Spiced Peaches and Chicken

This is definitely one of my very favorite dishes, both to make and to eat. One of my roommates at BYU gave me the recipe (Cara Powers, now Vivian, for anyone wondering) before my mission, and it's been a favorite ever since. I make it a lot of times when I take dinner to other people because it's so great. It's easy, fast, inexpensive, kid friendly, and has a totally different sort of taste that is exciting and lovable. Might as well rename it Mary Poppins. Practically prefect in every way.

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Ingredients:

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2 lb chicken

1/2 C flour

salt and pepper

3 Tbsp cooking oil

1 C orange juice

1 1/2 C diced peaches

2 Tbsp brown sugar

2 Tbsp vinegar

1 tsp nutmeg

1 tsp basil

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Directions:

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1. Cut the chicken into bite-sized chunks. Combine the flour and salt and pepper in a bowl and coat the chicken pieces with the flour mixture.

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2. Warm the oil in a frying pan, and fry the chicken until nicely golden (add more oil if needed).

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3. While the chicken is cooking, combine the orange juice, peaches, brown sugar, vinegar, nutmeg, and basil in a very large frying pan and let simmer for about 10 minutes.

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4. When chicken is done, pour off the oil and add the chicken to the sauce mixture. Don't forget to scrape the bottom of the pan - there's a lot of goodness in those brown bits stuck on there.

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5. Stir it all together, cover, and simmer for 20-30 minutes.

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6. Serve with rice. Yum!

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Substitution Tips:

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You can make this gluten-free by not breading the chicken at the beginning, just salt and pepper it and fry it up. Then add some cornstarch or other thickening agent to the sauce after adding the chicken.

If you don't have orange juice, you can use the juice from a can of mandarin oranges, just measure it out and make up the difference with juice from the peach jar.

I generally use regular white vinegar, but apple cider vinegar works well too.