Cooking Outside the Box

I'm always finding ways to cook what I want without having to leave my kitchen for extra groceries. My cooking style is opening up my pantry and fridge, gain inspiration for a dish to make then figuring out how to make it work. That is exactly what I did for this dinner and dessert recipe. I had some pre-seasoned BBQ chicken, leftover quinoa and fresh veggies. Plus I just got my Kitchen Aid standing mixer from my wedding registry so I definitely wanted to break it in and bake. I wanted to make my husband's favorite cookie, the snickerdoodle but I was missing a few ingredients including butter and I had minimal cinnamon.

The way I put everything together was to cook the chicken on the grill pan, make a quinoa with toasted pine nuts, garlic and apricot in addition an easy vegetable tian. Quinoa is one of my favorite grains to work with, it is a powerhouse grain that is pumped up with protein, it's fairly plain which is great when cooking because you can add anything to it. For the vegetable tian (which is a fancy way of saying layered roasted veggies), I had half a zucchini, carrots and yellow onion. Before assembling the side dishes, place the BBQ chicken onto the grill pan with olive oil and cover, start timer for 30 minutes.

Vegetable Tian

- Heat oven to 425 degrees
- Slice up any veggies you have that roast well into thick slices (zucchini, squash, potatoes, sweet potatoes, onion, carrots)
- Chop up two cloves of garlic
- Place veggies in a bowl, drizzle with olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic and poultry seasoning
- Neatly place into a baking dish, layering the veggies every other
- Place into oven for about 30 minutes


Apricot, Toasted Pine Nut Quinoa

- Take a 1/4 cup of pine nuts (or any nut you have) roughly chop up
- Heat saute pan at medium heat and toast pine nuts
- Chop up two cloves of garlic, after pine nuts are toasted add the garlic into the saute pan with olive oil on low heat
- Chop up five apricots

Meanwhile, get your ingredients ready for the cookies:

My Twist on Snickerdoodles

- 1 egg
- 1/4 cup of yogurt margarine
- 1/4 cup of olive oil
- 1 tsp cream of tartar
- 1/8 tsp of salt
- 1 1/2 cups of whole wheat flour
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1 Tbs of plain sugar, 1 tsp cinnamon, 2 tsp cloves, 1 tsp nutmeg (to roll dough in before baking)

Mix together margarine, olive oil and sugar into your mixer- blend until smooth then add egg. Combine dry ingredients into a separate bowl, once blended add dry ingredients slowly to wet mixture. Blend well then roll dough into small balls the size of walnuts. Roll each ball into sweet spice mixture, bake on ungreased cookie sheet for 8 minutes at 400 degrees. This should make about three dozen small cookies.

Once the cookies are in the oven, add extra (or newly made) quinoa to the pine nut, garlic mixture. Check on the veggie tian and flip the chicken. Add apricots to the quinoa after a few minutes. After 30 minutes everything should be out of the oven, cooked and ready to eat. Plate your delicious meal and enjoy!

xo Lo