Meet Hillary – Granddaughter and Lover of Easy Recipes – Parmesan Chicken

As the oldest of five kids and a person with a personality where I like to be in charge, I was always given a lot of responsibilities as a child and teenager. I’m also the oldest girl cousin, so when we would get together at Grandma Joyce’s house that sometimes meant watching the little ones while parents helped finish up dinner. I love playing with the smaller kids, and luckily I have a great sister and other cousins who are great to help out and play with us too.

When I was beginning high school, my mom made the brave decision to finish her Bachelor’s Degree. Education has always been extremely important to our family. My mom not only wanted to be able to go back to work, but also wanted to set a good example for her kids. She enrolled in some online classes as well as in-person lectures and started tutoring math students to help pay for her tuition. I truly admire her for being so willing to step out of her comfort zone to go back to school as an non-traditional student. I learned a lot from her example.

A lot of her classes and tutoring sessions took place in the evenings. At the time, my dad was the principal of a school that didn’t get out until later in the evening. This meant that a couple nights a week, my sister and I got to be in charge! We would watch over our little brothers and make dinner for our family of seven. We had a couple of dishes that we would make frequently and our mom did a great job of helping to come up with ideas. I was also in a foods class that provided us with some new, fun recipes that we still use to this day!

We spent the next couple years helping with dinners as my mom finished her degree. Once she finished school, we realized how much we enjoyed cooking dinner and continued to help cook meals frequently. We learned a lot about cooking through that experience! One thing that I learned really well was to cook enough food for seven people. I felt like an expert at knowing just how much food would be enough for our family.

A couple short years later, I followed my mother’s example and moved away from home to go to college. After spending some time living at Grandma Joyce’s house and learning more from her cooking (her home is near the university I attended), I was out on my own! And suddenly my table for seven became my table for one.

The first couple of times I actually cooked a real meal (you know, besides the typical Mac and Cheese or frozen pizza college-student meals), I ended up sharing with my roommates. Not because I was planning to, but simply because I was so used to making food for way more people than just one! As the years went on, I learned a couple of things. First, I learned just how detrimental Mac and Cheese and frozen pizza can be to your waistline. Second, I finally learned to cook fun recipes that were the right size to just feed myself.

Five years later, I have graduated from college, spent a year working in the “real world”, and recently got married, turning my table for one into a table for two! My experiences as a teenager and a college student have taught me to be a better cook and to have the courage to try new recipes. I especially love yummy but easy recipes. The recipe I want to share is a recent favorite that I love making for my table for two. It takes little effort and has only a few ingredients. This would be a great, easy dish to whip up for any table size!

To start, I like to either cut my chicken breast in half horizontally (butterfly-style), or use a meat mallet to flatten the chicken. The meal looks more appealing and holds more sauce and cheese if the chicken is flat.

Next up is the crushing of the crackers or breadcrumbs. Food processors are the best!

If you don’t have one, crushing the crackers with your hands or in a Ziploc bag will help you to get a good consistency. I prefer cracker crumbs because I like the consistency and how well they stick to the butter on the chicken. Put the crumbs in a flat, large dish and add seasoning. I use Italian seasoning, but use whatever you would like! We love improvisation with cooking in our family. Melt the butter and put it in a similar large, flat dish. For the dish, I like to use Tupperware; it’s not too tall which makes it easier to dip the chicken.

Dip the chicken in the butter, then the crumb/seasoning mix and place on the sprayed baking sheet. Spray the top of the chicken with cooking spray, and cook for 20 minutes at 450 degrees.

Turn the chicken over and spray again. Bake in oven for another five minutes. Remove and then cover in marinara sauce…

… and then the Parmesan and mozzarella cheeses.

Bake for another five minutes or until the cheese is melted and golden. My husband is a big fan of any and all pasta dishes, so we prefer to serve our chicken on top of a heap of noodles and sauce.

Add your favorite veggies and you have a meal! An unspoken rule of cooking in our family is to just add or use whatever feels right. We don’t usually know the measurements of our recipes until we’re writing it down for someone else. If you find something that works better or have suggestions for making the dish even tastier, please let us know in the comments!