80 lbs of chicken - 9 ways

Fresh chicken breasts are only $1.69 / lb! Use promo code WAYBACK. Valid until 11:59pm PST 8/9/17.
 Sign up for Zaycon Fresh to get your unbelievably fresh meat!  

Often I am asked how do I save money for my family. Our food budget is something that I rarely skimp on because I think it's one of the best investments we can make for ourselves. However, there are a ton of ways to be able to save money without skimping on quality.

I learned about Zaycon Fresh a few years ago and am a believer! We order chicken breast, chicken fritters, pork tenderloins, wild Alaskan Salmon and a few other meat products. The chicken breast comes fresh and straight from the farmer, so it ends up being a lot fresher than what you buy at the grocery store. For example, my last case of Zaycon Fresh chicken breast had a bar code with a time stamp for the butcher date that was 3 days prior to my receiving it. I recently went to my local grocery store to see what their time frame is - and their chicken was 15 days old and also had 3% water injected. It's really not much of a discussion on which chicken I prefer to buy!

What is Zaycon Fresh? It's super easy. You sign up, enter in your zip code and it will populate "events" near you. Each event will bring fresh or frozen meets to an agreed upon place and time. You place your order for what you'd like and then on the day of the event you bring your order slip and they put your case of bulk meats in the trunk of your car for you. You don't even have to get out of the car! Throughout the year they will offer different products; such as delicious bacon, fresh ground beef, fresh chicken breasts, frozen breaded chicken fritters (I like to make this), select steaks, even turkey and ham! Our all time favorite is their salmon. They are constantly adding more.

When you sign up, they'll send you non-spammy newsletters letting you know what they're adding, great recipe ideas and you can refer friends to get credit for your next purchase. Truly, I haven't bought meat any other way for a long time now.

Ok but then the question comes up with what do I do with 40 lbs of fresh chicken breast? Friends, let me show you what I did for this last order, which I am using to prepare for Baby Boy due this summer.

First, when I receive my chicken I cut it down to different sizes to help spread the meat a little further. Each lobe of chicken breast becomes a cut of breast, a tender and I slice the breast to an even thickness and save the top portion as a "cheek," which is great as Chicken Parmesan Cutlets.  For our family of 2 adults and 2 small kids I package a dinner meal either as 2 breasts, 5 tenders or 6 cutlets. I also use a Foodsaver instead of freezer bags. For each of the recipes below I used 1/4 c of marinade per "dinner package." Some of the recipes are larger than others so adjust the ratios as you need. 

Without further adieu, here are my most recently used recipes:
Brown Sugar Balsamic Chicken

I used about 1/4 c of marinade per 2 breasts.

Lemon Garlic
Chicken TacosUsing a grinder attachment, grind your chicken breasts
taco seasoning recipe

Chicken Enchiladas
1 large can of enchilada sauce
directions: boil your chicken breasts, shred them either with forks or with the paddle attachment on your kitchen aid, pour the sauce in! Freeze the meat as is or prep into enchiladas and freeze individually.

Tangy Teriyaki:
2T of grated fresh ginger
1/4 cup Kikkoman Teriyaki Sauce
makes enough for 2 breasts

"Hawaiian Style"  / Moana1 can of sliced pineapple
2 cups of orange juice
4T ketchup
4T soy sauce
1/4 cup brown sugar
2T of grated fresh ginger
1/4 c olive oil
1/4 c Balsamic Vinegar 

Tangy BBQ

1/2 c Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce

4T ketchup 

2Tbrown sugar

4T balsamic vinegar

1 cup chicken stock

Lime Sweet Thai Chili1 c stock
1 bottle sweet thai chili sauce

1/4 c lime juice

Spiced Rub with Apple Cider Vinegar2t paprika
1t chili powder
1t cumin
1t thyme
1t salt
1t garlic powder
1t pepper
1/3 cup apple cider vinegar
Mix all of the ingredients, pour over 12 chicken breasts and rub it in. It should be a loose paste.

Ready to save some moolah? Sign up here! 

Chicken Recipe Round Up!

Ladies, I love me some chicken. It's the main meat that I cook with! Here's a round up of Pierogie Mama chicken recipes that you can find here on the blog. Thanks to Foster Farms for sponsoring this post - where you can find so many more delicious chicken recipes!

Creamy Pesto Chicken Pasta

 Apple Cider Chicken

Lime Cilantro Chicken Tacos

CopyCat Wendy's Crispy Chicken Caesar Wraps

Parmesan Chicken Cutlets with Lazy Girl Gnocchi

Do you have a favorite? Leave a comment!

Parmesan Chicken Cutlets

Every 4 months, 80 lbs of chicken breast waits on my kitchen island. I spend a whole day, sometimes with
my mother in law, sometimes by myself, processing all that meat into packages of unseasoned, marinated, shredded or ground meat. I have over 50 meals started, and it costs me $135. 

I order a lot of my family's meat through Zaycon Fresh. The chicken breast comes fresh and straight from the farmer, so it ends up being a lot fresher than what you buy at the grocery store. For example, my last case of Zaycon Fresh chicken breast had a bar code with a time stamp for the butcher date that was 3 days prior to my receiving it. I recently went to my local grocery store to see what their time frame is - and their chicken was 15 days old and also had 3% water injected. It's really not much of a discussion on which chicken I prefer to buy!

So today I want to share with you one of the ways that I meal prep when I am processing all of this meat. When I prep the breasts to freeze I cut them into 3 separate ways (after trimming the fat off) - a tenderloin, a breast and a cutlet. A cutlet is made by laying the breast down on a cutting board and cutting through the middle of the breast, horizontally.

I like to make my cutlets really small; they are really more like a chicken coin than a true cutlet.  It's about the size of your palm. Cutting that small bit off a breast makes the breast thickness more uniform so that it cooks easily and the "coins" are really tender. They are perfect for Chicken Parmesan Cutlets!

For the breading:

• 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 cups Panko (Japanese breadcrumbs)
• 1 tablespoon of paprika 
• 1 tablespoon mustard powder
• salt and pepper to taste
• 2 beaten eggs
• 1/2 c of freshly grated Parmesan cheese

This will bread about 16 small chicken "coin" cutlets. 2-3 cutlets per adult is a standard serving. The remainder can be frozen between sheets of parchment paper and bagged in freezer bags once fully frozen.

Instructions:

1. Prepare three small mixing bowls. Fill one bowl with 3/4 cup flour, fill the second bowl with 1 1/2 cups of Panko, 1 T paprika, 1 T mustard powder, salt & pepper, and the third bowl with the beaten eggs. Set the 1/2 c of freshly grated Parmesan aside. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.

2. Dip each chicken cutlet first into the flour, then into the beaten eggs and then into the Panko mixture.
*If you are prepping for a future meal, skip the baking portion and read the instructions at the end.*

3. Place onto a greased broiling pan or cookie sheet.

4. Bake at 425 degrees F and bake for 15-25 minutes, until the chicken is fully cooked. Flip half way through.

5. Remove from the oven and give each cutlet a good sprinkle of Parmesan cheese.
6. Voila! I love to serve mine with my lazy girl gnocchi (using left over mashed potatoes!!) and spaghetti sauce. 

**If you are going to freeze these, after step 2 place them in between two squares of parchment paper and freeze them on a cookie sheet. After they are frozen, store them in a freezer safe ziplock bag.**

Get started on saving your family money but not compromise the quality of your meat! Zaycon Fresh is where it's at. Sign up here! Also - check out my favorite Zaycon Fresh product - Wild Alaskan Salmon - and how I love to prepare it!

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. Affiliate links help keep this blog going and using them is at no cost to you! All images, opinions and the recipe are my own. 

2015 Wrap Up

Hi everyone! I am checking in at the midway point of my trip to Germany. If you've been following along on instagram, you've seen a ton of posts on some of the awesome sights that we have visited. By the way, you don't need to have an instagram account to see the pictures, so do go on and check them out!

Whether you've been following along with me for the last *almost* 4 years or have jumped in just recently, fret not - in the new year I'll be sure to "re-introduce" myself as it's been a long time since I've really done it officially. A lot changes when you start a blog in the month before you expect your first child, when 4 years later you find yourself with two daughters that are pre-school and toddler age. And a blog that has grown and maintained over that whole time and all you really needed was somewhere to write out your thoughts in a somewhat coherent manner! Anyways, I digress. Back to 2015.

Here's a round up of my 9 most popular posts of 2015 from Instagram -

1. I finally made Monte Cristo waffles. So good, but fair warning - the raspberry preserves are not easy (read: impossible) to clean off your waffle iron. Lesson learned. 2. Though I've been a babywearing mama from the beginning with Penny, just a few months ago I dove into the world of woven wraps. My dear friend That Mama Gretchen and I took a mama's night out and took MommyCon Seattle by storm. I fell in love with Cassiope Wovens and was positive that one way or another, I would be leaving MommyCon with a wrap. I took a chance, entered in Cassiope Woven's giveaway and I was the extremely lucky winner of a limited edition MommyCon exclusive wrap. Woo hoo! That's what you heard if you were at the announcement of the giveaway - I wooped with careless abandon. So here you see my Ruby and I in our first wrap job. 3. Here is an old fashioned, no calories spared pound cake made from no less than 10 eggs from my own chickens. I started keeping a small flock of backyard chickens right before Ruby's birth in 2014 and have been so in love with the delicious eggs these girls provide. This photo reminds me that not only should I make this again, and that I need to share this recipe with you, but also that I should at some point make a post about how my flock of 5 increased to a flock of 9 over the summer. Ooops. 4.  2015 was a year of a ton of work travel for my husband, and one time while he was out of town I treated myself to an avocado mask after I *thought* the girls were asleep. I heard Penny call for me, so I came up to comfort her. I forgot about the mask and she FREAKED out. She had no idea who I was, and I had to convince her that I am mama and not some random person. 5. This is the view from Zugspitze, the tallest peak in Germany. More pictures are on instagram, but I do promise you that I will give you the full details once we come home.  6. I have so much love for my husband, but there is very little more that tugs on my heart strings than when I see him wear our girls. One of our family traditions (which has been a tradition from his family of origin) is visiting family bible camp in the Okanagan mountains in British Columbia. This picture is from family camp this year while agate hunting.  7. Cloth diaper reviews & giveaways are still going strong on the blog! 8. Another babywearing daddy shot! 9. Sharing recipes is another favorite on the blog, and this past summer I shared my ever favorite summer recipe - lime cilantro chicken tacos.

And finally, if you need any more reading beyond what I've shared above, here's a few of my favorite blog posts this year too.

• Love salmon? I do too. Here's two ways that I absolutely love to cook it. 
• Visiting zoos and aquariums is kind of my thing. We did quite a bit of travel in 2015 and I absolutely loved the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach. 
• Babywearing takes me everywhere - even the pool!
• I got a little crafty this year and did a bit of a Pinterest copy. Do you have a child in your life that loves model cars? This model car photo frame is so easy!
• With a team of friends, I sewed over 160 cloth menstrual pads for girls in developing countries. 
• On that same thread - why are cloth menstrual pads awesome?

Thanks for sticking along with me this year!

Don't miss out on the chance to win $20 PayPal from me as a New Year gift!

Polish Apple Pancakes

Taste has such a connection with memory, don't you think? These pancakes bring back so many memories, but my favorite is of visiting my paternal babcia in Poland and her cooking these delights for my dad and I on the night that we arrived. I was about ten years old; tired, grumpy and overwhelmed. We were ushered in, sat at a plain and simple table in her small apartment's kitchen, and she continued to fry these babies up.

They are called "racuchy" (rah-tsoo-hiy) or "placki z jablkami" (pancakes with apples / "plah-ts-key z yab-kahm-eh").

These days I pull it out on those evenings where "breakfast for dinner" is on the menu again or if I have extra apples that should get used. They're like a mix between a pancake, fritters, dutch baby, beignet and a donut. There's just no one way to describe them! But they are super easy to make, use readily available ingredients and are so tasty. Even though they are essentially deep fried, they don't come out greasy.

You'll need:
2-3 apples (peeled, cored and sliced thinly)
2 cups of flour
1 egg
1 cup of milk
1 tsp sugar
vegetable oil
powdered sugar

You'll do:
1. Mix together the 2 cups of flour, egg, 1 cup of milk and 1 tsp of sugar to make the batter. It'll be similar to the consistency of pancake batter. Fold in the apple slices.
2. In a frying pan, pour enough vegetable oil to fill the pan about 1/4 of the way up. Heat it to hot.
3. Ladle drops of batter with 2-3 apple slices into the oil. You don't need a lot of batter, just enough to stick the apple pieces together.
4. Cook until the bottom is lightly golden, then flip. It should take less than 2 minutes total.
5. Place onto a paper towel lined platter. Blot up any excess oil with another paper towel.
6. To serve, give it a good dusting of powdered sugar.

Pasta Alfredo with Ham and Asparagus

This has been one of my favorite dinners to serve lately! My sister in law made a similar dish for us a few months ago and since then I've been totally craving it.

You'll need:
1 lb of your favorite dried pasta. Trotolle is my favorite for this dish!
2 cups of diced ham
1 bundle of asparagus
1/2 stick of butter
2 cups of heavy cream
1 cup of freshly grated parmesan
salt and pepper

Directions:
1. Wash the asparagus and cut off the woody ends. Cut the remainder of the stalk into 2" sections.
2. Boil the pasta according to the directions. In the last 2 minutes, toss the asparagus into the pot and allow it to blanche with the pasta. Strain the pasta and asparagus when the pasta is al dente. Give it a quick rinse in cold water to stop the cooking process and set aside.

3. While boiling the pasta, give your diced ham a quick pan fry to give it a caramelized finish.

4. Heat a pan and gently melt the 1/2 stick of butter. Don't heat it enough to separate the butter, just for it to be slightly melted.
5. On medium heat, slowly pour in 2 cups of heavy cream and continually stir until the cream starts to barely bubble. Add the Parmesan cheese and continue to stir as it thickens. Keep control of the heat; if it gets too hot the butter will separate and you'll get a greasy versus creamy sauce. Add salt and pepper to taste.

6. Once the sauce reaches the process consistency, turn off the pan and combine all of your ingredients.

Buon appetito!