Pasta with chicken and fresh veggies

Well.. yesterday was the last day that I was able to volunteer at the urban farm on campus (unless I have time to go tomorrow). It has been wonderful, saving me plenty of money the past few weeks. It’s a really incredible feeling to harvest my own food, and I’d love to eventually have my own garden.

Now, I hardly eat chicken, but when I do, I make sure it’s local and free range. My favorite of the area is Draper Valley chicken, and they serve it at my favorite place to get burritos. I’ve only prepared chicken once before (and I didn’t really do it myself.. I left it up to Cameron to take care of), and was hoping to find some frozen pre-cooked chicken at the market, but had no such luck. So, I opted for a pack of three thighs of the Draper Valley brand, figuring that I could probably do it myself. Well, I chose the quickest method of cutting the thigh into slices and cooking it on a pan. But when I flipped the thigh over, I was pretty disgusted and had Cameron do it instead. I just don’t like handling raw meat. Since we still have two more thighs left, I am going to use a poaching method instead, so I can just put the whole thigh in without chopping first to make a chicken salad. I’ll let you know how that goes.

For this dish, I used eggplant, zucchini, carrots, broccoli, onion, and garlic. All but the last two were handpicked by yours truly. I’m trying to be as dairy-less as possible, but it’s so damn hard. I topped my pasta with a bit of cottage cheese, while Cameron used butter and parmesan cheese. I’m not that big of a fan of tomato sauce, but maybe I just haven’t found the right one for me.

And then because I can’t help but post these adorable photos of Lucy, here are a few. She did paw at the lens a few times, and move around into harder poses to photograph, but other than that, she did well for such close-ups!

Nutty butter balls

First of all, I am so tired of fruit flies in this house and I don’t know where their breeding ground is. I have set up two contraptions: 1) a glass bottle with strawberry tops, sealed with saran wrap with a few holes poked in and 2) a glass jar with apple cider vinegar and a few drops of dish soap with a funnel on top. Neither are working, though I forced two into the acv mix myself. I couldn’t even leave my leftovers out last night to cool before storing them without guarding them from those nasty drosophilas.

And man, oh man, it is HOT outside!!

But on to the good stuff.
Last night I made a delicious snack? Dessert? It’s hard for me to give them a name, as they are a mix of so many ingredients. This is an estimate of what I put in them.
1/4 c chopped walnuts
1/4 c chopped pecans
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tbsp cinnamon
in one bowl
1/3 c of raisins and goji berries
used a small blender to blend into an almost, but not quite, puree mixture, then added that into the bowl of nuts/spices
1/4 c almond butter
1/4 c peanut butter
1 tbsp honey
some raw shredded coconut
mixed well, and rolled into balls.
I chopped up a few raw cacao beans and rolled a few balls in the chopped cacao beans.

this made about 8 two-inch sized balls, that i stuck in the fridge to store. The process is really messy, but they are delicious and totally guilt-free. Plus, I have heard great things about raw cacao beans, so when I make these again, I will add some chopped pieces to the actual mix. These are also incredibly versatile, and ingredients can either be omitted or added, along with adjusting the amount of nut butter/honey to keep the mixture roll-able.

and, because I can’t get over how cute Lucy is: