split chicken breasts and candied carrots

So in all fairness I didn't make this dish tonight.  As I said in Monday's post, I'm running out of recipes, and tonight for dinner I made us deep fried dinner.  This was one that I had made several weeks ago when my ex was in town, so I made enough for 5 that night.

First, I pulled out this crazy cheap chicken: 4 split breasts (translation: LOTS of white meat, a little bone and skin.  Made MORE than enough to feed us all.) for $5.03.  I thawed it in the microwave, and seasoned it.

Because I knew my ex would prefer bbq sauce to butter and seasonings, I did it in two separate dishes.

 I just poured 1/2 a bottle of BBQ on one, and sprayed the other with "butter flavored cooking spray" [generic Pam] and shook on "Italian Seasonings"




I then cooked it in the oven at 375 for an hour.  While it was cooking, I got out the rest of these carrots (roughly 65 cents worth) and washed, peeled, and sliced them, then put them in the pot.  Since dessert that night was store-bought cookies (on sale, the large, soft cookies were 8 for $1) I didn't need to do anything else, so I just relaxed for half an hour.  When there was 20 minutes left on the chicken, I turned the heat on the carrots: to make "candied" carrots, all you really need to add is a little bit of butter and a lot of sugar to the water that you boil the carrots in.


So, first, add just enough water to your pot to boil the carrots and turn the heat on high.  Once boiling, lower the heat to medium, add about 1 Tbsp butter or margarine (guess which one I use) and about a cup of sugar.  I add 3/4 cup brown sugar and 1/4 cup sugar (eyeballing and spooning, not actually measuring, folks), stir well, and set your timer for about ten minutes.  If you get a rolling boil on medium heat, lower it to medium-low.  It should be bubbling slowly, like a fetid swamp.   You can leave them simmering at this level indefinitely, as long as they don't dry out and burn to the pan.

 Although the kids were a little suspicious of carrots being passed off as "candied", they believed it when they tasted it.

Our totals for this meal, then, were:  $5.03 chicken, $1 for half a bottle of BBQ sauce, 65 cents for the carrots, and each cup of sugar was previously calculated at 25 cents.  Since this was for granulated sugar, not brown, let's call it 50 cents worth of "mixed sugars" to be on the safe side.  There was $1 for the pack of dessert cookies, and maybe 25 cents for the Pam and "Italian seasonings", bringing the total to 

$8.43  

And that fed an extra person.

The best part about this meal: The kids discovered that carrots can be yummy.