chicken recipe, along with it is a mock cauliflower "rice" dish (it also has a greek salsa which I didn't make). The meal was good but I think that next time I just might make it with the chicken and a different side dish. Not to say at all that the cauliflower "rice" dish was bad but it is a little messy to make. Instead of using chicken breasts, I used chicken tenders as they were cheaper and then I didn't have to cut up the chicken breasts. I do think next time I might not use as much lemon or once I have shredded the chicken only put half back in the slow cooker. I couldn't find greek oregano so I just used regular oregano.