Go-To Dinner: Barbecue Pulled Chicken Sliders

Hey, folks! Just a quick post sharing my new favorite go-to, super quick, relatively healthy dinner I just found in Cooking Light. We tried these tonight with great success. Enjoy!


Barbecue Pulled Chicken Sliders:
For a less sweet option, use sliced dill pickles.

Total: 20 minutes
Yield: 4 servings (serving size: 2 sandwiches)

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup no-salt-added ketchup
• 1 tablespoon dark brown sugar (I used light brown; tasted fine)
  
• 1 tablespoon cider vinegar
• 1 teaspoon chili powder
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/2 teaspoon onion powder
• 1/2 teaspoon dry mustard (I bet regular would work, too)
  
• 1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1/8 teaspoon ground allspice
• 2 cups shredded skinless, boneless rotisserie chicken breast
• 8 (1.3-ounce) sliders mini buns (such as Pepperidge Farm)
• 8 bread-and-butter pickle chips

Preparation

1. Combine first 10 ingredients in a small saucepan over medium heat. Bring to a simmer; cook 3 minutes or until slightly thick, stirring occasionally. Add chicken to ketchup mixture; stir to combine. Cook 2 minutes or until chicken is thoroughly heated.

2. Spoon 3 tablespoons chicken mixture on bottom half of each bun; top each with 1 pickle chip and top half of bun.

Nutritional Information

Calories: 400

Fat: 7.5g (sat 2.3g,mono 0.9g,poly 0.5g)

Protein: 30g

Carbohydrate: 52.7g

Fiber: 1.9g

Cholesterol: 60mg

Iron: 2.7mg

Sodium: 481mg

Calcium: 83mg

I did this in under 15 minutes. As a new mom-to-be, I have begun looking at recipes that take 20 minutes or so. Trust me, as I find more of them, I'll post them.

It gets more real every day....

And today Mom and sister M are taking me to Babies 'R Us to choose the essentials.

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Bumpy

Several have asked for pictures of preggo me, so here you go, me at almost 20 full weeks (21 starts Saturday). That's 4 1/2 months, people. Halfway done cooking the bun!




Oh, and look at this gorgeous baby blanket one of my seniors made me. Covered with Eric Carle illustrations, it made me smile and brought me pretty damn close to tears in the middle of a classroom. She totally blew me away.

Brown bear, brown bear, what do you see? I see something incredibly thoughtful.

Happy happenings

Consider this a counter-post to the previous one:

1) Yesterday Penny turned three. She celebrated by throwing up in the middle of the night and getting chicken for dinner as a result.

2) I think I finally felt the baby move the other day. And I'm halfway done cooking him.

3) My youngest sister just got engaged! January has given a lot of genuine happiness to my family.

Budget woes

Today the proposed state budget came out. Looks like a lot of cuts, including, of course, education. This means schools, which means teachers, which may well mean me. I'm writing this in immediate response to this and the warning from my principal that cuts would be, in his words, "unprecedented". So while I've had to deal with this for the past four years, this year feels different for a number of reasons.

We all knew this was coming. Last year the school district barely squeaked by because we managed to raise taxes just enough to cover the deficit in spending. But now the governor has proposed a cap on how much to raise taxes...and I can't blame him. The state can't keep taxing everyone to death because it's so screwed up financially that the only way out is to gouge its citizens. I live in the county with the highest taxes in the COUNTRY. Don't think I don't know. Frustration just boils through, that it always seems as though education gets cut first instead of reorganizing and trimming fat from places we damn well know could lose some. Or a lot.

I'm scared. Being 34, a mom, and jobless doesn't fit well with my mental picture of my life. I know I'll land on my feet, but my position is at best precarious. I've played this game of Survivor and stayed on the island, to stretch the metaphor, so far. However, I've never had so much at stake before. We have a child coming, and I can't afford not to work. Yes, I'll find something--I'm qualified and have good references. T will get another job if he has to. But I don't mind expressing that the meantime doesn't feel good at all.

I will try very hard to work on what I can control. I've updated my resume. I'll stay calm. No more extraneous purchases. Keep baby healthy in utero. Particularly, I can focus on the rest of this school year and making damned sure I give those students everything I've got. Best of all, I'm not in any way in this alone. I have a wonderful support system in my husband, family, and friends, and we will come out of this.

I just have to remember that.

The new ride

Check out T's new (to us) car! It's forest green and gets double the gas mileage of the old Jeep. Plus it "initiated" itself this morning by getting stuck in the driveway on the way to the DMV.

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A dog's life

I haven't blogged about Penny in a while. I think it's ok to entertain you with Penny Tales.

My dearest Pen loves, loves, LOVES the winter. This has upsides and downsides. Watching her run around like a fuzzy little bullet, blazing her way through the drifts and burying her snout in the snow just to look excitedly at me as if to say, "HI! Mama, this is the best thing EVER! Nowigodoitagainagainagain!!!!!", makes me laugh with delight. However, once we get her home, as you have seen, getting the snowy crust off her wee legs and tummy takes quite some time. She looks like The Thing from the Fantastic Four, only with snow. Inevitably she has to spend time thawing in the back room until we finally let her small, damp self out.

She then goes to find a bit of couch to dry out, curled up in a Pennyball. However, I don't want Her Sogginess on our nice furniture, so I drape towels on the cushions for her to lie on. Inevitably, she will manage to get to the one place I didn't cover and snuggle riiiiight...there.

As we tell her at least three times a day, what a rough, rough life she leads.