Nom-Able

Okay, okay, I can hear you now: I thought you were going to update this daily, and it’s been a week since your last update, you bitch! I know, I know — if I were you, I wouldn’t read this blog any more either, since I’m a rather selfish woman who won’t drag herself out of bed when afflicted with an upper respiratory infection unless a massive mountain of email requests sends her flying to the kitchen.

Okay, that’s not exactly true — if no one reads this blog, then how can any email requests compel me to the kitchen? But I am battling a nasty upper respiratory infection, which was not pretty and not particular condusive to cooking, especially not nice meals for a blog. But, fearless readers, I have perservered, and still slightly under the weather now come to you with a recipe that I made last week.

Oh, you should feel special!

One of my goals (we’re not calling them resolutions, just like we don’t use the zed word when watching Shawn of the Dead) for this year was to lose weight and eat healthier — one of which should lead to the other, it would seem. So I went out and spent some hard-earned cash on a copy of Weight Watchers New Complete Cookbook. To be honest, most of the recipes in the book aren’t particularly inspiring for someone like myself, who thrives on flavor, most of which is usually derrived from fat. Want me to be vegan, macrobiotic, or even raw? I’m all over any eating system you can throw at me — even Atkins if necessary — as long as I can have FLAVOR! Unfortunately, most healthy recipes are sorely short on this oh-so-crucial element of cooking.

That is, until this recipe.

This recipe is full of yummy apple goodness — if you’re like me, the kind of girl who loves fall because of the perfect, crisp weather and the abundance of your favorite foods which are only in season in the fall, then this is your recipe. There’s apple cidar, apples, and apple cidar vinegar — if it has the word “apple” in it, there’s an apple involved. In fact, to cook this recipe, I had to listen to Fiona Apple while reading the recipe off of a MacBook and say the magic words “Pomme manzana ringo”₁ over and over again in order to get the recipe to turn out right.

Oh, and there were some other ingredients too, but I don’t remember what they were.

Honestly, my biggest issue with Weight Watchers recipes is usually exactly what most people like about them — the simplicity. I don’t really want to take something from a package, mix it with something else from a package, and end up with something that’s kind of food-like. I want to take raw ingredients and get food. My last experience with a Weight Watchers recipe went something like this: canned fruit plus box of cake mix equals muffins.

Um, no. Flour, sugar, spices, binding ingredients, leavening ingredients, and flavor equals muffins. One can of something manufactured plus one box of something manufactured equals, “I should have just bought the damned prepackaged Weight Watchers muffins.”

Yet, I was pleasantly surprised by this recipe — enough recipe to make me feel like I was actually creating a meal from raw ingredients — which were surprisingly inexpensive because it was all basically in season (Then again, isn’t everything always in season somewhere? Isn’t it also five o’clock somewhere, so I should be drunk now?). And yet, the recipe was simple enough that I was done cooking within an hour, able to kick back, relax, and sip a snifter of apple schnapps while listening to the Beatles recordings from their Apple record days and recall trips of my youth to farms to pick pumpkins and drink apple cider every year around my birthday.

Not that this made me obsessed with apples or anything.

Chicken with Apples and Cider

Ingredients:

2 tbsp vegetable oil

1 Granny Smith apple, cored and sliced

1 tbsp packed dark brown sugar

4 (4 oz) skinless, boneless chicken breasts (I used skinless, boneless chicken tenders)

1/4 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 tsp freshly ground pepper

1 medium onion, thinly sliced into rings

1/2 c apple cider

1/4 c apple cider vinegar

2 cups hot cooked wide noodles (I used No Yolks egg noodles)

Instructions:

1. In a large, non-stick skillet (I used a seasoned cast iron skillet) over medium heat, heat 1 tbsp of the oil. Saute the apple until lightly browned, about 5 minutes. Sprinkle with brown sugar; cook, stirring frequently, until tender, 3-5 minutes longer. Transfer to a plate.
2. On a sheet of wax paper, sprinkle the chicken with the cinnamon, salt, and pepper. In the skillet, heat the remaining 1 tbsp oil. Saute the chicken until browned, 4-5 minutes on each side. Transfer to another plate.
3. In the skillet, cook the onion, covered, until tender, 6-8 minutes; stir in the cider and vinegar. Reduce the heat and simmer 2 minutes. Return the chicken to the skillet; simmer, spooning the sauce over the chicken, until chicken is cooked through and liquid is reduced by half, 4-5 minutes.
4. Return the apples to the skillet; cook until heated through, about 2 minutes. Arrange the noodles on a platter; top with the chicken mixture, pouring any remaining juices over the chicken

Serves 4; Points Value: 8.

_{1: These are the word “apple” in French, Spanish, and Japanese, respectively}