delightful dinners

happy friday the 13th!  dun dun dunnnnnnnn.

so, anyway - yay for cooking yummy dinners at home!

thanks to one of my twirlies, i'd found this easy and delicious-looking recipe for chicken with a mushroom wine sauce.  and magically, i had all of the ingredients already in the kitchen, just waiting to be used in something.  i was pretty stoked to see that it was indeed super simple to throw together.

thanks to brother wan, who'd cooked dinner for us over the weekend, i had a bunch of fresh parsley - not something i typically buy.

the sauce incorporated the butter and olive oil used for browning the chicken, plus the tasty tidbits that got stuck to the pan.  sounds gross, but those little morsels add so much flavor.

putting the chicken back once the sauce reduced a bit ensured that it was cooked all the way through.

i even busted out the asparagus steaming pot for some fresh veggies.

it looked nice on the plate - and it was really good!  i was so happy to get this whole meal on the table in less than half an hour from start to finish.  pretty awesome, yes?

oh, and then last night i tried how sweet's recipe for maple bourbon glazed pork chops, published just yesterday morning.  except that i'd bought a pork tenderloin instead, so i had to do a little modification.  i ended up using rachael ray's method for roasting it in a super hot oven (500 degrees! i didn't even know my oven went up that high), which worked out really well.  plus, it was done in the same amount of time as the chicken dinner.  fantastic, since i was working on a pretty intricate cookie design at the same time.

this i served with a simple green salad - the sauce on the plate made the boring lettuce extra tasty.  yum.

i always feel so accomplished when i manage to put together a decent dinner.  and especially when it's a new recipe and ends up really good.  even more so when i have a gazillion different projects going on - oh, wait till i get to share some of the silliness i've been preoccupied with.

too much fun.