Marinated Chicken

J and I have recently fallen in love with a new Lawry's marinade: Herb and Garlic.  It's amazing, to put it quite simply. If you want to plan ahead, take a gallon size freezer plastic bag, toss your chicken breasts, thighs, etc. in and drown it in marinade! If you are scrambling to get something put together for dinner, then just slather the marinade on the chicken as you grill it! Totally just as delicious! Can you tell by now that I love items and recipes that provide options?!

J and I prefer to marinate the chicken overnight at minimum, sometimes even marinating the chicken for 48 hours (even better for those of you that plan way ahead!). So, here's how we do it.  Thaw out one pack of chicken breasts (3-4 breasts), thighs, etc. Once thawed out, go ahead and toss the chicken into a plastic bag.  I use a gallon-sized freezer bag.  Drown it in the marinade. I mark the time that I put everything in the bag so that the chicken can marinate for at least 22-24 hours. Pop it in the fridge for the night/following day (or 2 days as we do sometimes!). Make sure to lay it flat on the fridge shelf so that the chicken is not getting marinated unevenly! If you remember, flip over the following morning to make sure that every part of the chicken gets equal cover time!

Once the chicken has marinated for long enough, we grill it (best way to cook it, in my opinion). J loves to grill so that there is a bit of char on the meat. At first, I was a little turned off by it because I thought he was intentionally burning the meat.  Then I realized, he's just adding a little extra crisp and flavor, and I came to love it.  I mean, how good does this look?:

The best part of this marinade is that the chicken will go with essentially anything.  We ate it with spinach ravioli and marinara sauce (Check it out here!) a few weeks ago.  Tonight, we experimented and ate it with coleslaw - a summer staple for us. It was equally as amazing! Of course, I ate my signature dessert as a side, but who's keep track right?! ;)

Want to spice this recipe up? Why not toss some shrimp into the marinade bag, as well?! Quarter some red potatoes, sprinkle with parmesan cheese and rosemary and bake at 350 for 15-20 minutes (Depends on how crispy you like your taters!). Now that's a meal!

Throw Something Together

My "thrown together" meal: made on the fly
with convenience in mind, and turned out
DELICIOUS! Bon appétit!

You know those nights when nothing you have on your menu plan sounds appealing? Or when you have several things that you need to get out of your fridge or freezer? What to do when confronted with this dilemma?! Combine them and make them one amazing dinner, of course!  Obviously, this doesn't work for everything.  However, we were lucky enough the other evening that this combination did work together - and amazingly so! You know those nights that you had something planned for dinner but ended up meeting friends for dinner that night instead? Yeah...we had a few of those nights recently.  We had a meal planned for Monday night, but went to my parents' home for dinner instead.  Naturally, dinner for Tuesday was already planned, as well...what to do now?! Because Italian-marinaded grilled chicken sounds great...but so does organic spinach and cheese ravioli with homemade marinara sauce!

Remember making marinara sauce with me in one of my original blog posts? No? I'll pause while you check it out.  It's amazing, if I do say so myself!  Remember when I bought the spinach ravioli at Sam's? I highly suggest you run out and buy some if you live near one, too!  We originally planned to make spinach ravioli with marinara sauce for dinner one night, but ended up eating at my parent's that evening instead, so we postponed this particular meal. We had dropped chicken thighs into a plastic bag and drenched them with Italian dressing (easiest, best, and fairly low fat marinade!), allowing them to marinate about 48 hours before in preparation for grilling some marinated chicken thighs.

Now what's a girl to do? Because both those sounded amazing to me! Well, we just combined them into one fabulous dinner!  We boiled the ravioli up, and we thawed out some of the frozen marinara sauce in a small pot on top of the stove.  Meanwhile, J went outside and dropped the marinated chicken onto the grill.  We put one thigh in a bowl, accompanied with 4 ravioli (which were topped with the marinara sauce).  Dinner, completely ready, in less than a half hour!

I mean, doesn't this look amazing?!

On your left, you will see Spinach ravioli with
marinara sauce. On your right - grilled chicken
marinated in Italian dressing! Can you say Yum?!