Chicken Fingers for 20 Year Old Kids

I know it's not the greatest picture, but we had to hurry off to the play!

Finger food time! No one, and I mean no one can resist finger food. Especially chicken fingers. It just maybe one of the best comfort foods out there, next to mac n' cheese. There was also zucchini sticks and marinara sauce and a maple dijon dip to go with it all. The zucchini sticks didn't turn out too well but I will give it a shot again. So, for this time, I won't post the recipe for it. I don't think I will be attempting it in the next week or so. 

Before we dive into the recipes, I will give a little tid bit about my week. You may want to read the next post for my biggest battle of the week. The next biggest battle was biochemistry. We had a midterm this week, along with abnormal psychology. I, and many others, walked out of the biochemistry midterm going WTF?!?!?! However, turns out, I didn't do too shabby. Still gotta keep up with the studying though.

p.s. It's almost 12:30 at night, so I apologize ahead of time if I don't make any sense what-so-ever.

Let's skip to today! We are featuring Jenny today. We met while volunteering for welcome week at school. We then had a biopsyc class together where we spent too many times staying up way too late to study for the crazy tests. Today, we went to a play on bipolar disorder. Plays and finger food go together right? I figured so. The chicken fingers turned out really great. Sorta reminded me of a little taste of... KFC.

So, here it is...

CHEEZED-SPICED CHICKEN FINGERS

Working time: 20 min
Total time: 40 min
Oven temp: 400F

Ingredients

2 chicken breast--> cut into filets
3/4 cup ground almond
1/4 cup flour (or GF flour)
1 tsp paprika
1 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp cayenne
1/2 tsp salt and pepper
1/4 cup finely grated cheddar
1 egg--> beat it!
1/4 cup milk (or other alternatives, like almond milk)

Steps

1. Mix the dry (ground almond, flour, spices and cheese) and lay on a plate.
2. Mix the wet (egg and milk)
3. Dip the chicken filets in egg mixture then roll in dry.
           --> a trick here... one hand egg, the other hand dry. Keeps your hands a bit cleaner.

4. Bake at 400F for 20 min.


MAPLE-DIJON DIP

1/4 cup mayo
1/4 cup dijon mustard
3 tbsp maple syrup

1. Mix it all up!

Jenny loves her dip!

Oh, then after the play, we came back and baked 3 batches of muffins--> gluten-free nutty banana chocolate chip, banana blueberry and banana cranberry. I had 7 brown bananas. The recipe isn't quite blog featurable yet. One day. I'll get it.

Meanwhile... ENJOY!

35 muffins later... our last batch was short one, oops!

Asian styling with egg tarts

Not sure what happened here...

Ok, so this is 2 weeks after the initial posting. I said I wouldn't be trying the zucchini sticks again for a while. I lied. I tried it again on the Tuesday right after the weekend. There was left over egg from the egg dip, and slightly egg contaminated zucchini that is already cut into sticks. Long story short. I changed the recipe, and it is so much better! So here it is, gluten-free (or not if you don't want) baked zucchini sticks!

BAKED ZUCCHINI STICKS

Oven temp: 425F

Working time: 10 min

Baking time: 15 min

Total time: 25 min

1 large zucchini or 2 small ones

1/2 cup ground almond

1/4 cup GF flour mix

1 tsp italian seasoning

dash of salt and pepper

1 egg--> well beaten

parchment papered baking sheet

1. Cut zucchini into stick sizes. Just a tip: cut it in half length and width wise then cut it each segment from the center. This way, you don't get too much of the mushy inside in one stick and skin on all of them!

2. Mix all dry ingredients together and lay on a plate

3. Dip zucchini sticks into egg

4. Roll egged zucchini sticks into dry mixture

5. Put ready to go zucchini sticks onto baking sheet--> make sure they're not overlapping or too crowded

6. Bake at 425F for 10 min on top rack

7. Put on broil at 425F for 5 min

Now I know it's tempting to eat them right away but please, for your mouth's sake, wait for it to cool a bit first. I waited 3 min. Maybe 2. You can have these with your favorite dip or sauce or whatever. I ate the entire thing without any dips, it was that good.

Sorry I don't have any pictures of this, it looks the same as the picture at the very top (still not a very good picture but they're gone now).

Enjoy!