sriracha ranch chicken

Hi it’s Jacque again! This is another one of my recipes that has kind of evolved from suggestions from my husband and combining some things I’ve seen on TV or on the Internet. I tend to get an idea in my head of what I want to do but I don’t know exactly how to accomplish my end goal so I search for recipes online and combine what I like from a few to make my own.

On a side note if any of you haven’t downloaded the Betty Crocker App you should stop and do that right now… It’s okay I’ll wait… Seriously just do it :) It is a lifesaver for me when I need to come up with dinner and don’t have any ideas. My favorite part is the recipe search where you can tell it what you have in your fridge (let’s say leftover turkey and frozen peas) and it will give you a list of meals or side dishes that you can make with those ingredients. It really does help me think outside of the box and not make the same 5 things over and over…

Okay back to our chicken!

Sriracha Ranch Chicken

Ingredients:

3 thawed boneless skinless chicken breasts cut into ‘tenders’

1 cup of ranch dressing

Sriracha to taste (about a tablespoon)

2 cups Bread Crumbs

1. Line a cookie sheet with tin foil and spray it with cooking spray so the chicken doesn’t stick after its cooked and preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

2. Next set up your breading stations. First make your ranch/Sriracha mixture. I don’t typically measure but I would say put about a cup or ranch dressing in a bowl and then start adding Sriracha according to how spicy you want your chicken. I would say a tablespoon would be a good amount for the average taste buds, you want it to be enough to make the ranch dressing a light red color.

*** if you want to make some chicken without any Sriracha for children or someone who doesn’t like spicy foods do not add the Sriracha in yet and just put your ranch in a bowl.

3. For this amount of chicken I would say you need about 2 cups of bread crumbs (again depending on how big the chicken breasts were to begin with). You can use any type of bread crumbs for this. If you use Italian flavored bread crumbs you can use them straight from the box. If you are using plain bread crumbs I typically will add salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, paprika and parsley (Side note parsley goes good with chicken but if you add too much it turns the bread crumbs too green and when the chicken cooks it is not an appetizing color, although it still tastes great).

***If you don’t have bread crumbs, which I typically don’t, just make your own. You can make bread crumbs out of anything and everything. I’ve used Ritz crackers, saltine crackers, pretzels, cheerios, Chex cereal, Rice Krispies and many combinations of any of those. The easiest way is to put whatever ingredients you are using in a small food processor and blend them up with the same spices you would have added to the plain bread crumbs. You seriously can’t mess this up and I haven’t made a bad batch of bread crumbs yet (except for maybe the too green parsley ones). A money saving tip I use is to take any cracker or plain-ish cereal that is going stale into a ziplock baggie or air tight container in the pantry. I just mix them all together in a gallon size bag and when I need some bread crumbs for something I just dump out what I need, blend them up and put the rest back in the pantry…I digress.

4. Now it is time to start breading your chicken. At this stage if you are making some without Sriracha decide how many you will be making not spicy and start with those pieces of chicken first. Try to handle the chicken only with one hand if you can, it makes the clean-up process a little easier and you will touch less things with your raw chicken fingers. Take a chicken tender and coat it liberally in the ranch dressing (let it be pretty thick - no need to scrap any off, I did this the first time and my chicken wasn’t as juicy or as flavorful). Next roll it around in the bread crumbs until all sides are nicely coated and then lay it on your cookie sheet. Continue doing that until all pieces are done. If you run out of ranch or dressing just wash your hands and get some more, no biggie.

***If you are making some spicy and some not, once you are finished with the not spicy pieces wash your hands and add your Sriracha into the remaining ranch dressing. Use enough to color the dressing light red but don’t taste it obviously because you have had raw chicken in there! Doing it this way means you don’t have to dirty two extra bowls since the Sriracha will come off in the bread crumb bowl and you don’t want spicy bread crumbs on your non-spicy chicken.

5. When you have finished all your chicken put your tray into your oven that should be at 350 degrees. Cooking times will vary depending on your oven and how thick your chicken is. You want to flip the chicken halfway through the cooing time (about 15 minutes in) and then cook until the chicken has reached a minimum internal temperature of 165 degrees. For the size chicken I typically use my cook time is approximately 25-30 minutes. If you don’t have a meat thermometer it is a really good investment to make in your kitchen. If you are anything like me I overcook every meat I ever make. You can buy a thermometer relatively cheap and you don’t ever have to worry about over (or under) cooking anything ever again.

And that’s it! This chicken is really awesome, when cooked right it’s juicy and really flavorful and the spicy kick is just right. It tastes wonderful without the Sriracha as well because the ranch dressing really does a good job flavoring the chicken and keeping it juicy while it cooks. Stay tuned for some more of my recipes next time Holly lets me guest blog ;)

maybe I’m not ready for this whole mom thing

So, today, or more specifically, this afternoon did not go according to plan. The plan was to come home, start dinner, grab Miles, run to the store and then hit the Children’s Museum with friends.

I came home and totally forgot to start dinner, packed up Miles and headed to the store. Then I remembered about this park I wanted to take Miles to, so we did that. Then I remembered that whole dinner thing so we abandoned our shopping trip and went home to make dinner.

To keep Miles occupied I gave him some containers and a spatula to play with and started assembling dinner (my version of 8 can taco soup).  While I was opening all my cans, Miles grabbed a ladle out of the drawer (yeah he can reach those now) and then started scooping cat food from the bag onto the floor. I’m still assembling dinner and now Miles is ladling water from the cats water bowl. Ok, fine, whatever, he’s busy.

As I’m pulling apart the rotisserie chicken for the soup I see Miles pick up the water bowl (a large Corelle cereal bowl) and then unceremoniously DROPS. IT. ON. THE. FLOOR. It shattered. EVERYWHERE. I scoop him up, grateful that he was still wearing his shoes, and go back to shredding chicken.

After I finish and set the crock pot I empty the pack’n play of toys and then toss him in and listen to him cry. I snap a pic of the disaster, text my husband, sister and girlfriend. She asks if I need help and I start crying and text back a yes.

Enter mini Mommy meltdown. I contemplated just sitting on the floor in the kitchen until the cavalry arrives, but I compose myself and start to clean up while Miles tries to escape from the pack’n play. She arrives and then we clean up and hang out for a while.

But before she got there and Miles was crying and I was just staring at the mess on the floor I totally thought, “maybe I’m not ready for this whole mom thing.” It was fleeting and brief, but I still had it, and I’m sure I’m not the only one. So, in case you are having a crappy Wednesday, just so you know, you aren’t alone. It gets better and sometimes you have to call in the reinforcements and support and not feel bad about it.

DIY color sorter

So if you are anything like me (slightly neurotic and a tad OCD) you may be prone to holding on to things or supplies. However, I'm not really sentimental with personal items. I think I have one small box of items from high school including photos, and I've even thought about getting rid of it because I have no idea what to do with the stuff. But I digress. 

Anywho...Miles LOVES those baby food pouches and big kid applesauce pouches. Like loves them loves them. Inhales them. It's a-dorable. You would think with the 3000 some pictures of him I would have one with him eating one of these pouches but...no. 

Within the last few weeks I've started collecting the lids. Why? I had no idea until today. I've keeping them in a jar by the sink. I should note that you should clean/rinse them before keeping. 

I decided to make a color sorter for Miles. This is obviously a "with supervision" toy as the caps are very small. I spilled out my lids to see what colors I had. 

As you can see there are FIVE colors. Red, yellow, green, blue and purple. But more on that later. I went around the house gathering supplies. I found this Christmas gift box in the spare room closet. 

I decided to cover the box to make it less

"Christmasy". I used some left over wrapping paper form our Valentine's day photo shoot. It is very difficult to wrap a box with the lid off. I also only could find blue painters tape so the wrap job looks less than perfect. I'm also not firing on all cylinders with this stupid cold. 

I used a piece of sturdy white paper to make the sorter. I covered the lid with paper so I can still use the lid and keep all the caps inside the box without fear of losing them. I used my hole punch to cut out FOUR holes and then I colored a ring around each hole and wrote the color name. Are you figuring out what happened yet? 

When I was coloring around the rings I realized that I had FIVE colors. Oh well,  I guess I will have to wait until I find a sixth color and make a new box. 

Tada! What toys have you made for your little ones?

how to fix picture quality on night vision baby monitor

We have the Withings baby monitor and we LOVE it. It has an app for the iPhone (and I think Android phones) so I can check it wherever I am. You can also check it online through their website. It has alerts and you can adjust those to your specific preferences. It plays music and has a night-light.

The downside? The night pictures are horrible! As my aunt asked "what's with the paranormal activity?" We initially thought nothing of it and assumed that was just the quality of a night vision camera. Then one day we took our downstairs surveillance camera upstairs and put it in Miles' room to see what the quality was like there. We were amazed at the quality...in the old camera. WTF? How does this new camera make the old one better? It took my husband a few minutes of thinking before he realized that the downstairs camera has more infrared LED’s than the baby monitor. After some looking around on Amazon we found this (you will also need this). The difference is like night and day now.

Here is a screenshot with the light in the room turned on (it’s still black and white because there is not enough light for the camera to switch to color).

Here is the screenshot of the Withings camera by itself.

And here is the screenshot with the IR LED illuminator.

Amazing right?

one nap schedule

I am a very firm believer that schedules and routines are important for young children. You can read from others who agree with me here, here and here. Basically, “When a child knows what to expect, their world is more comfortable, it makes sense.” I’m sure there are others who say routines and schedules aren’t important and don’t matter, but that goes against everything I’ve learned prior to becoming a parent and everything that has been reinforced in my short time being a parent.  I’m not saying things don’t come up and you have to fly by the seat of your pants, of course that happens. But, in general and for the most part, having a plan of action for your (and your child’s) day is important.

Let’s face it, as adults we have schedules too, we wake at the same time, eat at the same times, go to work at the same time and go to sleep at the same time. You know, for the most part. For me, when my “schedule” is messed up I can be…less than pleasant. I had a job once where they scheduled my lunch at 10:30am…wtf? I just ate breakfast at 8:00am. But I digress…

Mile’s “schedule” has changed several times now (obviously). I implemented his first schedule around four months when he began solids. It looked something like this (I think):

7:00 AM Wake up and Bottle (4 ounces Breast Milk)

9:00 AM Puree

10:00 AM Bottle and nap (4 ounces Breast Milk)

12:00 PM Bottle (4 ounces Breast Milk)

1:00 PM Puree

2:00 PM Nap

3:00 PM Bottle (4 ounces Breast Milk)

4:00 PM Nap

5:00 PM Bottle (4 ounces Breast Milk)

6:00 PM Puree

8:00 PM Bottle and Bedtime (4 ounces Breast Milk)

           

Around eight months his schedule looked like this:

7:00 AM  – 8:00 AM Wake up and Bottle (6 ounces Breast Milk)

9:00 AM – 10:00 AM Breakfast

10:00 AM – 12:00 PM Bottle and Nap (6 ounces Breast Milk)

12:30 PM Lunch

2:00 PM – 4:00 PM Bottle and Nap (6 ounces Breast Milk)

5:00 PM – 6:00 PM Dinner

8:00 PM Bottle and Bedtime (6 ounces Breast Milk)

His schedule has stayed about the same for a while now. Although we dropped from four to three bottles a day, and then down to just two bottles (morning and night). I really wanted to separate milk from naps. I did not want that association to stay for an extended period of time.

Within the last two weeks he has decided that two naps are for…well…babies. The transition to one nap wasn’t what I expected. I assumed he would naturally start to get tired later in the morning and sleep longer and then just not be tired in the afternoon. WRONG. He still was falling asleep around the same time 10-10:30am and then just straight up refusing the afternoon nap, even though he was clearly tired. Clearly.

I started asking around and looking online to see what other “one nap” schedules were like for other parents and I decided on this generic schedule. Yes, times are listed. No, they are not definite. Especially not right now with this new transition. As you can see we also have moved the last bottle away from the bedtime routine and are attempting to move his morning milk to coincide with breakfast. Both of those choices are presenting their own challenges.

Last night was the second evening where we gave Miles his milk downstairs. We then went upstairs, took a bath, brushed teeth, changed into PJs and then attempted to snuggle in the rocker. Miles…wasn’t having it. He wanted to run around and get into everything in his room. I decided to opt out of snuggles and put him in his crib. He snuggled in and fell asleep fairly quickly. In the past we would go from PJs to the chair with milk, snuggles and then bed. He rarely would squirm away and want to explore. We just have to focus now on altering his expectations to the new routine. I’m sure it may take some time, but we are sticking with this new change.

Here is the new rundown of Miles’s day:

I print these out and hang them on the fridge. Why? I’m glad you ask. Yes, we have a nanny and she should be fairly aware of Miles’s schedule and what to do and when. However, this week she has a family emergency and Miles is going to have a different “caregiver” each day. Monday – nanny, Tuesday – backup sitter  (in our home), Wednesday, backup sitter 1 (in her home), Thursday – Daddy, and Friday – Mommy. I find that having a schedule printed and in an obvious spot eliminates the “what time should Miles nap/eat/have milk” texts and phone calls during the day from anyone who is watching him, especially if there is a last minute change. The times are generic and listed on the hour where they “should” occur based on what I have learned and picked up from Miles. If these times don’t work, we will adapt and on the spot or day if need be. The schedule is flexible in the sense that these events occur in this order but obviously I’m not going to force him to noon for a nap if he’s clearly exhausted at 10:30 in the morning and if he doesn’t want lunch before a nap then he can have it when he wakes up.

Thoughts? Am I alone in the crazy routine/schedule? Hit me up in the comments.