Chicken and Salad from Jamie Oliver

I received "Jamie's America" for Christmas - just a beautiful book. The photos of not only the food but also the places visited are spectacular. I haven't spent a lot of time with this book yet, but 2 recipes jumped out at me and demanded to be made- Southern Pecan and Apple Salad, and Competition Chicken.

I have a weakness for bbq - good bbq, real(ish) bbq, and this chicken is definitely the best bbq chicken I've made. That didn't use a bbq.

Southern Pecan and Apple Salad

So delicious. I was really pleased with this. Super easy and very tasty. And if you click this link here, you can see the nutritional info courtesy of Health.com (although they've scaled it down to 6 servings and in the book it's 4).

Bread Baking Babes - Stromboli

Elle from Feeding My Enthusiasms was the lucky lady to choose our bread for May, and she chose the Stromboli.

The stromboli is a sandwich in every slice - meat and cheese layered on a lovely bread dough, rolled up and baked. The recipe is straightforward to make and the results are delicious.

Our stromboli was layered with proscuitto and salami and swiss cheese and basil.  I rolled it up as tight as I could, sprinkled it with salt and baked it.

Unfortunately I forgot the apparently critical step of piercing the bread before cooking, presumably so your bread doesn't bake up hollow like mine did.

Regardless of the big air pockets in the bread, it was delicious. As Elle mentioned in her post to us Babes, this is a perfect picnic food. If the warm weather decides to stick around, maybe we'll find out!

Please visit Elle for the recipe, and all the deets on being a Buddy with her delicious pick. And please visit the participating Babes (listed over on the left) to see their breads as well.

Cheers!