Cooking with babies

I do not have kids and I do not pretend to know what working, home-keeping women with them do to survive but I wanted to share this...

Last weekend when I was meal planning before grocery shopping, I asked the hubby "if you were at a restaurant that served anything right now, what would you order?"
He thought a moment and said "chicken with prosciutto on top." So I decided, okay, let's do it. And while we're at it, lets make it in a creamy cheese sauce and add spinach.
I thought to myself 'what kind of cheese' and called to mind Oliver Garden commercials and the word "Fontina." Not that I have a clue what fontina is relative to other cheeses (taste, melt ability, ease of finding in the store...), but whatevs.

So I get my ingredients, which included whole wheat penne (Thanks to what was served to us at a friends house last weekend, that part was fresh on my mind.) Then due to my schedule this week, I determined that I would be making this dish Thursday night.
I'm also a nut for one-skillet type meals, so I chopped (ehhem, hubby chopped) the chicken into pieces the night before.

The plan was chicken, butter, oil, light cream, fontina cheese, spinach and the prosciutto in the pan.

The unexpected was a request to babysit my nephews - 3 and 9 months. No biggie, they're good kids.

My mom reminded me of this one key thing: the baby is now mobile. He can crawl and stand, so watching him is way different. I look around the house and decide that while's its not officially baby proof, it's not that UN baby proof. (side note: babies will show you exactly how not baby proof your house is.)

So here I am, attempting to cook in my kitchen while the baby finds ways to get into trouble in the living room and dining room and the 3 year old uses my legs to hide during his game of "pretend to be afraid of the dog" who by the way kept trying to eat the baby when she wasn't busy chasing around the 3 year old.

So yes, I attempted to cook with 2 kids and a dog running around.

Beside the recipe/anecdote below I leave you with one heartfelt suggestion - cook your face off before you have mobile-aged children!

Directions:
cook smushy roasted garlic and chicken breast piecess in some fake butter and EVOO
Add in some light cream and chopped (softened in the mic if you want) fontina
Add in ripped spinach
Sprinkle salt and pepper to taste
Wish you had some "bacon or something" to add
Remember the whole idea of this meal was the prosciutto
Laugh because clearly the distraction of children made you forget
Add in ripped prosciutto
Cover and simmer a bit
Serve over cooked whole wheat pasta


Forget to take a picture for the blog and take one of your leftovers the next night instead.

Enjoy!

Make your own pizza

Okay, you don't have to make dough from scratch... or buy that weird, preservative-laden looking ready-made crust. Just go into the frozen food section of your grocer, look around the frozen pizza, pasta and garlic bread. There, on the bottom shelf! A one or two pack of a dough "ball".
Get that and follow directions for thawing. I suggest giving yourself plenty of time.

Oh, and invest in a decent pan. This is my fav:
http://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/product.asp?SKU=14748520

Good luck spreading/rolling/fighting with the dough to get it large and flat. This I still have not figured out yet. What I do know is that it's best to make it bigger than your pan, then rolling or scrunching the excess to make a thick outter crust. It also can fake deep dish with the pan above, as I accidentally did this past Christmas Eve.

Did I mention that home-made pizza has been our Christmas Eve dinner for 3 years running? This cute little picture must be from the first time (2009) because by now we're married and not nearly as cutesy.

Back to pizza.
Do the dough.
Do sauce (can of Cento pizza sauce for a buck anyone?)
Or not (slices of tomatoes instead)
Do the cheese (finely shredded mozz, despite my mom's observation that finely shredded is harder to eat with your hands out of the bag)
Do the jazz:
Fresh basil (cover with cheese so it doesn't burn)
Grilled chicken
Ham and bacon
Italian Seasonings Galore
Garlic (powdered, fresh or shit - roasted if you have time)
EV Olive Oil
Broccolli


This is not a recipe. Shoot it's barely a how-to. Just a suggestion. Make it!