Orange Chicken - Go Vols!

So yesterday at work I was super busy and had absolutely no time to blog! How terrible? Also, since yesterday was Modern Wednesday, we went to burger night, so that will give me time to catch up! Caleb and I LOVE Modern Family, it is just SO funny!

But back to Tuesday, I made a delicious Orange Glazed Chicken Bundles! It was fairly easy, but OH SO DELICIOUS! I definitely recommend this recipe! I modified it a little, and I did get to brine the chicken.  I brined it in only water (obviously), salt, pepper, and a bay leaf; also, I only brined it for about 6 hours (lunch break till dinner time).  Also, I did buy orange marmalade since I did not have it already... which I think was about $4, but was totally worth it and will last forever. Plus I've found about 3-5 more recipes with that as a main ingredient. 

So after I get home and get the chicken out of its brine (you should not brine anything more than 6 hours if you put a generous amount of salt, but you can lower the salt amount and brine for longer but I'd say no more than 12 hours).  Then, I made the rice (thank goodness for Caleb who convinced me to get Uncle Ben's 90-second brown and wild rice pack because you need the rice cooked to put inside the chicken bundles! What would I do without him? Question of the month, year, decade!

So after the rice is ready, I begin to hammer out the chicken.... yes since I do not have a meant tenderizer, yet, I used Caleb's hammer!  So after about 10 minutes of banging (so that the chicken is about 1/4 of an inch) I am finally ready to stuff them with the rice.  Now it is super important you bang out the breasts because if not, they will take FOREVER to cook (this happened last time I was afraid of banging them too much).  So after they are ready to be rolled up, I spray some Pam on the baking dish and throw them into the oven.  That's right, no oil/butter in this recipe!  So, after about 10 minutes I decide to throw in some white wine to give it a better flavor and help it not stick to the bottom... genius!  So then I get started on the braised spinach in my ever favorite dutch oven.  Super easy, and I don't know a recipe site to give you so this is what I do: for 1 bag of spinach (fresh) I melt 1-2 tbs of butter in the dutch oven, then slowly add the spinach in bundles, then once it is coated with the butter I add about 1/2 a cup of white wine (sometimes I use a mixture of chicken stock and dijon mustard, but I was out of chicken stock... whoops!).  Then I just let it basically "braise" until all of the liquid has boiled out after adding some italian seasoning, red pepper flakes, salt and pepper, and voila!

Then I cut up some green onions, not because the recipe called for them, but because I love them! As I was doing this (not really at the same time) I was also finishing the Hunger Games. Yes I finished the first book in two and a half days....and then on Wednesday, I drag Caleb to Barnes and Noble to buy the second two book.  Nope, I couldn't wait any longer... and they don't come in paper back so I was forced to pay $17.99 each for hard back! Errr...

Now, while preparing everything and waiting for everything to finish, I turn around to find my cute little baby, being his usual cute self!
I can just imagine him saying (in Bruce Willis' voice used in Look Who's Talking), "Where's my plate? When's dinner, Mommy?"

Doesn't that just melt your heart?

So then, when dinner is finally ready we sit down to these beautiful and yummy plates:

Now, if you remember, I also used chicken for the maple and sweet potato chicken.  So Caleb has a full chicken breast and mine is a half (and I still didn't finish all of it, almost all, but not quite).

This Caleb's big ole plate that was completely cleaned by the end of dinner.

So that was our delicious dinner and now I'm off to get back to work and read  Catching Fire.