Chicken & Roasted Vegetables - Double Time

I came across some recent Real Simple recipes that had 2 recipes for the same ingredients - one where you make a big meal one night, and then use the leftovers to make a different second meal the next night.  This week I tried out the chicken and roasted vegetables combo.  With a slight chill in the air in the evenings, these recipes seemed totally seasonally appropriate.

Table

For the first meal, Roasted Chicken and Vegetables with Maple Mustard Sauce, it was super easy.  Basically I just got out a giant roasting pan (the size of one you might use with a Thanksgiving Turkey), put a bunch of vegetables in it, and put some chicken on the rack.  Olive oil on everything, and salt and pepper to your liking.  I also added some "Everyday Seasoning" - I don't remember what's in it, but it's just some seasoning mix that tastes good.  Stick it in the oven and enjoy how delicious it makes the house smell!

For the vegetables, I buy my new potatoes at our grocery store in little 1 lb net bags, so instead of putting in 1 1/2 lbs of potatoes, I used 1 lb and added a few parsnips.  I just happened to pick the "red, white, and blue" mix of new potatoes - it made kind of a cool color mix.

For the chicken, instead of roasting 2 whole birds, which I didn't actually have, I roasted 2 split chicken breasts (making a total of 4 chicken breasts).  That's just the way I get my meat from the co-op.  It made for plenty of meat for the 2 dinners plus Morty's mix.

I found the sauce to be a really nice addition.  Tasted very similar to a honey-mustard and was good on both the vegetables and the chicken.

The second meal we made was Roasted Vegetable Soup with Chicken Melts.  This meal took the vegetables and heated them up with chicken broth and orange juice to make a soup.  Then, it was blended together.  Of course, this was super easy with the Blendtec.  I'm not sure I was a huge fan of this soup.  I felt like it needed something more... I don't know what though.  Maybe some garlic?  It wasn't bad, it just wasn't fantastic.  Maybe if it had some tomatoes in it?

The chicken melts were an open-face sandwich toasted in the oven broiler.  It used the leftover maple-mustard sauce and chicken and added some red onion and graded cheddar.  If you like melted cheese sandwiches, these were delicious.

While these recipes may look relatively complex, there was really only 1 night of "cooking", and the food lasted for 3 dinners, at least one lunch, and a Morty blend or two!

Tube

I was originally going to make a g-tube blenderized version from the first meal, but there weren't very many ingredients, so the second meal - the soup and sandwiches - lent itself better to making a blend recipe.  

Here was the basic ingredients for the soup, if you're not making it from leftovers:

Roasted Vegetable Soup

carrots	1 lb
new potatoes	1/2 lb
celery	4 stalks
yellow onions	1 med
parsnips	2 med
olive oil	1 T
chicken broth	5 cups
orange juice	1/2 cup

As you can see, this soup uses a lot of starchy root vegetables, which alone would probably really thicken up a blended dinner.  So cutting them with the chicken broth helps keep the blend not too thick.

If you're making up the melted sandwiches and have leftovers, you could probably just put 2 of the open sandwiches in the blend.  I didn't make extras up, so my recipe has measured quantities of the ingredients.

If I made this again, I might substitute one of the cups of vegetable soup with some fruit.  As is, this blend had the largest volume of any blend I've made, and it turned out lower on the calorie scale than most of my blends.  So substituting some fruit would probably help bring it up.

Here's the blenderized g-tube recipe:

Whole Milk	1 cup
flavored Kefir - 1% milkfat	1/2 cup
orange juice	1/2 cup
Roasted Vegetable Soup	2 cups
Dill	1 teaspoon
Country Bread (TJ's Tuscan Pane)	2 slices
chicken breast	2 oz
red onion	thin slice
Cheddar Cheese	1/4 cup (28 g)
olive oil	3 T
maple syrup	1 T
dijon mustard	1 T
Children's Multivitamin	1/2 tablet
calcium chews supplement	1/2 chew
Volume (oz)	46
Cal/oz	30.5
Cal/cc	1.0
% Fat	19%
% Carbohydrates	49%
% Protein	32%

Carolina BBQ style Chicken

The first time I went to North Carolina was for work.  Of course we ate BBQ.  Later I went to North Carolina for a good friend's wedding.  Of course we ate BBQ.  A few years later my sister moved to North Carolina, and I have since made several more trips down there and of course since eaten a lot more BBQ.  I love vinegar, so I love Carolina BBQ!

Table
Carolina BBQ chicken sandwiches
Creamy Coleslaw
Cornbread
Plums

We get our meat from a meat co-op, and just didn't have pork left this month, but we did have some chicken, so I decided to make a chicken version of it.  I use this recipe on Allrecipes.com for my BBQ.  I slow cook the meat in apple cider vinegar for around 10 hours on low and it is totally falling off the bone.

Side note - I have read that many people who tube feed use apple cider vinegar to help calm tummies.  I don't personally have direct experience with this for my son, but it certainly doesn't hurt.

We made this a slightly healthier version by using big whole wheat buns for the sandwiches.

Many times I purchase coleslaw from the deli counter and use that to top the meat, but today I decided to make my own and see how that went.  I used this recipe from Allrecipes.com.  It wasn't too hard, and I upped the normal amount of carrots - about a pound of cabbage and a 1/2 pound of carrots.

I made cornbread from a Trader Joe's mix that I had around the house.

Tube
To make the blenderized g-tube version, basically after the basic liquid base, I just threw a serving of all the meal into the blender - everything that is on the plate in the picture.  A bun with 3 oz of meat, 3 - 4 oz of coleslaw, a serving of the cornbread (use an 8x8 pan and cut a tic-tac-toe design into it - one of those squares is a serving).

I did use the fully spicy sauce - with the Trappey's hot sauce and crushed red peppers.  My son hasn't had a problem with spice in his mix, but if you're feeding to someone with spice sensitivities, you could set aside some of the meat right after it's done cooking and before the spicy sauce is added.

If you don't have a Trader Joe's close by for the cornbread, I'm sure you could use any cornbread mix, but might need to add some extra oil to the blenderized version to make up the fat calories if your cornbread mix is a light version... a single serving of this is 290 calories and contains almost a tablespoon of oil.  In fact, if you're trying to add extra calories, you might want to add a pat of butter to the mix - just as someone might add butter to their cornbread!

Here's the tube recipe:

Whole Milk	1 cup
flavored Kefir - 1% milkfat	1/2 cup
apple juice	1/2 cup
wheat bun	1 roll
BBQ chicken	3 oz
creamy cole slaw	1 serving (3-4 oz)
corn bread	1 serving (1/9 of 8x8 pan)
plums	4 small (5 oz)
Children's Multivitamin	1/2 tablet
calcium chews supplement	1/2 chew
Volume (oz)	36
Cal/oz	35.5
Cal/cc	1.2
% Fat	24%
% Carbohydrates	57%
% Protein	19%