From My Kitchen: Italian Chicken

This chicken dish is super fast, super easy and super yummy. It was borne out of desperation one day when I needed to get some supper together in a hurry.

I thawed some chicken breasts, grabbed a can of seasoned tomatoes, tossed in some additional garlic and turned out a delicious meal in 20 minutes. Eat my dust, Rachael Ray!

If you aren't a fan of garlic, you can skip the extra, but for my taste it needed a little more kick.

I'm not sure this even qualifies as a recipe, but here it is:

Trippin' Mama's Italian Chicken

1 1/2 lbs. boneless, skinless chicken (breasts or thighs)

1 can diced tomatoes with basil, garlic and oregano

1 clove diced garlic

1 C. chicken stock or chicken bouillon

Salt and pepper chicken well. In a deep skillet brown the chicken in olive oil, a couple minutes per side. Add the garlic and cook for one minute. Add tomatoes (juice and all) and chicken stock (or water and chicken bouillon) to the pan and cover. Poach for approximately 15 minutes, or until chicken is cooked through.

Note: It is important to poach the chicken. That means your liquid should only come up a little less than halfway on the meat. If you don't need all of the chicken stock, that's fine. If you use too much liquid you will be boiling the chicken, and I find that it loses the nice juicy, meaty bite. It can even turn out a bit slimy. This is one reason I don't like to cook chicken in the slow cooker.

Remove chicken from pan and slice. If you didn't use all of your chicken stock earlier, or if you want a little more sauce, throw some extra in the pan now. Put roughly a tablespoon of cornstarch in 1/3 C. cold water and stir to combine. Pour into hot tomato and chicken stock mixture and stir to thicken. Return chicken to pan and stir to coat.

Serve over thin spaghetti or vermicelli. Top with parmesan cheese or even a little mozzerella if you're feeling especially indulgent. Add some nice crusty bread to soak up the sauce and revel in the fact that sometimes simple really is best.

We love to serve up the leftovers by piling the chicken and tomato sauce on some nice crusty rolls with a slice of provolone or some mozzarella for a knockout sandwich.

Enjoy!

© Trippin' Mama 2010

Writer's Workshop: Big Elk And A Broken Elbow

We have a rule in our house: "No using insurance while on vacation."

It stems from one of the very first vacations Jeff and I took after we got married. It was my family's reunion and we chose a campground in Estes Park, Colorado for the get together. It was fantastic! The weather was beautiful, the scenery was amazing, the campground was nice, and the wildlife was everywhere.

The animals, in fact, were the downfall of our vacation.

The first night we were there it rained. (Because what's a camping vacation without rain?) So we headed to town to eat and check out a local brewery. Just as we left the restaurant a herd of elk began to walk across the parking lot. My brother-in-law got very excited. More excited than he should, considering he lives in Montana and sees elk all the time. Although I will grant you that these boys were big and CLOSE! But anyway, he started shouting for someone to grab a camera.

Jeff took off for our vehicle, which was one of the closest. He slipped and fell on the wet parking lot. He popped right up and rubbed his elbow a bit, but none of us gave it a second thought.

Fast forward to midnight, and we were in the emergency room waiting for an x-ray. Sure enough, he had broken his elbow. A very nice doctor, who happened to be from the Frozen North not far from where we grew up, put him in a splint and a sling and gave us a prescription for pain medication. Then he informed us there was nowhere in town to fill it that night.

So we headed back to our tent. In the woods. With only Tylenol and elevation as treatment. That's not exactly what we had in mind when we decided to rough it.

We spent the few remaining hours of the night not sleeping in our tent. Jeff tried to get comfortable many, many ways, including by resting his very heavy splinted arm across my abdomen. Did I mention we were in a tent with no bathroom handy?

To add insult to injury, we had scheduled a whitewater raft trip for the next morning. Which meant that most of us headed off to have fun while Jeff stayed behind. My mom hates the water, so she never planned to go rafting, so she took care of Jeff. That rally only involved taking him into town to get his pain medication and finding him a pair of sandals to wear since he couldn't tie his shoes.

We got back late that day, and tried hard to pretend that it wasn't really much fun, even though we had a blast. By then Jeff was well stocked with pain meds and had spent most of the day in a drug-induced sleep, so he was in a pretty darn good mood considering.

It was not the vacation we planned, but it's one we certainly remember. Since then "Don't use the insurance" has become part rule, part mantra, and part standard for judging the quality of a vacation. It's a pretty low standard, I'll grant you, but it works for us.

I'm guessing that rule may get harder to follow with four kids in tow...

Play along with Mama Kat's Writer's Workshop.

© Trippin' Mama 2010

Work-Life Balance and Other Myths

The other day I got an email from a friend and former colleague whom I just learned is expecting her second baby. Her first will turn one at the end of this week, and the second is due in December, so they will be close together.

She wrote: "I don't know how you balance work, four kids and a house. You are seriously Superwoman. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed with just one baby and no "paying" job."

Superwoman? Ha! Far from it girl. Why just this morning I realized that if I didn't get it in gear and do a load of laundry I'd be out of underwear by tomorrow. And for a minute I contemplated just going to buy more. That's not exactly the way a superhero would do the job around here.

Over the years I have learned that  it's a myth that you can "balance" work, kids and life in general.

So I don't even try.

My method is more like the guy at the circus who spins the plates on the poles. In order to keep things moving you have to let some other things go. The trick is to figure out which plates you need to keep spinning, and which ones you can let slow down -- or even crash to the ground.

So the house doesn't get cleaned for a couple of weeks. Or the blog gets a little neglected. Or you have to complete work assignments at midnight. Or the laundry piles up a bit. Or the kids watch a little too much TV one day so you can cook or clean. Eventually things change and you can put those plates back in motion, if you want to.

As long as the most important plates keep spinning, it's all okay.

And when things start crashing down right and left I just look around and wonder where the heck my lovely assistant is with that box of new plates.

© Trippin' Mama 2010

Seriously, Designer Diapers?

Is it just me, or have the diaper manufacturers lost their minds?

First Huggies introduced their Jeans Diapers. They say, "HUGGIES® gets fashion forward with new denim diaper design to help your baby stay trendy while keeping dry."

Perfect, because what every baby needs is a little more trendy in his or her life, right?

I'll grant you they are cute, but at 44 cents a pop? A pair of jean shorts is cheaper than a 25 pack of these diapers. And pretty stinkin' cute, too, without the actual stinkin' part.

Then yesterday I was flipping through this week's Target ad and I saw that designer ("and mom!") Cynthia Rowley has teamed up with Pampers to offer 11 colorful patterns for boys and girls.

"As a mom, I wanted other moms and dads to have more options in every part of their lives -- even diapers," said Rowley. "It's the first piece of clothing your baby will ever wear, and it should be special."

Thanks, Cynthia. I was just thinking the other day that what I need is more options. And at 65 cents a piece, these limited editions are quite the pricey option.

Triplets aside, I'm sticking with Target's Up & Up diapers at 12 cents apiece, and making my way through the potty-training minefield as quickly as possible.

Really, people. Let's focus. These are DIAPERS. That your child will poop in, and you will then THROW AWAY.

And since there seems to be an inverse proportion between the cost of an item and how long it lasts in my house, you can guarantee that every time I would put one of these trendy little wallet emptiers on one of my boys gastrointestinal distress would instantly ensue.

I guess this gives a whole new meaning to the term "disposable income."

© Trippin' Mama 2010

Must Be The Y Chromosome

What is it about the Y chromosome and remote controls?

The boys have discovered the couch and the remote controls in the living room (usually a no-kids zone). In the morning they all make a beeline there shouting "Memote! Memote!" They each grab a remote and sit on the couch as happy as can be.

You would think we could make them happy with old remotes, but somehow they know the difference between a working remote and a non-working remote. Seriously, I think this knowledge might be embedded on the Y chromosome.

© Trippin' Mama 2010

Whoops, There Goes The Blog!

Sorry for the unscheduled interruption folks. We've been having too much fun with Grandma and Grandpa D., Uncle Jacob and Aunt Judy to find time to post.

After we caught up on our sleep following the problems earlier this week, we dived into fun with the family. We had three days of chasing around the yard, playing at the park and wrestling on the playroom floor. I'll give you the full scoop later, plus a bonus recipe this week to make up for slacking off on Friday.

Hope you had a great weekend just like we did!

© Trippin' Mama 2010

I Am NOT Nostalgic for This!

My kids are not the worlds' best sleepers. Far from it. But last night the boys decided to show us just how good we've had it lately.

Everyone was up multiple times, and when we'd go in to help one of the boys another would wake and cry to be held. Finally we had all three standing in their cribs SCREAMING at the top of their lungs.

Hmm. This is not going well.

Amelia, thank heavens, slept through everything. Which is nothing short of a miracle since the other night she woke up during a light rain because, "someone was tapping on my window."

There was no vaccination to blame, so I don't know WHAT the problem was. Perhaps the moon was full? Or they were revisiting their youth? Or they are, as I have suspected all along, conspiring against us?

No matter the cause, we were faced with the typical triplet problem of not enough hands for all the kids. So we patted and soothed and then finally gave up and left them to tough it out. After about 10 minutes Sam and Alex settled down. Then Isaac started to scream intermittently. And the other guys would start to cry. Finally after a half hour of that nonsense I'd had enough and went in to yank Isaac out.

Everyone started to scream and cry again.

So we pulled an old trick out of our hats. We separated everyone so those who were ready to settle down didn't have to listen to someone cry in close quarters. Then Jeff and I headed for the futon in the basement.

We laid there for a few minutes, struggling to get comfortable. And all I could think of was those early days when we'd put everyone somewhere and escape to the basement. Or I'd get to sneak off down there on a Saturday for a morning nap while Jeff took care of the kids. Then later that day he'd do the same.

We both thought that futon was the most comfortable place in the world.

I guess it just goes to show how exhausted we really were!

© Trippin' Mama 2010