Balsamic Chicken with Mushroom

Tender chicken grilled to perfection, drizzled with sweet, reduced balsamic, and served on a layer of sauteed baby bella mushrooms and onions.

^ is probably what it would look like on a menu. lawl

Now from here on, let me digress onto my college life. I spent about 5 hours at the computer lab last night working on my programming assignment, only to have the TA tell me that I should probably change my program because I had used arrays and constructors, topics not yet discussed in the lectures. Now I don't know what has or has not been covered in Ord's lectures, as I have been decorating my notes the whole time, but I do remember this: programming is used to make repetitive tasks easy. Plus, efficiency is always the best policy. So why give up elegance for inefficiency, just because the professor has not covered those topics? But anyways, I was in the lab for so long because I was stubborn and wouldn't budge from my seat until I had fixed all my glitches. (failed. and i went home)

I woke up this morning just to go to Ralph's and Trader Joe's to get some groceries. Now I can spend another paragraph talking about my market adventure this morning, or I can just not, and talk about what I made with my food. I made balsamic chicken with boneless chicken thighs (brought it from home and my mom didn't have chicken breasts)

Food is cheaper at home. :X

And I actually didn't look at a recipe for this one! Hooray!

Balsamic Chicken

• Halved chicken (breasts)
  
• 1 cup baby bella mushrooms, sliced
  
• 1/4 onion, sliced
  
• Green onion, for garnish
• Salt and pepper
• (Crushed bay leaves & thyme) or Italian seasoning
  
• 2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
  
• 1 tbsp white wine (Chardonnay)
  
• 1 clove of garlic, halved
• A few *asparagus spears
• A tiny bit of tapioca starch
  

How:

1. Season the chicken with salt, pepper, and herbs. You can also pre-season it and stick it in the freezer/fridge until you need it.
   
2. Heat pan to med-high and add a few drops of oil. When hot, chicken in pan and sizzle it for 3 minutes on each side.
   
3. After that, you'd want to turn down the heat to med-low and add the onion and mushroom. Deglaze with wine and a few drops of balsamic vinegar, then put the lid on to cook until done.
4. Mushrooms and onion at the bottom and place the chicken on top. Garnish with green onion (tossed around in the pan some time between steps 3 and 4) and a few artichoke spears.
   
5. Time to make the balsamic drizzzle. Mix a little bit of tapioca starch with water until it has dissolved and combine with balsamic vinegar. Pour that into the pan and it should sizzle and bubble. Reduce it until it's half of it's original amount. (Should only take a few seconds) Drizzle on the chicken. Yum :)