Sunday - prep day

Maybe some people are wondering what "Durban Chicken" is on my plan for this week. I'm going to try to post a scanned JPG of a newspaper article on it. It's a dish we used to get at our favorite South African restaurant in Charlottesville, VA. It is worth the trouble, trust me. Click on the image and it will blow up enough for you to read. In keeping with my format of reviews along with recipes:
*****Durban Chicken is a hit every time we make it. I line a baking sheet with foil and just lay out the chicken strips on the foil and bake them at 400° for about 5-6 minutes on each side. At the end, turn on the oven's broiler to "dry" it out a bit. We usually make about 4 chicken breasts of strips so we have lunch leftovers.



Prep day means pre-cooking and thawing and making sure everything is ready for the next week. Baby, Parents, etc.

1. soak the beans. I've really found that dry beans are SO MUCH better than canned. They aren't salty (the husband has high blood pressure), they are firmer and less like a pile of mush if you cook them for a long time, and they generally taste better in my opinion. I'm using pinto beans for my beans and rice recipe later in the week, so I rinsed a 1lb bag 3 times, and they are soaking overnight in a bowl with about 3 inches of water covering them.

2. cook the rice. We try to eat brown rice whenever possible, since it is higher in fiber, healthier and tastes more nutty and yummy. But it takes forever to cook on a weeknight when you need to use it in a recipe. So I'm cooking up 2 cups of brown basmati rice for the beans and rice recipe, and with leftovers to puree for the baby and to freeze. I wash my rice well and cook in Penzey's vegetable broth.

3. make some combo dinners for the baby. I'm trying to make sure she gets a wide range of fruits and vegetables. To that end, I am going to puree some frozen corn (ingredients: corn) to combine with green beans (wholesomebabyfood.com recommends this combo, sounds yuck to me). I will also thaw some squash and sweet potato for these combinations: squashy sweet potato, sweet potato pie (apple/cinnamon yogurt with sweet potato) and squashy peas.