Yum!

Well its been a really long time since I last posted. I have some interesting things in the works but I'm still not quite ready to post about them yet. However, tonight I made a recipe that I thought was blog worthy and wanted to share.
I've been trying lots of new recipes on pinterest lately last night we had this chicken spaghetti from The Pioneer Woman and a very good knock off of olive garden bread sticks found here at Mrs. Happy Homemaker. I served them with a salad, since I got a new salad spinner for Christmas we've had salad almost every night.
Tonight the plan was chicken parm but its been a cold and lazy day and it didn't really sound worth the trouble.  I was kind of stuck though because budgeting and meal planning have been a New Years resolution at our house and I wasn't ready to break it on only the 15th.  I decided to jazz it up a bit and use the cheez-it crackers we had (I bought them last week thanks to the craving that I had from eating them out of trail mix over the holidays and I never did anything with them.) So here's what I came up with:
Cheeze-it Chicken

What you'll need (this is approximate)
Buttermilk
3 eggs
1 small box of cheeze-its -crushed fine
1- 1 1/2 cups of flour
1/4 cup corn starch
1 heaping teaspoon of baking powder
season salt
garlic powder
pepper
oil for frying
mozzarella shredded cheese for topping
1 can of Emeril's Vodka Sauce

Directions
*rinse and cut chicken into strips then season it with  garlic powder, pepper, and season salt
*soak chicken in buttermilk in a bowl
*while the chicken is soaking crush cheeze-its and mix in a bag (paper works best but ziploc is fine) with flour, corn starch, and baking powder in a separate bowl whisk all three eggs until a little foamy
* preheat oven to 400 and start heating your frying oil in a large skillet (enough to fully cover the bottom of the pan) have a cookie sheet ready to set the strips on
*once oil is hot remove a few strips (as many that will fit in the skillet in 1 layer) drag each through the egg then drop them into the back with the cheeze-it flour mixture.  Shake coating them well, remove them from the bag, and set them lightly in to the hot oil.
* leave them in just long enough that each side is crispy and slightly brown. Then set them on the cookie sheet and repeat with the rest of the strips. If your chicken was not cooked all the way you can put them into the oven at 400 for 10 min. They will likely need it,  mine did and they weren't very thick.
*while the chicken is cooking warm the vodka sauce in a saucepan

When everything is ready plate the chicken and pour just a little sauce over it then top with cheese. You could serve this on noodles but I did not since we had chicken spaghetti and bread sticks last night and I try to be at least aware, if not cautious, of our carb intake

I served this with a yummy cucumber salad-ish thing

2 cucumbers peeled and seeded then cut up in to small pieces
1 large tomato seeded and cut into small pieces
2 sliced of bacon cooked and crumbled
a tiny bit of cilantro chopped fine
a handful of crutons chopped in the food processor
a pinch of garlic salt, cayenne pepper, and onion powder

mix it all together then add a bit of ranch (I try to use very little and you can add more if you feel like you need it.)

Well guys, enjoy!