In honor of my new reader!

I haven't tried this yet, but I think it's a wonderful fall recipe. I'm tired of keeping it up on my browser window, really I'm not going to make it this week.
Serve with veggies. I'm thinking Spinach....

Apricot Chicken Recipe

If you don't have fresh apricots, you can use a combo of dried pitted apricots and apricot jam. Chop up about a dozen dried apricots and add them, with a half cup of apricot jam, to the stock in step 4 (skipping steps 1 and 5).

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 pounds apricots, roughly chopped, pits removed and discarded
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 2 Tbsp cider vinegar
• 2 pounds skinless chicken breasts, cut into 1 to 2-inch pieces
• Salt
• 1 Tbsp unsalted butter (can sub olive oil)
• 3 Tbsp olive oil
• 1 chopped onion
• 2 cups chicken stock or broth (use gluten-free stock if you are cooking gluten-free)
• 1 Tbsp chopped fresh rosemary
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 2 teaspoons Tabasco or other hot sauce (you can add more if you like)
• Black pepper

Method

1 Place the chopped apricots in a large bowl. Stir in the sugar and the vinegar. Let sit while you brown the chicken in the next step.

2 In a large sauté pan, heat 1 tablespoon of the butter and 1 tablespoon of olive oil over medium-high heat. Working in batches, place chicken pieces in the pan, without crowding the pan, and brown them on each side. As the chicken cooks, sprinkle salt over it. Once the chicken is browned, remove the pieces from the pan to a bowl and set aside.

3 Add the remaining oil to the pan and sauté the onion until it begins to brown. As the onion cooks and releases moisture, use a flat edged spatula or wooden spoon to scrape off the browned bits from the chicken (called fond) from the bottom of the pan.

4 Once the onions have browned a bit, add the chicken stock and lower the heat to medium.

5 Put about 2/3 of the apricots, along with any juice they have given up, into a blender and blend into a purée. Pour the purée into the pan with the chicken stock and onions.

6 Add the cinnamon, rosemary and Tabasco and taste. You may need to add some salt. Bring to a simmer, then lower the heat and gently simmer for 10-20 minutes.

7 When you are ready to serve, put the chicken and the remaining apricot pieces into the pan and simmer gently for 5 minutes.

Peaches!

So a few weeks ago now we made our (now) annual trip to Kingsbury Orchards. We had a great time with our friends and our visit to their animals (a bunch of cows, this year with some baby cows, and a donkey and a goat).

I restrained myself and only bought a 1/4 peck of yellow and a 1/4 peck of white peaches. I should probably have written down the variety since the orchard has about twenty but I forgot. Next time. I also bought a half peck of donut peaches, and although not as perfectly ripe as other years, they are still my favorite.

Although I did use the word restrain in the last paragraph, I did have a lot of extra peaches, so for the first time, I canned something that was not jam!! * It was pretty easy. I canned about 4 quarts of peaches using this recipe. So I'm pretty excited about that. I won't know how it went till the winter, but the idea of yummy peaches in winter was pretty exciting. And I think the girls will love opening up a jar in the middle of winter and remembering our trip to the farm.

* OK, so in writing that it was my first time canning, I realized that I recently made some rhubarb mustard that I canned. And by the time I had finished writing the paragraph I remembered about the cherries I canned in syrup, so I guess I'm starting to can on a regular basis. But it feels like a new experience every time!!!