Cheesy, Oozy Chicken.

If you decide to stick around to read this blog as I start to post more often, you'll likely start to see a trend - food. I love to cook and I love to take pictures, which should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me well. And while this is technically a photo blog, I figure it might be fun to throw in a few recipe ideas with the photos, considering I tend to photograph all my new meal endeavors anyway.

For whatever reason, today at work I was extra hungry. I don't know, it could have been the food blogs I was browsing through, I suppose. I'd previously come across a recipe for chicken cordon bleu at Omnomicon (one of my favorite food blogs) which looked delicious, except for the ham. There aren't too many foods that I won't eat, but ham is - and has always been - one of them. So the question of the day was: what to stuff in my chicken besides ham? I pondered this for awhile until I remembered these frozen stuffed chickens Jon & I ate in college before either of us knew how to cook. They were stuffed with broccoli and cheese, and while packed with fat, were so tasty.

I figured out what kind of cheese was stuffed in those (swiss and american), then using the techniques from the cordon bleu recipe, put together my stuffed chickens.

I sliced the (low sodium) american cheese into rectangles (as in the cordon bleu recipe), placed a rectangle in the center of the (reduced fat) swiss, piled on a bit of broccoli then wrapped it up.

Following the recipe, I wrapped the chicken breasts around the filling and toothpick-pinned the seams together, placing the stuffed chickens seam-side up on my stone.

25 minutes later these babies were cooked to perfection! The cheese oozed out just enough to make it look pretty.
Oh my. It wasn't a terribly hard meal to make, but definitely one to add to my repertoire.

As for the photos (this is a photo blog, after all), I used the Sigma 17-70mm f/2.8-4.5 macro lens. I do have a dedicated macro, but when I'm photographing while cooking alone, it's a little easier to use this lens. I think the photos came out okay, but to be honest I was far too hungry at this point to really worry about it!