Zucchini Bread

With the abundance of zucchini from the back yard, I had to find another use for them aside from cooking or giving them away, so I thought I'd bake bread. This is a straightforward zucchini bread recipe from the Food Network. The only things I changed were the amounts of sugar, as it seemed like way too much and I usually find non-Chinese baked goods too sweet. I reduced the granulated sugar down to 3/4 cup, and increased the brown sugar to 1/2 cup, which still yielded less than the original total. Ken was quite happy with it and didn't notice the missing sugar. To finish it off, I sprinkled some brown sugar on top after it's just about done baking, and set it on broil for about 5 minutes to give it a nice sugary top crust.

"Hurry Up" Chicken Pot Pie

I almost never watch Paula Deen's cooking show and yet somehow ended up catching an episode on how to make a quick and easy chicken pot pie. With still plenty of Costco chicken breast in the fridge, this was the perfect solution to a quick and easy comfort meal that Ken would love. And love it he did.

The filling too salty so I would substitute the chicken stock with water next time. Instead of just peas, I defrosted a mixture of frozen corn, green beans, peas and carrots, and sauteed it along with more sliced carrots (Hint: use peeled baby carrots) as well as added about 1/4 cup of chopped cilantro. I wasn't sure I'd like the boiled eggs and only used one, cutting it up into smaller pieces. Rather than layers, all the filling ingredients including the wet mixture were combined before topping with the biscuit. In the future, I might also use 1 cup of the biscuit mix because there was more than plenty to soak up the filling. Also, 1 whole stick of butter to top the biscuit mix sounded like too much and half would suffice.

This was easy to make and you could actually cook and cut up the chicken ahead of time. Give it a quick toss on the stove with the carrots to heat it up when you're ready to cook. And look--I've perfected the stuffed squash blossoms!