Italian Chicken with Green Beans and Potatoes

To start off, here is one of the easiest recipes I've ever seen. It's also been a hit every time I've served it. It's great for serving when you have guests over and want something that tastes like it took you a lot of effort to cook. It's also convenient as a dish to take to a potluck or to a friend's house when you need a comfort dish for someone. This is one of my mom's recipes (thanks Mom!) with my own modifications to make some of the ingredients easier to prepare. Mom, for instance, uses fresh-peeled-and-cut potatoes, which is tasty...but canned is so much easier!

Italian Chicken with Green Beans and Potatoes
Ingredients:
4-6 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
1 stick butter (melted)
1 package Zesty Italian salad dressing mix (I prefer "Good Seasons")
2 cans french-cut green beans
2 cans diced new potatoes (also called "white potatoes)

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Place potatoes in one end of 13x9 baking dish.
Place chicken in the middle of the dish.
Place beans in the other end of the dish.
The beans and potatoes should be separated by the chicken. It is fine if the beans and/or potatoes overlap onto the chicken a bit.
Stir the dressing mix into the melted butter.
Pour the dressing mix/butter mixture over the beans, potatoes, and chicken, spreading evenly.
Cover the baking dish with aluminum foil.
Bake for 1 hour.
Uncover the dish and bake for an additional 10 minutes or until chicken is cooked (white) all the way through in the center of the largest pieces.
Move the whole baking dish to the table to use as a serving platter. (This will keep the food warm. Just be sure to keep hands...especially little hands...away from the dish, since hot glass looks no different from cold glass.)

Welcome to the Kitchen

Welcome to the kitchen, all.

You won't find any...well, not many...fancy recipes here. I'm so tired of "easy weeknight meals" that have ingredients that are so expensive you could have eaten out (or maybe you've never even heard of them or know where to buy them) or that obviously adhere to a new definition of "easy" with which you are not familiar and includes knowing what words like "flambe" mean or require you to have some kitchen gadget like an automated salad-spinner-ice-cream-scoop-in-one. So here are some recipes using real ingredients that you know what they are, tools most people have in their kitchen, and with instructions for any fancy kitchen maneuvers that might be required. If something needs explaining, the details are here...comment if something's not clear, and I'll try to help. The idea is to have EASY recipes that are QUICK, are TASTY, and don't require ingredients you need a dictionary to pronounce.

Everything posted here is a recipe I've tested in my own kitchen. And it's been given the status of "a keeper" by at least one person in the family. Believe me, if I can cook it and make even one person think it's a keeper, you'll be hard-pressed to mess it up. In short...I can burn water.

If I can do it, you can do it!

Where possible, I've included nutrition information and/or diabetic exchanges, as well. These are ESTIMATES. I am not a dietitian or nutritionist. Nor am I a doctor. I just thought that information will be useful for you to have a ballpark figure, as at my place, I've got a diabetic to cook for, and I find it helpful to know if what I make falls somewhere within their diet...or is so far off it that it should be marked "Toxic" and "Do Not Eat" for them. The figure is based on nutrition info and exchanges for the ingredients, researched online...then added together for the full recipe. I'm not giving medical advice...just convenient reference.

I've included tips where I can if I've found a short cut or substitution in a recipe.

Enjoy!