Spicy Honey-Brushed Chicken Thighs

So... how are those New Year's resolutions coming along? Uh, yeah... me too. If you want a quick, healthy, and tasty dinner to get you back on track, give this recipe a try. True, chicken thighs are not quite as lean as the breasts, but they're still quite healthy and they have a lot more flavor. And if saving money was one of your resolutions: chicken thighs are cheaper than the breasts, too.

John and I have made these a bunch of times, but somehow they've never made it to the blog. It's a quick and easy recipe... all you have to do is brush the spice rub on the chicken, broil for a few minutes, and then brush on the glaze (and you know I love a good glaze). These have that great sweet and spicy combo, but they're not too hot. We had ours with some green beans and Trader Joe's Harvest Grains.

P.S. We're on Twitter now, so follow us here, or click the button on the right. We'll be tweeting all sorts of delicious things. And by "we", I mean John, since I have virtually no understanding of how it works.

Cast Iron Skillet Deep Dish Pizza

Last week I got a craving for some deep dish pizza, which is understandable because all I ever make is Trenton style thin crust pizza. I didn't have a recipe but I knew I wanted Chicago style deep dish and I wanted to cook it in our trusty cast iron skillet.  I looked around a little bit to see if I could find a secret recipe from Lou Malnati's somewhere, but of course there was none to be found.  So I found my way over to the greatest cooking site on the planet, cooksillustrated.com.  They had just updated their Chicago style deep dish pizza recipe last year, so I knew I could count on them, as per usual. Their recipe makes two 9 inch pizzas, but I wanted to use my 12 inch skillet, no big deal, I'll just make one large dough ball and one small dough ball.  They also list their own tomato sauce recipe, but that's silly since I make my own tomato sauce and always have it on hand.  Although, their recipe looks good and I wouldn't mind if you used it.  Now let's talk about the crust on this pizza.  Chicago style deep dish pizza has a buttery, biscuit-like crust, and that was the most important thing i wanted to get right with this pie.  The key to this is laminating the dough.  What is laminated dough you say? Well you get it when you press together alternating layers of butter and dough.  Mmmm...butter.  As you can see, it makes for a flaky, pastry like crust that holds up well to all the cheese and sauce.  Go ahead and try this recipe tonight, you won't be disappointed.

Skillet Carbonara Casserole

We decided to take a snow day today, even though we really didn't get more than 6 inches. I mean, who wants to wake up and shovel snow at 7am? So after Bec made me some delicious pancakes (another future blog post), I decided to stop being lazy with this blog and put up some delicious recipes we've made recently.  My parents came over for a weeknight meal a few weeks ago, and this Skillet Carbonara Casserole from Cooks Country was a hit!  It has all the delicious flavors of a spaghetti carbonara but it's a heck of a lot easier to make all in one skillet.  We served it with my tasty Balls of Meat and a salad, and it made for a hearty meal. This recipe will definitely be in regular rotation.