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Saturday, July 16, 2016

Skillet Chicken Broccoli Quinoa with Cheese


A one pot meal! These days a recipe wins extra points if it creates less dishes to clean up after dinner. The leftovers of this were just as great as well. I found the recipe on Pinterest (of course). I actually read through several recipes before finding a Chicken Broccoli Quinoa one that didn't look like a lot of work or contained a bunch of extra stuff (like heavy cream) that I didn't want in my dish. Oh and few weeks ago I reached 1000 followers on Pinterest! Woohoo! So if you aren't following you should ;)  there's an easy link on the right-hand side to do so.




Skillet Chicken Broccoli Quinoa with Cheese {One Pot Meal}
from Cooking Classy, serves 4

Ingredients:

- 1 lb chicken breast diced into one inch cubes
- 3/4 cup chopped yellow onion or sweet onion
- 1 Tbsp olive oil
- 2 cloves garlic, minced (or buy the pre-minced jar)
- salt and pepper
- 14.5 oz can low sodium fat free chicken broth
- 1 cup dry quinoa
- 1/4 tsp dry thyme
- 2.5-3 cups chopped fresh broccoli florets
- 1 cup grated sharp cheddar cheese

Heat olive oil in a big skillet (big enough for all of these ingredients) over medium-high heat and add onion. Saute 2 minutes then add chicken for additional 2.5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add garlic and saute one more minute. Chicken should look cooked on outside at this point. Add broth, quinoa, and thyme and season mixture with salt and pepper to taste. Bring to a full boil then cover and reduce heat to simmer for 12 minutes. Quickly lift lid and add broccoli to the top, recover and continue to cook for 8 more minutes (this will basically steam the broccoli) or until broccoli is tender and quinoa is cooked. Sprinkle cheese over top and recover for 1-2 additional minutes until cheese is melted.



I did take the time to grate the cheddar instead of buying it pre-grated because I like the taste of it that much more. Enjoy!

Wednesday, July 6, 2016

Whale Plushy


For this last Christmas, I decided I wanted to make something personal for two of the babies I was doing gifts for. I planned to do one for Dexter too but haven't gotten around to it yet. I swear I do way more crafting/sewing for gifts than for myself/us. Any one else that is crafty do the same thing?

I found this tutorial when I was looking for a stuffed animal to make. I wanted something fairly simple and who doesn't love a whale!

Here is the tutorial with printable pattern pieces and I followed it step by step. I did the larger size whale and I'm glad I did because some of the curves were a little tricky to sew around and it would have been even harder with a smaller pattern.





You could add eyes with buttons but I like them without. It takes more stuffing than I thought it would and I used a little corner tool to help push the stuffing into the small areas but you could also use the opposite end of a wooden spoon. This makes a great gift for someone! I would definitely make another one and hopefully I'll get around to it eventually :)

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