Chicken Strips and....Cake?

Greetings lovers of fine food and good grub!

My deepest apologies for the space between posts, but there is a reason.  I've started at the Yolo County District Attorneys Office as a prosecutor so my time has been taken up a lot recently.  I'm learning a lot at a very rapid pace and the action never stops.  But I am loving it thus far and know this has been my field since day one.  In fact I was having a cake fit the other day, so Patty very graciously went out and got this:

Lemon filled ecstasy! I don't have a big sweet tooth, but from time to time I will indulge myself, so Patty did the honors this time and it was fabulous! I loved it, she loved it. Nicole who hung out with me last night.  The cake was truly slammin! And a nice treat to the new gig!

Today I was thinking about something new, I look back at past entries and there is a lot of pasta based things, and I need to get off pasta for awhile.  After all, Summer is coming, need to continue to lean up more for softball.  So I wanted to try a little something different and fun...Chicken Strips!

I thought "How hard can that be...?", so as always I started off with some research and got a simple recipe from one of my favorite chef's, Ms. Paula Deen!  the list of ingredients was short and to the point:

• 
  
• 2 cups crushed sour-cream-and-onion-flavored potato chips
• 1 egg
• 2 tablespoons milk
• 6 chicken breast fillets, cut into 1 1/2-inch cubes
• 1/3 cup butter, melted

That's it.  Looks pretty smooth.

First thing I did was fire up the oven to 350 degrees. Then it was time to get the big bag of Sour Cream and Onion Lay's chips, put them in a bowl and pulverize them into very tiny crumbs, I had to back off before it became dust...

From there I took three chicken breasts and sliced them into strips, gave them a slight hit of salt and pepper and let the, rest while I prepped the rest of the goodies. I mixed the egg as and  milk but used two eggs and 4 tablespoons of milk because the strips were pretty robust.  I then slowly melted a cup and a half butter, and while that was happening I began lay out the chicken.

I would dip the chicken into the egg mixture, then roll them through the chip crumbs, then lay onto a baking sheet.  After doing all the chicken, I then drizzled the butter over the chicken strips and placed them in the oven.  The recipe called for 16-18 minutes, but they didn't look quite done and crispy enough so I gave it an extra 6 minutes and....BANG! The end result...

 From there I pulled out the Dressing and the Barbecue sauce and got my comfy on and watched the hilarity that is "Celebrity Apprentice", just a low maintenance, cool out Sunday evening. Nice breeze outside, opened the windows in the house and picked up my laptop and got my blog on.... a good day.  In fact the evening was so relaxing, my buddy Hefner swooped on my spot on the couch when I went to get my laptop

It was just that kind of day...

I tried my hand at some Philly Cheesesteaks last week and they turned out well and I will write on that during the week.  That was a fun experience and one way out of my comfort zone.  But, like I always say, just follow directions and don't deviate from the game plan and everything will turn out fine.

Catch you mid-week!