Anne Can Cook

On my last trip to the Twin Cities, I bought a container of fresh jalapenos. I promptly brought it home and said, "Ok, so now what do I do with all these jalapenos?"
Enter this simple recipe from Cooks.com.
Of course, I did things slightly differently. I just used one chicken breast, which I vigorously poked with a fork in an attempt to mimic a meat perforater. The whole point of that process is to allow the marinade to get down into the meat so that it flavors it throughout out. At least, I'm pretty sure that's how Alton Brown explained on "Good Eats" that one time.
Anyway, it totally worked. Instead of grilling the chicken (which I'm sure would also be good), I baked it at 350F for about 30 minutes. I also baked some of the jalapenos, because I like them.
The flavor of the marinade made it into the whole of the chicken, with the wine being the primarily flavor. The jalapenos gave the whole thing a nice after-burn, but it wasn't too spicy. Well, the baked jalapenos were pretty spicy, but I like that. You may feel differently.
I cheated and served ate this with some Knorr Rice Sides Spanish Rice. I've sort of gotten away from that sort of thing, but I can't deny how convenient they are. They also taste perfectly decent.

In other news, I also tried my hand at homemade pop tarts yesterday morning. I used Smitten Kitchen's blog post as a guide. Again, I cheated and used store bought pie crust. I regret it. The store bought stuff wasn't awful, but it wasn't good either. It had that distinctive Pillsbury taste (you know what I mean?) which is strange considering it was store brand. The texture was fine, but the taste distracted from the filling, except for the tarts I had rolled extra thin. I'm not sure how that might differ using SK's dough, but for store bought, the thinner the better.
I ended up with a dozen small (about 3" x 3") pop tarts. I did 6 with blackberry preserves, and 6 with Nutella. The Nutella ones turned out better, and were also incredibly sinful.

I think I'm going to try my hand at homemade ginger ale this week. I had some really good unfiltered Jasmine Tea Ginger Ale when I was in the Cities last week, and I've been itching to try to duplicate it.