lemon and artichoke chicken

Happy Monday!  Hope you've had a great weekend.  Ours was pretty low-key with two under-the-weather kids.  Yesterday they both seemed to finally be feeling better.  Glad that's behind us! 

A lot of quiet coloring and reading in the (new!  I'll take you on a tour of our newly switched up rooms next week!) playroom over the weekend.

Today, as promised, I'm posting the recipe for the lemon and artichoke chicken that I made last week from Practical Paleo.  Definitely give this one a try - it's really good.

Lemon and Artichoke Chicken
Recipe from "Practical Paleo" by Diane Sanfilippo, BS, NC

4 TBSP butter, ghee, or coconut oil, divided
2 shallots or 1/4 of an onion, sliced
2 cups of artichoke hearts, thawed and/or drained and rinsed
1/4 cup of capers, drained
juice from 2 lemons
2 lbs of bone-in, skin-on chicken
sea salt and black pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 375.

Heat a large, oven-proof skillet over medium heat and melt 2 TBSP of the butter.  Add the shallots and cook until softened.  Add the artichoke hearts, capers, lemon juice, salt and pepper; stir.

Put the chicken pieces in the skillet and top each with a small bit of the remaining 2 TBSP butter.  Put the skillet into the oven for 45 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through.

Enjoy!

Notes:  For this recipe, I used what I had on hand:  butter, onion, half a jar of artichoke hearts, no capers, 1 lemon, and just over a pound of thin-cut boneless, skinless chicken breasts.  Since the chicken was so thin, I made the sauce as she suggests above, but when I added the chicken, I just cooked it on the stove top until the chicken was done.  Also, I added a little bit of the juice from the jar of artichoke hearts, which I think really contributed to the overall flavor. 

Sorry there are no photos to go along with the recipe.  I'll be making it again this week so will share some photos later.  I really think you'll like this one!  All of the recipes in this book are so simple and use minimal ingredients - something I really like.  Every once in awhile, I love making really involved recipes, but most of the time I like to keep things simple.  "Practical Paleo" is full of simple, easy, recipes.  Win!  

I will, however, show you a photo of the muffins I made yesterday...

Pumpkin, cranberry, walnut!

They're really good, but I'm going to play around with the recipe a little to try and bring out more of the pumpkin flavor.  It's not pumpkin-y enough for me.  More pumpkin and pumpkin pie spice?  We shall see!

Hope you're week is looking good so far.  Things are starting to wind down for the summer around here for us.  Soccer is over, Wednesday-night church is over, Will's youth group weekly meetings end next week - which means we'll have more time to ride bikes and play outside with the neighbor kids.  Looking forward to summer!