No name chicken.

I am not a very big risk taker. Once I find something I like at restaurants, I usually continue to order it time and time again, because I like it enough to do so. Then there will be no disappointment in trying a new meal, only to wish that I would have just ordered my usual. My husband? The complete opposite. Very rarely orders the same things and is always encouraging me to try out new recipes at home.

So my handy dandy Iphone has an app that I found the other day called "All recipes" - stemmed from the infamous website www.allrecipes.com. It has this cool feature that you can select the ingredients you already have in your house and it will bring up recipes that you can make.

Fast forward to last night ... I am trying to decide what to make for dinner, and know that I have tons and tons of frozen chicken in our deep freeze. {It's one of those things that I always buy at the store thinking "I don't know if we have any of this at home ... guess I better buy another bag" sort of thing} I came across a recipe called "Texas Chicken" and thought -- well, why not. I guess we're Texans now. The recipe called for chicken breasts, ranch, and vegetable oil. You baked the chicken in the veg oil and add ranch for the last 15 minutes to top it off. It sounded gross to me, greasy and very bland. So I decided I would go out of my comfort zone and just make up my own recipe.

Here's what I did! Looked in my pantry and found a packet labeled "seasoning mix". I had no idea what it was, but I thought I would cover the chicken in this mystery seasoning mix, add ranch, and let it marinade with the seasoning and ranch for about an hour. I lined a 10x10 baking dish with a little more ranch, added the seasoned chicken, and baked it at 350 for 45 minutes. Then, I took it out, added mozzarella cheese to the top each piece, and baked it for another 15 minutes.

IT WAS DELICIOUS!! The chicken was so tender that it literally fell apart while taking it out of the pan. The seasoning was perfect, I think I could duplicate it again with taco mix and maybe some Lowry's or another similar seasoning. The ranch added just enough 'tang' to it and kept it moist while baking. I served it with rice and some biscuits and it was a hit! We'll definitely be trying it again, and hopefully can duplicate it since I don't have anymore random seasoning mixes in my pantry.

Moral of the story? It's a good thing to go out of your comfort zone. Granted, this could have been a complete disaster, but it wasn't. And for that reason, I am proud of myself!