Baked Pineapple Chicken

Wow! You are going to love this recipe. Not only is it easy and tasty but virtually fat free. It's sweet, sour and spicy! Serve over steamed or baked rice*. Yummy! Be sure to buy pineapple chunks packed in juice, not syrup, or the sauce will be too sweet!
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Baked Pineapple Chicken

4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (6 to 8 ounces each), trimmed
salt and ground black pepper, to taste
1 (20-ounce) can pineapple chunks in juice, drained, reserve juice
1/2 cup honey
2 tablespoon cider vinegar
2 tablespoon soy sauce
4 teaspoons curry powder
1-1/2 to 2 teaspoons Tabasco sauce
2 teaspoon cornstarch
2 tablespoon water
1/3 cup sliced almonds

Preheat oven to 450 degrees F. Pat the chicken dry with paper towels, then season with salt and pepper. Lay the chicken in a 9 by 13-inch baking dish coated lightly with vegetable oil spray.

Drain the pineapple chunks, reserving juice. Add enough water to juice, if needed, to equal 1 cup. Whisk the pineapple juice, honey, vinegar, soy sauce, curry powder, and Tabasco together in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat. Simmer, whisking often, until the mixture has thickened, about 8 minutes.

Dissolve the cornstarch in the water, then whisk into the honey mixture. Stir in the pineapple chunks. Pour the pineapple sauce over the chicken, then sprinkle with the almonds. Bake until the chicken registers 160 degrees on an instant-read thermometer, 15 to 18 minutes.

* Baked White Rice
1 cup white rice

2 cups boiling water

dash of salt

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Lightly spray a 1-1/2 qt. casserole with vegetable spray. Add rice and salt to casserole, pour boiling water over rice. Stir with a fork until evenly combined. Cover and bake for 25- 30 minutes until water is all soaked up. Remove from oven and place aside to cool slightly, leaving cover on. Fluff with a fork and serve!

Homemade Almond Butter

It's as easy as 1..2...3...
All you need are raw almonds! For this recipe I used a 3 pound bag of almonds. ( hubby is an almond butter freak). But you can use as much as you like depending on how much you want. My cost was $9.79 for the bag at Costco. The jars shown are 16 oz. jars. So this worked out perfectly for me.

Did you know that almonds are one of the most nutritious of all nuts? It's true. One ounce of almonds contains 12 percent of your daily allowance of protein. And absolutely no cholesterol. You'll also get 35 percent of your daily allowance of vitamin E, the valuable antioxidant with so many cancer fighting qualities. And most of the fat in almonds is monounsaturated, also known as the "good" fat.
Almonds are also loaded with minerals like magnesium, phosphorus and zinc, as well as lots of healthy fiber. And don't forget calcium and folic acid! One study showed that three ounces of almonds a day actually lowered a person's cholesterol by 14 percent. Now how can you say no to this nutritious snack?

Well, enough bragging. Try it yourself and I'm sure you will agree that almond butter is the best!
Read below for step by step instructions.

First you will need to toast your almonds. I used a pie tin. You can also place them on a cookie sheet. This held about 2-1/2 cups of nuts. I put them in my toaster oven at 350 degrees F. for about 8-10 minutes stirring every couple of minutes or so so they toasted evenly. Then placed aside to cool.







The easiest way is with a food processor. Of course you can use a blender I suppose but I wouldn't recommend it. Imagine the clean up!











Turn your food processor on high. Slowly add handfuls at a time through the shoot. As it mixes it will make crumbs.











Pretty soon it will start to clump together.













Scrape down the sides every now and then.













After about 7 to 8 minutes you will have nice smooth almond butter. If you like your almond butter chunky add some crushed almonds and pulse a couple of times. That's it in a nutshell (pun intended) Store in a cool place or in the fridge. Enjoy!