I got ambitious this weekend and planned a menu for the entire week. My mom gave me this cookbook called “Cooking for Two” and it has complete meals – not just a recipe for an entree, but also recipes for suggested side dishes. We’ll see how this goes. :-)

Today’s menu called for Cheese Baked Chicken with potatoes, green beans, and dinner rolls. The chicken was fairly simple:

2 chicken breasts
1 Tbsp. melted butter
1/3 cup parmesan cheese
2 Tbsp. melted butter

First I dipped the chicken in 1 tbsp of melted butter, then I rolled it in the Parmesan cheese. I made sure to cover it very well in cheese, so I probably used more than 1/3 cup. Then I melted 2 tbsp. of butter in a pie dish and placed the cheese-covered chicken in there. I put it in the oven at 350 and cooked for about 45 minutes.

My oven is really hot and unpredictable, so we had the fun experience with the butter getting so hot that it bubbled and popped, hitting the heating element and causing a lot of smoke (setting off the smoke detector) and successfully rendering our oven unusable until we clean it out. It was cooking at over 400 according to the thermometer in the oven. Anyways, it was quite exciting and another chapter in my Adventures in Cooking book. Despite the smoke, the meal turned out quite well and I highly recommend that recipe.

Tomorrow is supposed to be meatball stroganoff, but I doubt that’s going to happen since I’ll probably be too hungry to clean the oven, THEN prepare a meal, THEN eat – all after I get home from work. :-) I’m excited about this cooking stuff. It’s much better tasting than my meals this past year which have mostly consisted of Lean Cuisine frozen dinners. Mmm.