In the kitchen with Steve-O the LLamabutcher

So lately Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays are the nights for me to do the family dinner cooking. Now I can hear the clucking already---this is not one of those households where when it's Dad's turn to cook, it means take out pizza. Au contraire, my doubting fiendish friend.

So late yesterday afternoon, I stared at the fridge and the cupboard and let my mind roam. We've got a big thing of skinlees chicken breasts. We've got a lot of cans of navy beans, and cans of corn. We've got a lot of romaine lettuce from the garden, and---here's the wild card---a heap o' sweet potatoes from my desire to get in touch with my Irish, umm, roots, and plant a couple of varieties of potatoes in the garden.

Add that together in my mind and out popped "Steve-O's Super Orange Baked Chicken and Succotash, together with a nice salad."

First step is the baked chicken. Now I'm sure you're asking yourself, "Dave, is Steve-O really going to reveal his family's secret for making Super Orange Baked Chicken? Because I have had it, and daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn it's good!" And my answer to you would be yes, I'm going to do it. My Moms is going to kill me, but here's the critical sooper sekrit part of the recipe:

Yes, it's Cheez-Itz. You get about one big handful per person that you are feeding and put it in a freezer bag, zip it up, and treat that bag like it's a Code Pink protester in a VFW Hall that's run out of beer on Patton's Birthday. When it's ground to a fine dust, mix in a little bit of garlic powder (I recommend that from Chez Kroeger), and, if you want to be super fancy (which, if you have read this far, the answer is "but of course"), cut up some fresh basil leaves. Dip the cleaned chicken breasts in milk, and put them in the bag with the Cheez-Itz powder, then lay out the breasts in a pan with a little bit of olive oil and a little bit of white wine. Bake at 375 for about 40 minutes.

The succotash is easy. I started with some fresh sweet potatoes dug right out of the garden.

Cleaned, and then thinly sliced, and then sauted---not fried---till soft and barely crisp. Remove, and saute an onion, mixing a little paprika. When they are soft, add a drained can of beans---I used Navy Beans, but you could use great northern or another white bean because, let's face it, aint no one in this house eating lima beans so it isn't worth the effort---and a can of corn (I used a "fiesta" can that already had little green pepper bits in it). Let it simmer, well stirred, adding the potatoes back in.