Grilled Crispy Chicken BLT Salad!

Grilled Crispy Chicken BLT Salad!  That's a mouth full, but the Salad is so worth every word!

Best part, it's part of my new series,

You will need:

*Bag of breaded chicken, I used the Kroger Brand breaded chicken tenders.
*Bacon
*Foil
*Lettuce of choice, I used iceberg because that's what I had
*Tomatoes I used grape tomatoes, but any will work
*any other Salad Toppings you're a fan of!
*Salad Dressing of choice, I'm using our favorite Dairy Free Ranch!

So first, heat up the grill to the temperature given for your breaded chicken.  Turn on all of your burners to high to heat it up, then turn off the middle two (assuming a four burner grill, adjust according to your grill) and adjust the outer burners to maintain a steady temperature.

Then lay down some foil across the middle of the grill and lay out your chicken and Bacon.

Now close the lid and head inside to turn on a timer for 10 minutes! Or enjoy the outside, but I'm grilling right now because of the 115* heat!

Now inside chop your lettuce, tomatoes, and other toppings for your salad and prep your salad dressing.  Check your chicken periodically so it doesn't burn!

Pro-tip: Bacon cooks pretty fast on the grill, especially if you use precooked like I did.  It was completely black in less than 5 minutes!  Yuck!  I had to cook a second batch, such a waste of bacon!

The chicken will still take close to the same amount of time on the grill as in the oven, but check it often so it doesn't burn just in case!

When it's crispy and hot through, take the chicken off with tongs and put it on a plate.  Crumble the bacon and chop the chicken if you want.  We leave it whole because the kids eat the chicken whole, not as a salad.

build your salad and enjoy!

And remember,

Dairy Free Ranch Dressing

Our son, Mr. A is allergic to milk.  We found out right after his 4th birthday, and have been learning and experimenting with dairy free cooking ever since!  One of the first things we needed to find was a dairy free ranch dressing.  They do exist at the grocery store, but they are expensive!  Like $7-8 and more for a small bottle.  yuck!

With just a little searchingI found this awesome recipe from Genius Kitchen.

I have since changed a few things, but the basic ideas are still the same.

Also, as I often do, I quit measuring the seasonings after a while, you kind of get a feel for how much of each seasoning you need!

For my version of Dairy Free Ranch Dressing, you need:

*1 cup mayonnaise
*rice milk
*1⁄2 teaspoon dried parsley
*1⁄2 teaspoon dried dill weed
*1⁄4 teaspoon garlic powder
*1⁄8 teaspoon salt
*2-3 cracks of fresh ground black pepper

Dump everything but the milk in your container.  You can use a salad dressing bottle, or a mason jar, or just about any container you can shake and has a lid.  Then add a tablespoon or so of milk and shake.  Then add more milk as needed till you get to the consistency you want.  It won't thicken or thin, so get it where you want.  It can be eaten right away but the flavors develop much better if it gets to sit for at least an hour before use.

Enjoy!

Grilled Pizza - Papa Murphy's Pizza!

I'll do another post later about how to make your own grilled pizza, a favorite of ours, but today I'll show you how to grill a Papa Murphy's Pizza!

Of course papa Murphy's comes as a take-n-bake in a paper pan.  Normally you turn your oven to 425* and bake for 12 minutes.

This works great, and we love Papa Murphy's because without cheese, they are dairy free for Mr. A, but it REALLY heats up the kitchen to cook those pizzas!

Enter, The Grill

You will need:
* Papa Murphy's Pizza - size Large or smaller.  The Family size won't fit on my grill, if yours is massive it might!  Pro-tip: Tuesday is $10 Tuesday!  Any large pizza only $10!  Also, get on the text list, they have regular deals!  This week was 2 large 2 topping pizzas for only $6.99 each!
*Pizza Stone or cookie sheet, something you can put on the grill as a barrier between the PAPER pan the pizza comes on and the grill
*Oven Thermometer our grill actually has a thermometer right on the lid, that works fine too!
*Timer trust me!  There's not much "Oops-how-long-has-the-pizza-been-cooking" time here!
*Hot Pads probably a no-brainer, but have them handy!

Our grill has four burners, so my instruction will be written accordingly.  If you have more or less you can adjust as needed.

Turn on all four burners!  If you want it to heat up fast go ahead and turn them to high!  The goal here is to get the oven to around 425* and to hold steady with two burners.  I use all 4 to heat it up then turn off the two middle burners off so they are: On-Off-Off-On.

Either while you are heating up the grill or once it is hot, put your pizza stone or cookie sheet directly on the grill grate.  The pizza stone/cookie sheet needs to heat up for 15 minutes before you put your pizza on.  It seems like an insignificant step, but unless you like doughy, floppy crusts, it is important!

Once the pizza stone is hot, unwrap the plastic wrap from your pizza, and put it directly on the pizza stone in the paper pan!  Now close the lid and set the timer for 5 minutes!

Now it really doesn't take long to cook!  Last night our first pizza took a grand total of 6 minutes to cook to perfection!  That is why I HIGHLY recommend the use of a timer!  After 5 minutes check your pizza!  If it's golden brown on top, lift the pizza off the paper pan a bit and make sure it's done underneath.  If it is, use your hotpads and take it off!  If not, rotate 90* and set a timer for 3-5 minutes more (depending on how close you think it is to being done.

From here it's pretty simple, cut and enjoy!  Best part is, the house isn't any hotter than when we started!  And there's no cool down time from the oven cooling off from 425*!

Pro-tip!  If you're doing more than one pizza, ALWAYS let your pizza stone warm up for a solid 15 minutes between pizzas!  If not subsequent pizzas will have floppy crusts!

Enjoy!  and Remember:

If You Can Cook it - You Can Grill It!

We live in Arizona and as Summer is coming at us full force I just DON'T want to cook in the house!  Our electric bill alone gets up to $400 a month in July/August/September and that is just crazy for a student family to afford!  Now cooking in the summer you feel EVERY BIT OF HEAT the stove, oven, crock-pot, or even instant pot produces!  Yes, even a crock-pot or instant pot you can feel the difference! By the time I finish cooking I just want to lay under a fan and drink a tall lemonade!

After spending the winter in New Mexico (we were up at 8,000 ft above sea level!) It just seemed so much worse than before!  I just had no desire to heat up the house!  The highs in New Mexico before we left New Mexico were low 80s, in Arizona we keep our house set at 78 degrees, it was just too much to cook and add to that!

So I decided that I was just going to grill as much as possible!  But really, you can't eat hamburgers, hotdogs, and grilled chicken for every meal!

So we decided to see how much we could Grill!

And you get to follow our adventures through a new series called,

And I mean what I say, I really plan to grill everything I can cook!  

Our grill has four burners in the grilling area, and outside the lid we have one burner (that we haven't used yet, key word yet) that we could use with a pot.

Check back regularly to see what we've grilled this time!!!

Where Have I Been?

I'm back!  Maybe...  I'm sure going to try, but lets be honest, as our family grows up and our kiddos get bigger, it just gets harder and harder to find the time to blog and share the things we do!  Nearly 18 months ago a beautiful baby girl joined our family and life is wonderful!  Princess O is the most loved sister in the world!  Mr. A and Mr.C adore her!

Since she was born we had another wedding in the family (I did the flowers again)!  Thanksgiving in Utah and Christmas in Arizona.  Then we spent 4 months in New Mexico while my husband did an internship for his schooling!

Now we're back home, things are quieting down, and I hope I can start blogging again!