Sauteed Chicken and Baby Bella Mushrooms Served Over Garlic Spinach

I found a recipe for Pan Sauteed Chicken and Mushrooms with Garlic Spinach at one of Ruth's Bookmarked Recipe Round-Ups. It looked so good that I just had to make it. This was one of the best dinners I've ever had and you can bet I'll make this again. It's a keeper.


It was bookmarked by I'm Running to Eat, who bookmarked it from Dinners for a Year and Beyond. If you want to bookmark it and make it, let me know how it turns out. I guarantee you're gonna love it!

I've made some changes to the recipe and rewritten the directions. To read the recipe as it was originally written, visit one or both of the above blogs.

• 1/3 cup plus 1 T. all-purpose flour, divided
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 1/2 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
• 1 T. Tone's Garlic & Herb Seasoning (available at Sam's Club or substitute 1/2 T. garlic powder and 1/2 T. dried oregano)
• 3 skinless, boneless chicken breasts, sliced lengthwise in half (they're much easier to slice if they're partially frozen)
• 1 T. vegetable oil
• 3 T. butter, divided
• 1 (16 oz.) container sliced baby bella mushrooms
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 (10 oz.) bag fresh baby spinach
• 1 cup chicken broth
• 1 cup white wine
• Squeeze of fresh lemon juice

Put 1/3 cup flour on a dinner plate. Add the salt, pepper, and Garlic & Herb Seasoning. Stir to mix with a fork. Dredge the chicken in the flour mixture.

Heat a deep, 12-inch chef's saute pan over medium-high heat. Add the vegetable oil and 1 T. of the butter. When the mixture bubbles, add the chicken and saute on both sides until nicely browned. Remove to a plate and set aside.

Add 1 T. butter to the pan. When it sizzles, add the mushrooms, let them brown on one side, then turn them over and let them brown on the second side. Remove and set aside on the same plate with the chicken.

If necessary, add just a little bit more butter to the pan. Add the onion and saute for 5 minutes, or until limp and just starting to brown.

Add the garlic and saute for one minute with the onions.

Add the spinach, stirring to mix it with the onions and garlic, and let it cook down. Remove to a separate plate and set aside. Cover with aluminum foil to keep warm.

Add the remaining 1 T. butter to the pan. When it bubbles, add the remaining 1 T. flour and stir constantly for about 30 seconds to make a roux. Stir in the chicken broth and the wine. Let cook for 2 to 3 minutes or until the sauce thickens.

Add a squeeze of lemon juice and stir to mix. Return the chicken
and mushrooms, with any accumulated juices, to the pan and heat through.

Serve the chicken and mushrooms over a bed of spinach. (If the spinach has gone cold, just zap it in the microwave for about a minute.) Drizzle the wine sauce over.

It should come as no surprise that I'm sending this to Ruth for another episode of Bookmarked Recipes. Visit her blog to see what other foodies are cooking from recipes they've found in magazines, cookbooks, online recipe sites, and other foodie blogs.

Sunday Shorts

Here's the second installment of Sunday Shorts which features bitty pieces of news from my meanderings around the foodie blogosphere and sometimes offers tidbits a little closer to home.

A great big Happy Birthday to Hannah, my granddaughter who turned 3 yesterday. We had
her party at Chuck-E-Cheese, celebrating with pizza and cupcakes, fun and games, and lots of Dora presents. Chuck-E himself (a great big, tall, fat rat) was there, visiting all the birthday kids; when he came over to Hannah, he scared the holy be-heck out of her and she burst into tears and ran screaming for her mom. Bad Chuck-E!

Reeni, of Cinnamon, Spice, and Everything Nice, is in love.




Cynthia, of Tastes Like Home, has recently published My Caribbean Cookbook: Tastes Like Home, and will be writing a guest post here next month.


Teresa, of Mexican-American Border Cooking, celebrated Chinese New Year, Southwestern style.



The Crunchy Chicken is challenging all of us to reduce the food we waste in her Food Waste Reduction Challenge for February.


Need a hug? Chef Bliss offered everyone big virtual hugs on National Hugging Day. Just in case you missed it, I'm offering this Hug Coupon, which is good every day of the year, to anyone who needs a hug, whenever they need a hug.

As is the tradition, Sunday Shorts ends with a delicious chocolate cake. Deeba, of Passionate About Baking, has created a beautiful, absolutely delicious Coffee Mocha Gateau for all of us to enjoy.

Sharing Your Food... Or NOT!

Sharing your food and your words on your foodie blog is a wonderful thing, but someone stealing your food and your words is definitely not an okay thing.

Ready for a rant? Well, ready or not... here goes:

As foodies, we love our food and we lovingly share it. We take the time and put a lot of energy and effort into making wonderful meals, letting our food get cold so we can get a perfect picture, then invite readers into our home--our blog--offer them a delicious meal and enjoy a conversation, in the form of comments, with them. Then a day or so later, or maybe a week or a month later, we're visiting another blog and there we see it! Our food, our words--stolen right off our pages with no link and no credit.

I've had content ripped off from this blog and some of my other blogs, as well as having complete books ripped off and offered as downloads. My words that I so lovingly created and put my whole heart and soul into, and devoted a lot of time and thought to, are stolen, with no credit and no rightful payment. Words that I chose
to share to maybe brighten someone's day, to offer them a way to meditate with coffee, to share my knowledge, to share information about writing a cookbook, were taken from me, ripped right from
my soul. It's like someone breaking into your home and stealing your most prized possessions--possessions you would have willingly shared with them if only they had asked.

As I was browsing the blogosphere this morning, cup of coffee in hand, I came across a post that someone had STOLEN from my Zen Coffee blog. And this isn't the first time someone has stolen content from that blog or my Magical Mind blog without my permission and with no credit given; they posted it as their own.

That's STEALING! That's like the guest you invited into your home and shared your food with, has lobbed off with all your food when you went into the kitchen to get them more food. I HATE this! It makes me feel upset, angry, mad, hurt, and totally pissed! It makes me not want to share my food anymore or to write posts on my other blogs.

I know that plagiarism happens all the time, to everyone sooner
or later--and I've blogged about it at my Writer's Workshop--but
it's happened to me one too many times, even with my copyright notice on my sidebar. When it happens to you--and it will, sooner
or later--there are a few things you can do about it. WordPress has an informative article about Content Theft: What To Do. CopyScape is a wonderful resource to find out who is stealing your content and has an article about Responding to Plagiarism.

Maybe I'm overreacting to the theft of my content, but I think not. It's happened one time too many. I've had my fill of it and I don't
feel like sharing anymore--on any of my blogs. But then again, I may change my mind. I'm really, really upset and angry, and mostly hurt. And when I get hurt, I get crabby, moody, and withdraw. It's in my nature; I was born under the sign of Cancer--the crab--it's kind of scary that I'm so true to what this sign represents.

Okay, rant over. I'd just like to add that I've really enjoyed making some fine foodie friends.

Want Some Chili to Warm You Up?

The round-up for January's Chili Cook-Off Challenge offers you seven delicious bowls of chili that are guaranteed to warm you from the inside out and ward off the winter chill. Come on over, have a taste, then cast your vote for your favorite chili.

It's Just Soup

A few posts back, I asked you to guess what's cooking by looking at a picture of something steamy on the stove. I'll bet some of you even lost sleep over it, wondering what it was. Almost everyone guessed chili because everyone knows I like chili and the picture did look like it might become chili because of the red kidney beans. Appearances can be deceiving and you all know my ingredients can sometimes be sneaky. It's just soup, folks.

I put my favorite pan on the stove, looked in the fridge and freezer to see what was there, opened the pantry door to see what would catch my eye and jump out at me from the shelves, and it all ended up being just soup.

There's really no recipe; just some fresh ingredients, some leftover ones, a few potatoes, some seasoning, and of course, those sneaky beans. But it isn't all their fault. Sausage had a lot to do with it and some veggies that were planning to become science projects in a few days decided to jump into the pan--with the exception of one lone carrot that was trying to escape. One of the nicest things about soup is that it's very open and accepting of almost any ingredient you want to put into it and it doesn't care if you measure anything. Just toss it all in and call it soup. Works for me and I think the soup was happy, too, because it got to fulfill its mission in life which is to be warm, nourishing, and soul-satisfying.

Since this is a foodie blog, I should probably give you the recipe for Sausage Soup. By the way, this is NOT the way to write a recipe, just in case you're in my cookbook class. It's called the "paragraph format" and it hasn't been used since the olden days in cookbooks because home cooks (your mothers and grandmothers) rebelled because the recipe was confusing to follow.

Depending on how many people you're planning to feed or how much leftover soup you want, prep a few skinless Cheddarwurst sausage links by cutting them into cute angles. Make some room on the cutting board and slice some carrots into pennies. Chop up the same amount of celery. Thickly slice a yellow crookneck squash and then cut the slices into quarters. (This is beginning to sound like a money soup--first pennies, then quarters.)

Peel a medium-sized onion, cut it in half, and run that baby under cold water so you don't cry. Lay the first half flat side down and slice width-wise from the top down in concentric circles, keeping all the slices together. Then slice it length-wise from one end to the other. If you're crying at this point, you're doing it all wrong. Turn it halfway around (still in one piece) and finish slicing by cutting it length-wise again from the other side. No tears and you have a perfectly-chopped half onion. Do it all over again with the other half.

Take 2 or 3 cloves of garlic (depending on how garlicky you want your soup) and mince them very fine. Just push them to the side and let them sit there for a while. They don't mind; they're used to waiting until the last minute before the one cup or more of chicken broth and a 14 oz. can of Italian-seasoned diced tomatoes hit the pan.

If you want to be wonderfully efficient and have everything ready
to go into the soup at the same time, scrub 3 or 4 red-skinned potatoes, cut them in half, and then into obtuse angles. And now, here come the beans! Drain and rinse a 15.5 oz. can of red kidney beans. (I rinse mine in a colander under cold running water.) Set the potatoes and beans aside.

You know how much I love nonstick cooking spray as opposed to sauteing stuff in olive oil or butter because it works just as well and saves you hundreds of unnecessary calories plus the cost of the olive oil (and eevo is expensive). Spray your pan with butter-flavored nonstick cooking spray and heat it up over medium-high heat. When it's beginning to smoke just a little bit, add the sausage, carrots, celery, squash, and onions. Stir them all together while the sausage browns a bit and the veggies go limp. When you think they're done, add the garlic and let them all get to know each other for about a minute and a half.

Pour in the chicken broth and the diced tomatoes. Stir to get everyone all acquainted. Add whatever seasonings you want in any amount that you want. I added Mexican oregano, freshly ground black pepper, Tone's Spicy Spaghetti Seasoning (I have a humongous jar I bought at Sam's and have to find creative ways to use it), along with some crushed red pepper, chili powder, cumin, and fajita seasoning. (I live in San Antonio and these seasonings are actually required in all soups. If you don't put them in, the Tex-Mex police come knocking
at your door and throw jalapeno peppers at you when you open the door.) Bring to a boil, stirring once or twice, then reduce the heat, cover, and let simmer for about a half hour until the potatoes are done, stirring occasionally.

And that's it--it's just soup. If you want, you can dress it up with a sprig of parsley.

Sunday Shorts

I'm adding a new ingredient to this blog: Sunday Shorts will feature tasty tidbits
from around the foodie blogosphere.




Cathy, of Wives With Knives, broke her ankle. Let's all send her healing wishes so her ankle is all better in time for her trip to Paris. (As they say in the news biz: If it bleeds, it leads.)

Reeni, of Cinnamon, Spice, and Everything Nice, is very nice and is sharing two of her blog awards with everyone.


Foods and Flavors of San Antonio is going on a blog tour in February and March, sponsored by Pelican Publishing and hosted by lots of wonderful foodies.



Cathy, of The Noble Pig, hosts a monthly Potato Ho-Down. Get in touch with your inner ho and
strut your spuds.



Gaynol, of Self-Rising Flour, is urging all of us to Share Our Strength and participate in Operation: No Kid Hungry to feed hungry children.



Only two more days to enter your best original chili recipe in the Chili Cook-Off Challenge. The round-up will be posted on 1/21.


Wrapping up Sunday Shorts with
a sweet note, Meg, at Megan's Munchies, has awarded her weekly Holy Yum Award to HoneyB for her Rich Mocha Cake. Chocolate and Kahlua are sooo good together, but of course that is my own personal opinion.

What's Cooking?

Can you guess what this steamy food will eventually become?

Notice the little carrot trying to run away. I wonder why one of my ingredients always try to escape.

Chicken Cacciatore

I love Italian food. I love pasta. I made Chicken Cacciatore last week and served it over whole-grain penne.

As you'll notice, one of the ingredients is trying to secretly escape
the plate. Didn't see this little flavor trying to flee when I took the picture. I think he/she is trying to escape because he/she wants to stand on his/her own. Silly little ingredient. Doesn't he/she know that being part of a delicious dish means you get together with all the other ingredients?

I'm short on time today so I'll post the recipe later. I'm sending my Chicken Cacciatore over to Presto Pasta Nights, an event created by Ruth at Once Upon
a Feast.

Another Update Before We Return You to the Regularly-Scheduled Programming on This Blog...

I'm still playing catch-up, so here are a few more news items before
I get back to blogging on topic:

Foods and Flavors of San Antonio: There are lots of things happening over on my new foodie blog. In addition to my Chili Cook-Off Challenge, I'm tweaking my sidebar to include all the big, bold flavors of San Antonio which will feature fun and festive events such as Fiesta and Rodeo, as well as showing you the highlights of our city such as the River Walk and the Alamo. (This is still a work-in-progress.)

My new cookbook will be published in March and both my publisher and I are already setting up lots of promotional events including booksignings, radio interviews, and a blog tour. We're still looking for foodies who would like to either review the cookbook on their blog or participate in the blog tour. The response has been great so far and I would like to thank everyone who has offered to help. You guys are wonderful! I love you!

Chili Cook-Off Challenge: An on-going, once-a-month event where you can enter your best original chili recipe and win several prizes: A copy of my Foods and Flavors of San Antonio cookbook, a chile pepper refrigerator magnet, and this hot badge for your sidebar. In addition, your recipe will be included in a new cookbook I'm writing. Post your chili recipe on your blog between the 1st and the 20th of each month with a link to the event. The round-up is posted on the 21st and everyone can vote for their favorite chili to determine the winner. There's still time to enter this month, so come on over and sign-up.

Another event at Foods and Flavors of San Antonio is A Fiesta of Foods and Flavors in March to celebrate the publication of my new cookbook. It's going to be a month-long fiesta of fun, flavor, and food, and you're all invited. Get your Tex-Mex recipes ready and come to the party.

As if I don't have enough on my plate already, I'm in the process of rewriting and bringing my first cookbook, Really Good Recipes, back into print. I sometimes bite off more than I can chew, so we'll see how this goes. I'm also thinking about resurrecting my Really Good Recipes blog that I started a while back for this purpose.

And... this is just a thought for the moment, but it's good to put your thoughts on paper to help them manifest (or in this case, out into the blogosphere)... I might, just might, just maybe also bring my second cookbook, Food Feasts, back into print. I'm thinking about changing the title to Foodie Feasts and will be opening up this cookbook to all of you foodies who would like to have one or more of your recipes published. More on this later if and when the time comes.

I'm getting close to my 100th post. When I arrive, there's going to be a giveaway. You can probably guess what it's going to be, but I'll give you a big clue...

If you've got some extra time, maybe you'd like
to visit some of my other blogs (which I've been largely ignoring but have recently begun turning my attention to): Magical Mind offers you a way to put more light
and happiness in your life. Zen Coffee offers you a way to mindfully meditate on your coffee. Writer's Workshop offers you the inside track on writing a book and getting it published. Chadwick Pages offers you a look into some of my New Age books.

I'm heading off to Monster Jam with my daughter and my grandsons. It should be a lot of fun, mostly for the boys, and we're going out to dinner after the show, which will be fun for me and my daughter. The boys will be hungry, too, after a day of watching big-wheelie trucks run all over each other and then walking around the grounds and getting up close and personal with the trucks.

Preview of Coming Attractions and Playing Catch-Up

You may have noticed that I haven't posted all week. That's because, just like everyone else, I'm really busy. I'm still too busy to blog, but
I did want to give you a preview of coming attractions that I will give full details on in future posts. (This sentence is contradictory because first I tell you that I'm too busy to blog and now here I am, blogging!)

Update on my Cookbook Class: For the orientation, I asked everyone what the most important ingredient is that goes into a cookbook. The answer is PASSION. Three people got it right. You've got to put your whole heart and soul into it. You have to totally love your cookbook if you want it to love you back. Chef Bliss was the first one to answer and she won a copy of The Path to Publishing Your Book. The prize was going to be a copy of Recipe for a Cookbook, but she already won that in the Gift for a Foodie post. The next two class sessions will be Bite Your Cookbook and What's Wrong With This Recipe?

Speaking of Chef Bliss -- don't you just love the way I segue into paragraphs? It's somewhat of a talent (?) -- she's created a great award to share the foodie love. And she's letting you "steal" it and give it to any blogger you want as a way to thank them for creating delicious food. Now what foodie blogger wouldn't love that? Plus, she's sharing her award-winning Pea Soup. Chef Bliss is one of my newest foodie friends and I just love her. Visiting her blog brings you a sense of -- oh, I don't know -- bliss, perhaps? Or maybe you feel her happiness because she's following her bliss.

Tyler, what can I say? I've missed the last few Tyler Florence Fridays and was planning to participate today -- I made his Spaghetti and Meatballs last night on the recommendation of Natashya -- but other things came up and got in the way. I'll blog about this next Friday, but be warned: There's a recipe-writing rant involved, which some
of you may find amusing if only for the fact that Tyler is doing his best to make us fat.

I'm sure you've heard the adage, "All work and no play makes John
a very dull boy." Let me rephrase that: All work and no play makes Gloria very crabby! I've been working way too hard and not playing, so today I'm taking a doggy day. I do them once a month and today
is the day. My two little babies, Jodi and Moki, are in for a real treat! Well, not according to them, but I think it's fun. They get brushed. They get their nails clipped. They get a bath. And then they get a bone. They get bones more than once a month, but this is their special treat after their doggy day ordeal.

Tonight, I get to play one of
my favorite roles: Grandma! My grandsons are coming over for
a sleep-over -- a pajama party. We're going to watch movies, eat popcorn, play, laugh, and have lots of fun -- and they'll be waking up to a chocolate chip pancake breakfast.

That's all for now folks. I'm off to torture, I mean treat, my dogs to
a special day.

Baby Bella Mushrooms

I love mushrooms, but it hasn't always been this way. For the longest time, I totally hated them and there was nothing on heaven or earth that would move me to put them in my mouth. Until one day, a very good friend invited me over for a barbecue. He was grilling steaks and had made garlic-butter button mushrooms to put on top of them. Since he was such a dear friend, and begged me to try them, after many, many protests: But, Bill, they're so gross!; Are you sure they aren't poisonous?; I won't die from eating them, will I?; There's no way in hell I'm eating them; Where did you find them?; These aren't "magic" mushrooms, are they?; I don't want to eat them, they look slimy; etc., so on and so forth, I thought it only polite to take a teeny, tiny bite just to humor him (and so he'd quit bugging me
to eat the mushrooms).

It was love at first bite -- not him -- the mushrooms. It's a good
thing I was his only guest because I ate almost all of them, with the exception of what he'd already put on his plate (and I did try to take them, surreptitiously, with my fork when he went inside to get me more wine). Poor guy; he didn't realize I could be such a pig, but he forgave me.

Since that time, I can't get enough mushrooms--any kind of mushrooms. I put them in many of my recipes, eat them on their own, and also serve them as an accompaniment (think main part of the meal; big portions) with meat or chicken, or anything else. So, without further ado, here are my favorite mushrooms: Baby Bellas.


The recipe is really easy: Just melt some real butter (4 to 5 tablespoons, maybe more) in a saucepan--or a wok--over medium-high to high heat. Add the mushrooms (I used a 16 oz. container of baby bella mushrooms; grown locally here in Texas,
but any kind of mushrooms will do) and saute until they turn nice
and brown. Add about 5 cloves (more or less to suit your taste) of finely-minced garlic and saute for another minute or two. Sprinkle with freshly chopped parsley to serve. I've also been known to throw some dried oregano and freshly ground black pepper into the mix.

I'm submitting my Baby Bella recipe to Weekend Wokking, a once-a-month event featuring a secret ingredient, created by Wandering Chopsticks and hosted this month by Palachinka. As you've probably already guessed, the secret ingredient for December was MUSHROOMS. I think you're supposed to make an actual meal, using mushrooms as part of the dish, but I obviously didn't do that because these Baby Bellas are so good on their own.

Meet the Newest Foodie Blogger

As foodie bloggers, you know how many times we wish we could reach into the computer and grab the food and taste it because it looks so delicious. Well, there's a new foodie blogger who is determined to do just that! Meet Skinny...

Yumm! This looks really good!

If you're wondering what she's craving, she's going after a red chile pepper jumping across the screen. A true Tex-Mex cat. Sorry about the messy desk; it's usually worse!

I want it! I want a taste!

Hmm, there has to be a way to do this!
The food is there; why can't I eat it?

Maybe I should start a foodie blog.

Oh, no! Where did it go? I want my food!
It was here a minute ago...

Whew! It's back.
I was really worried there for a minute!
I'd better grab it quick before it's gone!

Alright, this isn't funny any more!

I'm getting a little upset... totally bummed.
Why, why, why can't I have the food?

I'm outta' here!