Chicken..... it's what's for dinner.

Sometimes coming up with "what's for dinner" is often more confounding than I'd like it to be. Perhaps I should do some better planning? Hmmmm....Sometimes, you just want something that hasn't been on the menu in the last 6 months.

Well, after being gone for 3 days, having a LONG day yesterday, and coming home late last night, I wanted something (relatively) easy for dinner tonight. Now, PW posted a Chicken with Tomatoes & Garlic, which looked wonderful. However, I didn't have enough canned tomatoes to make it.... sigh.... So I hopped on over to Tasty Kitchen for some inspiration. I saw a yummy looking recipe for some chicken legs, but again, not all of the ingredients.... so I decided to wing it...

I took 8 legs & 8 thighs, removed the skin (left the bones) and placed them in my crock pot with salt & pepper. I started them on high and cooked for a few hours till I could see hardly any pink. While they were cooking, I mixed up the following ingredients and then poured it over the chicken pieces:

10oz seedless raspberry jam/preserves
1c. ketchup
1/4c. worstershire sauce
3 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp dijon mustard
4 chopped up cloves of garlic
2 shakes of Tapatio hot sauce

After I added the sauce, I cooked it (still on high) for another 3 hours (give or take). Basically, I wanted the meat falling off the bones and the sauce nicely mixed up with the liquid that the chicken had made in the previous 4 hours.

Just LOOK at this.... chunks of garlic, yummy sauce, meat that falls apart... YUM YUM YUM!!

I let it sit for about a half hour (while the olive cheese bread was cooking) and served it with a salad and the olive cheese bread, with MUCH less olives. Oh, and I followed it all up with some of PW's insanely delicious Apple Dumplings.  The only change I make to that recipe is that I use 3 apples - cutting each into 6th's - instead of 2 apples cut into 8 pieces. We all agreed that a little more apple was in order.

The chicken does produce a fair amount of "juice" which translates into yummy broth AND fat. While I didn't drain off the fat before adding the sauce, I did spoon some of it off after cooking it down. There was enough chicken here to feed all 5 of us and leave a good amount left over. I pulled all the remaining meat off the bones and shredded the meat, which was mostly already to that point. I placed it and ALL the sauce/juice into a container & put it in the fridge. I think I'll serve it over rice for dinner tomorrow... YUM...