Chicken Breast Bacon House Salad

This is what I'm talking about!

 

I like to make a salad that has become a favorite of my heart light. He really enjoys it and we have shared it with a couple of our friends. It has become a favorite of theirs as well. I started making it based on a salad that I loved buying from Zaxby's. You could go and buy one of their chicken strip house salads with any dressings that you wanted along with any extra's that you might want. Being there is no such restaurant that even comes close to that I started creating my own based on theirs. I have since changed a couple of things and added a couple of additional ingredients. Sometimes I don't have access to an ingredient and have to compromise by either doing without it or exchanging it for something else.
So my recipe is based on what I put in it myself and how I make it is my own recipe. Getting salad dressings that I like here is extremely hard so I use mayo because it really makes the salad pop!

Chicken Breast-Bacon Pecan House Salad (Feeds up to 4 people)
1lb Boneless Chicken Breast
8 slices of Bacon
1 Head of Iceberg lettuce
1 ½ Dozen Cherry Tomatoes
2 Carrots
½ Red Bell Pepper
1 Shallots and/or small Onion
2 Boiled Eggs
1 ½ cup Shredded Cheddar or Havarti Cheese
1/3 cup chopped pecans
5 Tbsp Mayo or to taste
Butter and/or Olive Oil
Flour
Coarse Ground Garlic Salt
Croutons

Thaw out boneless chicken breast, rinse and pat dry with paper towel. Season with coarsely ground garlic salt and let it come to room temperature. Should take about 15 minutes.

Flour chicken breast next. Melt butter in a medium sized fry pan and place chicken breast in fry pan. (Or use Olive Oil) 

Brown chicken breast on both sides making sure that it is cooked through before taking from fry pan. Let cooked chicken breast rest on paper towels.

Cook Bacon in medium sized fry pan till crispy but do NOT burn it. Drain on paper towel. Boil eggs and then cool under running cold water. Peel eggs and set aside.

Take iceberg lettuce from plastic covering and remove the stem heart from the head of lettuce. DO NOT cut with knife to remove. Do it by hand. After stem heart is removed, place iceberg lettuce in a colander and allow cold water to run over it for a few minutes and then remove and drain.

After it has drained, by hand pull the lettuce apart tearing the leaves by hand to the size for salad that makes it easy to eat. Place in a large boil.

Rinse cherry tomatoes under cool water and remove. Slice tomatoes in half. Put in bowl with lettuce. Clean two carrots and then slice them thinly and put with lettuce as well. Pour pecans in the bowl. 

Slice a shallot or a very small onion into very thin slices and put in bowl.

Cut bell pepper in ½ and clean one side of it and thinly slice and put in bowl. 

Peel eggs and then slice them and place in bowl. 

Take two large spoons and gently mix all the ingredients so far together.

Take the flat side of a knife and crunch up the bacon and pour into bowl. Mix again with spoons. 

Add mayo to taste. Gently blend in the mayo.

Shred a small amount of Chedder cheese to use as a topping.

Slice chicken breast in thin slices. Place slices on a small place for serving. Place a bowl of croutons on table for serving as well.


Serve salad with breast and enjoy!
(I used to work in a restaurant and there was a cook that worked there and he knew everything or seemed like he did and he told me that the reason lettuce gets brown edges on it is because it was cut with a knife. Metal causes a reaction apparently with the leaves and I believe he is right on that. He told me to always run it under cold water and then let it drain and then pull apart to the size needed for salad. The cold water seems to keep the lettuce plump and lively while waiting to be eaten. I always do this with my lettuce and it never turns brown it is always crunchy and tasty.

Erika's Crafts Corner: Link-Yourself Monday #24

http://kimiikins.blogspot.com/

Colors - Potential for Creativity

Colors - Potential for More Creativity

     I have finally finished my mandala by crocheting one.  The paintings below that I briefly wrote about gave me the inspiration along with the designer who created the star portion of this mandala.  

     I ended up changing the second part of the pattern because I had a strong desire to modify it and put my own interpretation into it. So here it is.  I hope that it will give someone some enjoyment as much as it did while I was creating it. I have to mention who is the designer of the star portion of the mandala due to it having been her creation and copyright laws that exist.  So as far as the pattern is concerned, the star part of this pattern came from her pattern called "Starflower Mandala" which you can find at the following web address. Starflower Mandala

The rest of the pattern is my own creation and I did not take the time to write it as I was creating it. The stitches came based on how I was feeling at that moment and there was times where I would rip parts out and try something different. There will be no written pattern for the rest of the mandala.  Sorry about that.  

     The paintings below helped to give me some ideas with the colors. Of course not all of the colors in some of them were used in the mandala but some were.  I love colors so much. Makes life more enjoyable.

     When I was younger and my aunt introduced me to both crocheting and growing plants. The very first plant she introduced me to was a cutting from her Coleus plant. The plant has bright vivid colors and some of the other ones had deeper colors as well. 

     As I grew older I discovered more and more plants that displayed colors and before I knew it I had many plants. By the time I reached adulthood I had become knowledgeable about plants and started surrounding myself with plants of many textures and colors. Sometimes I wish I could display the colors in my mind onto some kind of canvas but of course it stays locked up inside my mind. 

    Since I have been living in Greenland for the past three years I have developed a strong desire to work with brighter colors when it comes to 
potential crochet projects.
                                       

     When I was younger I didn't give it much thought being I had surrounded myself with flowers and plants that had colors all to themselves and I so love what mother nature throws at us when it comes to plants and flowers.

     Being I live in Greenland now, there isn't so much relating to colorful fauna year around.  Most of the colors happen between June - September.

So having written that, I have taken to noticing more colors in things like artwork and well whatever else that might catch my eyes at the that given time.

     So while my husband had taken me on a short tour of his employer Royal Greenland I had a chance to take some photographs of some of the artwork on display in the offices.

     







I love how the artist used bright colors in the paintings.

    I will have to make sure my daughter Lynnette (the artist in our family) sees these paintings. I think she might enjoy them. I thought the paintings were also cute in light of the little text writings added to some of them about who is eating who. :)

I think the usage of colors makes the paintings even more fun to look at.

This is the center part of the mandala that is actually the Starflower Mandala pattern.  Thanks to Zooty for sharing her patterns too. 

Crochet Crazy Link Along

ii

Tuesday – September 24, 2013

Day 21 of Fall Trip 2013 (Munkebo, Denmark)

Day 17 of Sailing trip – currently in Dry dock with the Qaqqatisiaq

Day 6 in Dry Dock at Lindo Shipyard – Monkebo, Denmark)

https://www.stok.dk/

Tuesday we were invited to attend a tour of a company "Stok Emballage" that Royal Greenland uses to wrap the product they produce after it has been boxed or packaged so that it can be shipped without incident.

This is the old equipment that had been being used on the Qaqqatsiaq.  It is time for a replacement. 

  The tour guide gave us a little bit of a speech with video to go with it but of course it was all in Danish so I didn't get much out of it. After the speech he took us on a tour of the facility.  

This is the more updated equipment that probably will replace the old one. 

On a secondary note, I couldn't help but take photo's of some of the artwork on display around this business along with some very nice looking indoor plant life.  Here is a sample of one in fact. 

After that we all went to a local Go Cart facility "Odense Kart Hall" in Odense, Denmark to have some fun with Go Carts. The kart slogan is: "Give your boss the rear!"  LOL

http://www.gokart-hal.dk/english.html

This is the first time I have ever been in a Go Cart and I have to say I was a bit apprehensive because I did not know what to expect.

We got to race each other in four different heats in which we would change car numbers as well.

My husband Nikolaj getting ready to whoop some butt!  LOL

I noticed that it became quite competitive between some of them but it was all in great fun. We all had a good time.

Once it was all over, the top three was rewarded with medals.

ZOOM ZOOM!!!

I thought that was very cool and it sure did make the winners smile big time.

Afterward we drove to an Italian Pizzeria called Mamma's Pizzeria. (http://www.mammas.dk/Menukort.html)

What a nice restaurant too. There was twelve of us eating and they did not seem to have any trouble getting us into a table and the service was good along with the food.

Nikolaj had the following for his dinner:

1^st course consisted of:

Scampi Fritti: Butter Fried prawns flambeed in cognac. Easy tomato sauce and garlic. Served w / baguette and butter 

2^nd course consisted of:

Spaghetti agli Scampi:  Spaghetti with prawns, cherry tomatoes, parsley, white wine, olive oil, chilli and garlic.  

I had:

1^st course consisted of:

Scampi Fritti: Butter Fried prawns flambéed in cognac. Easy tomato sauce and garlic. Served w / baguette and butter

2^nd course consisted of:

Penne San Francisco: Best-selling pasta dish with large tender pieces of veal, chicken, roasted mushrooms, tomato / cream sauce and basil. 

A couple of the other crew members had the Carpaccio di Bresaola for their first course part of the meal followed by two different kinds of pizza's.

Course one:

Carpaccio di Bresaola: Thinly sliced ​​air-dried beef topside w / rocket salad and fresh Parmesan flakes. Serve with baguette and butter.  

After we finished eating, then Peder (company spokesman) took us to another place for a liter of beer for each person called Bryggeriet FlakiLaven.

http://bryggeriet.dk/eng

I didn't have any beer. The beer the rest had was brewed from some type of berry as well.  It was quite a dark colored beer too.   The entire business had brightly painted walls, artwork strategically placed in the right places as well as the ability to view their brewing facility as well.

I don't really care to drink it so I had a vodka/orange juice mixed drink instead. This business brews its own beer and has the brewing equipment and ingredients right on premises.

I took a couple of photo's of some artwork that was also on display in this place of business as well. ;) 

Don't forget to go to my photograph site to view more of my photo's.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kdojoelsen326

Scarves

A while back a friend of my husbands mom had seen a couple of my scarves in a local shop and wanted me to crochet her four scarves of different colors. I could choose the patterns and we had agreed upon a set price. I was very thrilled about this project because I could earn some money so that I could buy more yarn to add to my stash along with maybe buying a few skeins of yarn that is not of the usual kind.

This first scarf I used a crochet stitch called the crazy stitch. The stitch is very easy and once a couple of rows are done, there isn't much counting required and easily done while multitasking like watching TV or listening to music at the same time. I used a picot stitch for the outside border. 

Begin with a chain, in multiples of three, plus one extra. So I chained 16 + 1.

Chain 17, 3 double crochet in fourth chain from hook.

Skip next three stitches. *Single Crochet in next stitch, Chain three, three double crochet in same stitch.*

Skip next three stitches and repeat from * to *

Continue till desired length. Do not fasten off. Single crochet around all four sides of the scarf.

I used a simple stitch style for the second scarf. I rotated between a double crochet and single crochet. It makes for a nice pattern with the scarf. I used the picot stitch for the scarf border.

I used a cable stitch for the third scarf. This has been the first time I have attempted such a stitch and I have to say it was a bit challenging to begin with but once I understood how it works after a few rows than it was just a matter of my making sure I had the correct amount of stitches on each row so that when it came to the cable part it could be created. It took me a little bit longer to do this scarf but the results came out rather good.

The forth scarf is a combination of the crazy stitch, reverse single crochet and picot stitch.

Down below are some photo's of more scarf's I have done in the past six months. I will add information about them at a later time. 

I will add more about this venture at a later date.  I hope you like the scarves. I am on a mission to make different ones in order to show how they vary and maybe I can figure out which ones would be a big hit for selling so that I can pay my way through my hobby.  Ya know how it is, wanting more yarn to be more creative then I am.