Tag Archives: honey

Honey Orange Baked Chicken with Sweet Potatoes and Green Beans

23 Jan

I’m not sure how, but I had a lot of sweet potatoes.  I think I forgotten I had some and just kept getting more.  Anyway, I have made chicken and roast potatoes many times, but just with russet or gold potatoes, not with sweet potatoes.  To somewhat match the sweetness of the potatoes, I decided to make a honey orange sauce to pour over the chicken.  I baked it all together in a pan with green beans, and was very happy with the result!

Honey Orange Baked Chicken with Sweet Potatoes and Green Beans

Honey Orange Baked Chicken with Sweet Potatoes and Green Beans

What you need:

4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
2 pounds sweet potatoes, peeled and cubed
1 pound green beans
1 small onion, diced
1/4 cup honey
Juice of 1 orange (about 1/3 cup)
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon Italian seasoning blend

How to make it:

Preheat oven to 425 F.

In a small bowl, whisk together honey, orange juice, olive oil, and Italian seasoning blend.

Drizzle olive oil in the bottom of a roasting pan.  Add sweet potatoes, green beans, and onions to the pan.  Pour half of the sauce over sweet potatoes, green beans, and onion.  Toss to coat evenly.

Place chicken breasts on top.  Pour remaining sauce over chicken.

Bake in the preheated oven for 30-35 minutes or until chicken reaches a temperature of 165 F.

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Honey Lemon Basil Chicken

24 Sep

My husband wanted chicken tonight, and since I had basil I needed to use tonight, I thought about using it with some lemon.  Then, I came across a honey, lemon, and basil mixture that sounded really good.  And it was!  It got rave reviews from both girls, and I really enjoyed it too.  I served it with garlic green beans.

Honey Lemon Basil Chicken

Honey Lemon Basil Chicken

What you need:

4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts, pounded thin
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup chicken broth
2 tablespoons honey
Juice of 2 lemons
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 cup fresh basil, minced

How to make it:

Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat.  Cook chicken in the oil for a few minutes on each side to brown.

Meanwhile, mix together the chicken broth, honey, lemon juice, garlic, and basil.

After chicken has browned, pour in the liquid mixture.  Reduce heat to medium-low and cover.  Cook for 20 minutes, or until chicken is no longer pink and has reached an internal temperature of 180 F.  Remove the lid, and continue to cook the chicken until the liquid reduces to a glaze.  Turn and brush each side of chicken with the glaze.  Remove from heat, and serve.

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Watermelon Cucumber Cooler

16 Aug

I recently got a watermelon in my FarmBox, and since it usually takes a while to eat it, I decided to juice it instead.  We’ve also been juicing cucumbers, and I thought that those tastes might be pretty good together.  So, I did some searching just to make sure, and came across a recipe from Martha Stewart’s website for Watermelon-Cucumber Coolers.  I just made it minus the vodka, although with the day I was having, I could have used the vodka, I think!  My older daughter didn’t think it was sweet enough, so some extra honey would work, although my husband, younger daughter, and I, all thought it was perfect the way it was.

Watermelon-Cucumber CoolerWatermelon-Cucumber Cooler

What you need:

1 small watermelon, or about 5 cups of cubes of watermelon
1 cucumber
Juice of 2 limes, about 1/4 cup
2-4 tablespoons honey, depending on how sweet you want it
2/3 cup vodka, optional
Ice

How to make it:

Run watermelon and cucumber through your juicer.  If you don’t have a juicer, you can use a blender to blend each until smooth, then pour through a fine mesh sieve to remove pulp.

Combine lime juice and honey.  Add to the watermelon and cucumber juice.  Add vodka, if desired.  Serve in glasses over ice.

 

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Orange Honey Sesame Chicken

14 Feb

Sesame Chicken has been a favorite in our house for quite a while now.  It’s a go to dish when we have vegetables to use up that are good in a stir fry, or just as a chicken dish to throw in the weekly meal plan.  I have gotten a ton of oranges lately from Bountiful Baskets and Sunizona FarmBoxes, so I decided to try to incorporate fresh squeezed orange juice somehow.  Also, the Sesame Chicken uses white sugar, but this time I decided to use honey in its place.  I have a lot of honey from a Bountiful Baskets 12 pound bucket to use, plus it’s more natural than the sugar I have.  It turned out really great!  It’s not overly orange tasting, which is what I was going for.  I also added in some fresh grated ginger, which I think I may do with the Sesame Chicken in the future as well.  (Quick tip for ginger, keep it in the freezer to keep longer, then just take it out, grate what you need, and put it back!)

Orange Honey Sesame Chicken

 

 

Orange Honey Sesame Chicken

What you need:

1/4 cup all-purpose flour
4 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves, cut into 1″-2″ pieces
1 Tbsp olive oil
1/4 cup reduced-sodium soy sauce
1/4 cup honey
1/2 cup fresh squeezed orange juice
1/2 tsp dark sesame oil
2 Tbsp sesame seeds, toasted
1/4 teaspoon fresh grated ginger
Veggies of your choice (tonight I used broccoli and green onions)
Cooked rice

How to make it:

Place flour and chicken in a gallon size zipper bag.  Shake to coat chicken in flour.  Heat olive oil in a large non-stick skillet over medium high heat. Add the chicken to the skillet in batches and cook, stirring occasionally, for 3 to 4 minutes, or until white and no longer pink.

Meanwhile, in a medium-sized skillet, combine the soy sauce and honey in the skillet. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the honey is mixed well with the soy sauce. Stir in the orange juice, grated ginger, sesame oil and sesame seeds.  Pour over the chicken in the larger skillet and stir to coat.

Add in any chopped veggies you want.  For this batch, I used just broccoli.  Other times I have used different combinations of broccoli, onion, green, yellow, and red peppers, shredded carrots, bean sprouts, snow peas, water chestnuts, and mushrooms.  Cover your skillet and cook until veggies have softened.  I tend to leave the veggies a little crispy still because my husband likes them still crispy.  After other veggies have softened, add the green onions.

Serve over cooked rice.

Note: You can buy toasted sesame seeds, usually with in the section with other Asian grocery items.  If you can’t find them, to toast sesame seeds, place in a dry skillet and toast, shaking the pan, over medium high heat for a minute or so, or until fragrant and lightly browned. Do this first and cook the chicken in the same skillet to pick up more sesame flavor.  Also, if you are using a lot of veggies, you may want to double the ingredients for the sauce so there is some for the veggies.

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Ah, produce!

14 Jan

After being out of town for 2 1/2 weeks for the holidays and not participating in Bountiful Baskets or Sunizona’s FarmBox, my house had no produce!  Well, I take that back, I think my husband had gotten some bananas just before the kids and I got back.  So, I was very excited to get my FarmBox last Wednesday and then Bountiful Baskets this past weekend.

The FarmBox program has a few new items, citrus from Arizona Organic Family Farms, a raisin walnut bread, and hoagie buns.  First, I tried the raisin walnut bread, it’s really great!  I’m going to try some oranges this week and I’m looking forward to it.  Here is how my box looked last week:

Sunizona FarmBox 1/9/2013I picked a cucumber, micro cilantro, red potatoes #2 (non-perfect potatoes), raisin walnut bread, special spelt bread, radishes, green beans, and pink lady apples.  All delicious!  We really, really love the bread.

It was a good haul at Bountiful Baskets this week.  I got the conventional basket and the new juicing pack.  I have a juicer, but honestly, I got the pack more for the extra produce offered in it, it’s all things we love to eat.

Here is the conventional basket:

Conventional basket 1/12/2013Red potatoes, cucumbers, rainbow carrots, avocados, grape tomatoes, sweet peppers, strawberries, oranges, lemons, red delicious apples, golden delicious apples, and Asian apple pears.  I’ve already used the lemons to marinate chicken and potatoes for mashed potatoes.  We’ve been snacking on the peppers, cucumbers, carrots, and apples.  I also made guacamole with the avocados.

Juicing Pack 1/12/2013This is the new juicing pack.  Great mix of fruits and vegetables, celery, kale, baby spinach, carrots, beets, cucumber, limes, ginger, fuji apples, and a lemon.  I may juice some of this, but more likely we’ll just eat it.

Finally, I didn’t contribute for these, but snapped a picture of the 12 lb jar of honey and the 1/2 gallon of coconut oil, just to show what they look like.

Bountiful Baskets honey and coconut oil

Note: The type and amount of food may vary from another basket because of geographic location and because of variances in how case ends are distributed once everything is distributed evenly. I also volunteered and got an extra item for volunteering.

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Tangy Honey Glazed Ham

16 Nov

 

Oh my, this ham was delicious!  My husband and I had to stop ourselves from eating too much!  I’m glad I finally decided that tonight was the night for some Zaycon Foods ham!  I first cut the ham into 3 sections, which of course I didn’t cut very evenly, so this section was about 4.5 pounds of the 10 pounds that it was.  Oh well.  It was a good size for us, with slices leftover to lunch tomorrow.  This was a fully cooked, boneless ham, so really, I just had to make sure the ham was heated though, then added the glaze and cooked a little longer for added flavor.  Yum!  This glaze was perfect since I received a pineapple and oranges at Bountiful Baskets this past weekend.  The recipe called for pineapple juice, but I just took fresh pineapple chunks and pureed them in the blender.  The honey was from a bucket of honey I bought a while back that I finally divided into smaller jars today.  Everything tastes better fresh!  This does have Dijon mustard, so if you aren’t a fan, I think you could leave it out and still have a nice glaze with the rest of the ingredients.

 

Tangy Honey Glazed Ham
Based on recipe here

What you need:

1 ham (mine was fully cooked, boneless, 4.5 pounds in weight)
1 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup pureed fresh pineapple (or 1/3 cup pineapple juice)
Juice of 1 orange (or 1/3 cup orange juice
1/3 cup honey
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
1/4 teaspoon cloves

How to make it:

Preheat oven to 325 F.  Cook ham according to type and weight, using guidelines on package or here.  For my ham, I lined a roasting pan with foil, set the ham in, added 1/2 cup water to the pan, and covered the ham in foil.  I cooked it for 45 minutes to make sure it was heated through.

Meanwhile, combine the ingredients for the glaze in a small saucepan.  Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to low and simmer for 10 minutes.

Once ham has finished cooking, remove the foil cover.  Pour 1/3 of the glaze over the ham, and cook uncovered for 10 minutes.  Repeat until glaze is gone, for a total of 30 minutes of cooking uncovered with the glaze.  Check to make sure the temperature is at 140 F if the ham was in original packaging, or 165 F for re-packaged or leftover ham.  Cook additional time as needed.  Slice and serve!

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