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Arizona Lodging Rentals >> Blog >> Sedona

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Sedona Arizona

Sedona, Arizona's Famous Red Rocks

What a great weekend we just had in Sedona! To get there and back we used just over 1/2 tank of gas in our Honda Oddessy family van, which was helped by the trip being almost 100% downhill on the way back. Ahhhh. First, we got settled into our room at the Sedona Summit resort and stood outside and took about 15 minutes to fill our lungs with the fresh Sedona air.

Next, we planned our day one, which for my wife and daughter was shopping at the fun shopping district and for myself and my son was hiking up Oak Creek from our resort along a narrow and seldomly used trail right behind the shopping areas, but down along Oak Creek. All of us enjoyed our 4 hours. My son was especially excited to find a walking stick just perfect for him and I was excited to find one just right for me. We took them home.

Oak Creek was running very high due to the snow runnoff and we actually saw kayakers who entered the creek just below slide rock and exited the creek just under the main bridge in town, about 5 miles away. They had a blast and said they can do this during a 2 week window when the water is high enough.

The next day, after a really great breakfast at the Coffee Pot restaurant, home of 101 omelletes, we spent the afternoon at Red Rock crossing, which is a State Park behind my favorite rock formation of them all, Cathedral rock. It cost us $10 to enter the park for our family, yet the experience was worth a million. With Oak Creek running briskly before us, we took a modest 1 mile hike along the creek and made rock towers to go along with hundreds of rock towers made by other hikers. We settled down for a nice picnic along the creek and sat on the smooth red rocks. My wife, read a book and slept. Me and the kids took off our shoes and put our bare feet in the FRIGID water and it felt nice for about 10 seconds! We also watched silently as a duck floated down the creek past us and a Blue Heron walked down the creek very slowly, looking for fish and food to eat.

Every time we go to Sedona, our goal is to discover new things and we did. We discovered many blooming Peach Trees in their pink glory and we discovered a new, wonderful ice cream parlor which had great homeade ice cream on a waffle cone for the paltry price of $4 a cone, but it was really good. Although we didn’t sit in any vortexes this trip, which we usually do, we definately felt energized by just being in this beautiful part of Sedona and can’t wait to go back. A must visit after leaving Vacation Home Rentals in Phoenix.

Snow Covered Mountain in the Distance

Sedona, Arizona

Monday, April 5th, 2010
Tags: Oak Creek, Sedona, Sedona Arizona, Slide Rock, Summit Resort, Vacation Rentals
Posted in Lodging, Photography, Road Trips | Comments Off

Spicy Chicken Breast

My wife and I would like to share our “Spicy Chicken Breast” recipe with everyone, so you can enjoy the amazing flavors and endless dinner possibilities that will come from this one simple recipe. So let’s get right to it!

Here are the ingredients you will need.
(Feeds 2 to 4 people)

4 Large Chicken Breast
Extra Virgin Olive Oil
Stubbs Moppin Sauce (12oz bottle)
Beef Broth
Salt & Pepper (and any other spices you love)

Now, I need to mention that you will be cooking this delicious meal in the oven for one hour and thirty minutes, so give yourself some lead time to make sure dinner is ready when you are ready to eat, okay.

First, you want to turn the oven to 325 degrees. Now let’s go ahead and clean the fat of the chicken breast, if needed, and butterfly any thicker breast into thinner pieces or cut them into two pieces if you want. Medium to small pieces is fine for this meal and they will cook just how we want them to. Now add your salt and pepper (to taste) and any other spices you enjoy. Remember, this is “spicy” chicken, so you may want to add some additional ingredients to make it a little hotter. Here are the spices my wife and I use in our dish which gives it a nice spicy flavor, but its not hot for wimps like me that can’t handle really spicy food.

Lawrey’s (about 6 to 7 shakes)
Garlic Sea Salt (grinder-3 or 4 turns)
Peppercorn (grinder 8 to 10 turns)
Black Pepper (grinder 8 to 10 turns)
Ground White Pepper (large pinch)
Mrs. Dash Southwest Chipotle (6 good shakes)
— next 4 ingredients 1/2 tsp each —
Ground Cayenne
Ground Paprika
Ground Chorizo
Ground New Mexico Chili Pepper

Now before you mix your spices and sprinkle them all over the chicken, put a little olive oil on the chicken so the spices stick like glue. Cover the chicken evenly with the wonderful spices. Next we want to prep our cooking dish. For the amount of chicken you have, you want to use one large pan or two mediums pans. First, add about 1 table spoon of olive oil to the bottom of the pan and 1/2 cup of beef broth. This will ensure the chicken doesn’t stick and stays nice and moist during cooking. Now, put your chicken breast in the pan nice and even (touching each other is fine) and cover generously with 1/2 a bottle of Stubbs moppin sauce. It should look something like this:

: Spicy Chicken Breast

Next, put the chicken in the oven (middle rack) and set a time for 1 and 1/2 hours. Now, just sit back, enjoy a cold drink and wait for the magic to happen. For some amazing reason, which I am truly grateful for, the Stubbs sauce breaks down during the cooking process and mixes with the oil and broth to create this amazing spicy oil-juice that you can save and use on other dishes such as “Chef-Shea’s Spicy Chicken Green Chili Cheese Enchiladas”, which I will share with you another time, I promise!

(Sneak Peak)

Spicy Chicken Green Chili Cheese Enchiladas

Once you finally hear the timer go “ding”, it is time to sample some of the best chicken breast you will ever taste!

Spicy Chichen Breast 325 degrees - 1 1/2 hours

You can serve them any way you want to, maybe with a side of veggies and mashed potatoes and a side salad, or maximize your dish and make some tasty spicy tacos or spicy chicken cheese enchiladas. The chicken is fork tender now and full of great flavor. We hope you enjoy it as much as we do, and don’t forget to save the juices in the pan for later use.

Happy Eats Everyone!

And to all of our visitors that are renting our Vacation Rentals in Phoenix Arizona or any of the premier Homes, Townhomes or Condos from Arizona Lodging Experts, we hope you too can enjoy some wonderful home cooked meals and margaritas during your stay “thanks to great blogs like these”!

Beautiful Sedona, Arizona

My wife and I had the pleasure of taking a drive north to Sedona, Arizona, in mid January this year. We stayed overnight in a gorgeous resort called the Sedona Summit, located just off of Arizona 89A between Cottonwood and Sedona. We arrived at about 8pm on Friday night, so we were not able to really appreciate the stunning view we had until the next morning. It was breathtaking!

This was the view from our 2 Bedroom Suite in Sedona

Saturday morning, we decided to venture into town and grab some breakfast. The town of Sedona is less than 5 minutes from the resort, and the first place we came upon that caught our interest was a small cafe called Cafe Jose. We stopped in and had their Rancho breakfast, which was very good by the way. Once we had our fill of good eats and treats, we took a drive into the heart of town where they have a great variety of shops and restaurants to choose from, and we found the local trolly called the Sedona Road Runner.

Sedona Roadrunner Trolly

It wasn’t easy finding a parking space, but we eventually found one and began our on foot adventures. We must have walked around for hours stopping in as many shops as we could to absorbe the local art work. It was a wonderful day that my wife and I will remember for a long time.

Once reality set in, we remenbered that we had to check out today from our beautiful 2 bedroom suite at Sedona Summit and head back south to Phoenix where we live and work. Before we returned to Phoenix, we were instructed by our good friend Scott to stop in the Rock Springs Cafe and purchase two pies, which he could only describe as a heavenly treat. Rock Springs cafe is just off the I-17 on exit 242. We did as instructed and picked up 2 pies for Scott and we decided to grab one for ourselves. We had to see what the fuss was all about. We also took home a Pulled Pork sandwich with baked beans and homemade coleslaw, which my wife says was the best she’d had in a very long time. The pie was homemade and made with nothing but love and care and it was a really good pie everyone. We might make this a regular stop from now on.

Thanks for the tip Scott!