Gluten Free Bacon Wrapped Chicken Breast

One of my many goals for 2013 is to introduce more variety into our dinnertime meals. Like most things in life, meal planning can easily fall into a rut. Toward the end of the year, The Youngest subtly hinted that he would like me to change things up a bit in the food prep department. So, in order to quell the rising familial unrest, I put together the following gluten free (and pork free) recipe.

Ingredients
6 boneless skinless chicken breasts
12 slices turkey bacon
12 slices Swiss cheese
BBQ sauce

Coating
1/2 cup gluten free breadcrumbs
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp rosemary
1/4 tsp ground black pepper

Prepare your cooking vessel (I use a shallow, rectangular casserole dish) by lining with tin foil and coating with non-stick cooking spray. Pam Olive Oil is a gluten free product that I use regularly.

Combine and thoroughly mix the coating ingredients. I like to do this by adding everything to a Ziplock bag then shaking it vigorously to mix. Dredge both sides of each chicken breast to achieve a thorough coating. Place one slice of Swiss cheese on the inner side of the breast, rolling moderately tightly and securing with toothpicks. Next, wrap two slices of turkey bacon (Jennie-O is gluten free) around each rolled breast. Use the toothpicks to secure the bacon to the chicken.

GF bacon-wrapped chicken breasts before baking

Place the rolled breasts into the casserole dish and bake at 400° for 25 minutes. Remove the breasts from the oven and top each one with a dollop of your favorite gluten free BBQ sauce (I use Sweet Baby Ray's Hickory & Brown Sugar). Place one more slice of Swiss cheese atop each breast and return to baking for another 15 minutes.

The cheesy, delicious finished product

This simple recipe was bursting with flavor, though the medley was perhaps a bit too much for The Youngest to fully appreciate. Wonderful Wife and I, as well as The Daughter, enjoyed it very much and so this dish will definitely make a repeat appearance.

Update: The next time we tried this dish, Wonderful Wife experimented with pineapple slices as filling for the rolled chicken and was very pleased with the results - The Youngest even gave a thumbs up!

A Tale of Two Tablecloths

Last weekend, Wonderful Wife and I spent a rainy day exploring a couple of antique spots in the Cincinnati area. One of the spots we stopped at was Venice Pavilion Antiques in the hamlet of Ross, which is just to the northwest of the Cincy metroplex. We'd not been here before, but since the day was such a washout I didn't bring along my camera. You can still get an idea of the look of the place by visiting their website. What their site doesn't tell you, though it should, is that the building was once an entertainment hall back in the early 20th century. Housing a bowling alley and dance hall, the three stories now hold the wares of a fair amount of antique dealers - which are priced a little on the high end.

Nevertheless, Wonderful Wife did uncover this pink tablecloth for our recently purchased (second-hand, of course) dining table. I am most definitely not a fan of pink decor, but she was really fond of it so... why not?

Earlier in the day we had stopped in at one of our favorite Cincinnati-area antiquing spots - Covered Bridge Antique Mall in Mt. Healthy. This little hole-in-the-wall store has a lot of nice inventory that's very reasonably priced (hence the reason it's one of our favorite haunts). We picked up several items on this particular excursion, which I'll blog about a bit later, but one of our purchase left an awfully sour taste.

Wonderful Wife's mission on this trip was to find a tablecloth or two for the dining table, which I mentioned earlier in this post. Here at Covered Bridge, she found a nice-looking one for the reasonable price of $9.00. After we got back home and she spread it out on the table, she discovered the very obvious repair pictured below.

Now, I'm down with the whole "as-is" and caveat emptor aspect of antique buying, but I'm also a firm believer in full disclosure. Here's how the tablecloth was tagged:

Notice that there isn't a single mention of any damage or repairs. So in the end, for $9.00 (more than we paid for the fully intact pink tablecloth at Venice Pavilion) we are the not-so-proud owners of several yards of scrap fabric. Lesson learned. Always fully inspect any item, no matter how large, and be sure to avoid Booth #4 at the Covered Bridge Antique Mall in Mt. Healthy, Ohio.