A little dinner trick I learned along the way.

So I am pretty much not a great cook. I can cook any recipe you give me, and probably cook it well and have all 5 aspects of dinner all timed perfectly and done in the exact minute. But I am not good at making up new recipes, about making fancy adjustments, other than leaving out things I don't like or adding more Tony's or salt and pepper. So really, anytime I post anything about food, it is merely to help those like me, who have to feed their families, fast, easy, cheap, and in my case with basic ordinary ingredients. Tonight I did one of my tricks I learned along the way. It is called in very fancy restaraunts as "pounding the chicken to death." Well, maybe not, but it should be. Some of you may be way smarter than me and have done this for years, but I've only been doing it the last 6 mo or so. And basically all I am doing is taking my fresh chicken breasts that are normally crazy thick and ginormous and well, pounding them to death. I think there is another term for it, chime in if you know it. But tonight I took 3 hugely thick chicken breasts and turned them into 6 nice and thin, edible to chicken cutlets thats probably not the right word. Let me tell you why this trick is great, and why I am so glad I broke down and bought the cheapest meat cleaver I could find. One, when I buy my chicken in bulk, I divy them up into dinner portion freezer bags. But before I do this I put the chicken breasts between plastic wrap on a cutting board and hammer away till they are nice and thin. My kids, and myself, hate biting into a huge chunk of chewy white meat, so this makes the breasts nice and thin. The upside to this is they thaw faster, they cook faster, and they are chewed up faster, oh and somehow 3 breasts turn into 6 which stretches the meat budget and shrinks the waistline. Tonight we had black bean chicken, which is basically spiced up chicken breasts, baked in the oven, then the last fifteen minutes I dump black beans and mont. jack or pepperjack cheese on top. Very yummy, especially with a dollop of sour cream, maybe a squeeze of lime or cilantro garnish. But not tonight, tonight you can clearly tell which of these portions belong to my picky boys. Happy cooking to all 8 people who read this blog :)

Pardon the ugly pictures and the picture placement, I can't figure out this stupid thing!