Catching Up

If you read my post the other day, you know that our family meals this week revolved around basketball games. Here's the update: The kid's team won the first game, lost the second in the semis. The hubs' team won its game by almost 30.

And tonight, I'm the winner because I finally have everyone back for what feels like our first family dinner in ages!

There's a lot I like about Cooking Light. One of my favorite things about this resource is its variety of recipes - meaty deliciousness to vegetarian, from complex to super-simple. All accessible.

So instead of basketball, super-simple was the name of our game tonight, courtesy of Cooking Light's "The Enlightened Cook: Simple Additions" section. I don't know how enlightened I'm feeling, but I'm always down for simplifying my life during a weeknight.

Latin Baked Chicken
Source: Cooking Light, June 2010

Ingredients:

• 1/4 c. fresh lime juice
• 3 tbsp low sodium soy sauce
• 2 tbsp honey
• 2 tbsp minced chipotle in adobo sauce
• 8 (4-oz) bone-in chicken thighs, skinned (used boneless, skinless chicken)

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
• Combine lime juice, soy sauce, honey and chipotle in a large bowl. Add chicken and toss well to coat. Let stand for 10 mins at room temp.
• Arrange the chicken on a broiler pan coated with cooking spray, reserving marinade. Bake for 15 mins. Place reserved marinade in a blender, and process until smooth. Place pureed marinade in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil and cook 3 mins.
• Brush chicken with half of cooked sauce, return to oven and bake an additional 10 mins. Brush chicken with remaining sauce, bake an additional 10 mins.

Yield: 4 servings (2 chicken thighs per serving)
Per serving: 316 cals; 9g fat (2.3g sat, 2.8g mono, 2.2g poly); 45.3g protein; 11.9g carb; 677mg sodium

Reviews:
Soooo, I kind of didn't follow most of the directions. I despise chopping chipotles (my market doesn't sell them pre-minced), so I just used the sauce from the can for my marinade. This also eliminated the need to use the whole blender thing - even though I enjoy my fancy blender, it saved an extra couple of steps and clean up. PLUS I used boneless, skinless chicken and popped it in a pan to bake it. I did keep brushing the marinade on the chicken as it baked.

The boys LOVED this recipe - especially the kid, who gobbled it up (along with his steamed broccoli - boo yah!). I, on the other hand, thought it wasn't awesome. Maybe its because I barely followed the directions, but I don't think it had tons of flavor.

Ranking:
Two Forks. Even though the kid loved it - ask him who the ruler is... and that ruler gives all rankings.

A word about the video. I forgot to take a picture of the dinner tonight. So instead you get to listen to one of my absolute favorite Beatles songs. I can't choose just one song as my fave, but this is pretty close to top of the pops for me. Howevs, I hate this video b/c most of the images aren't even close to being from when this song was recorded. THERE. Now listen to it and love it.