Day 3 - Nearly in the History Books

Greetings readers! Here we find ourselves once again fed, happy and ready to write, OH YEAH life is good, yes?


Interesting this about today, after writing my morning ramble and doing some work before leaving the house and getting the wee lad to school on time...I forgot to eat breakfast. I remembered just as we were getting in the car and thought, well here comes that empathy thing. I had a choice, go hungry for a few hours and experience this for what it is since I figure many people who must live on assistance don't have the $s to just plunk down at the Organic to Go near work and get on with their day or go the route I usually do and plunk down that $s at the O to Go and just be like any other day I forget/don't have/don't feel like preparing breakfast.

I chose to go hungry and live the challenge. I got to work, had a cup of coffee and some water and tried to forget about this rumbly in the tumbly (and if you know the size of my tumbly, you know that rumble could knock down a tall building). I made it, I felt hunger for a lot longer than I usually do and made it all the way to Noon when a grilled chicken sandwich with lemon chive aioli on homemade baguette and an apple awaited me. Frankly, it just didn't seem like much after the wait. The same thing was fine the prior day but then I ate a big breakfast so it wasn't quite the same thing. Empathy was the theme of my writings today and there I was feelin' it just a short time later.

So on with what we did today...

Breakfast

No breakfast (obviously) for me
Henry chose no breakfast either as is his usual habit

Lunch

The aforementioned chicken sandwich and apple for me
Henry had a pizza sandwich - Homemade baguette with organic marinara from TJs, Canadian bacon and mozzarella cheese and an apple

Dinner

One of Henry's favorites was on the menu tonight - chicken parmesan. Simple and really good but still I was working with limited resources so things were a bit different than usual.

Chicken Parmesan - Hunger Awareness Week style

• 1 and 1/2 Half chicken breasts leftover from when I broke down the whole bird on Monday
• 1 Egg
• 1 Tablespoon Milk, Organic 1%
• Fresh bread crumbs - the centers of the bread on which we've made sandwiches the past 2 days
• Kosher salt & freshly ground black pepper
• Canola oil for sauteing
• Trader Joe's Organic Marinara - We buy this as we don't often use red sauce and this makes fine pizza sauce and is really quite tasty and no high fructose corn syrup or other sweeteners - it tastes like herby tomatoes w/ onions and garlic the way it's supposed to and it's cheap, $2.29. I don't think I can make 25oz of organic sauce for that
• 2oz Shredded mozzarella cheese

1. Cut the chicken breasts into 4 equal pieces per breast
2. Pound to ~3/8 inch thick between 2 wet sheets of plastic
3. Beat egg and milk w/ a pinch of salt (this helps break up the albumin in the egg and makes it smooth)
4. Add the chicken to the egg mixture and let soak while grinding the bread crumbs
5. Dredge the chicken on one side in the bread crumbs - no added seasoning today
6. Salt and pepper the non-breaded side and then dredge that side as well
7. Saute the breaded chicken bits in just the smallest amount of canola oil you can until brown on both sides
8. Oil a 9x13" baking pan lightly and spread with about 3/4 C marinara sauce
9. Remove chicken to the sauced baking dish as it is browned
10. Spread a bit of marinara on each piece of chicken and sprinkle with cheese. I usually add parmesan, asiago etc. at this point but we're on a budget so mozzarella only and not much of that

Bake for 15 minutes @ 400F


I served this with steamed broccoli tonight and we had enough chicken left over for us both to take for lunch tomorrow as Henry once again accompanies me to Bring a Child to Work Day. We usually leave early and go out to lunch but this year we need to stay (I have too much to do this week, busy busy) and we're on the budget too so no dining out for today.

All in all another successful day on the challenge. A full belly, a happy kid and time to get a full nights rest. Is there any more?


Hasta