God's Gift to the Single Girl

Rotisserie chicken. So simple, yet so easily overlooked.

Rotisserie chicken is god's gift to the single girl.  For a mere $6.99 ($5.99 if you find it on sale) you have a delicious, well cooked bird.  You can heat up some frozen veggies, toss them in a little butter and garlic add some potatoes (Bob Evans does a mean heat & serve version) and you've got a great "homemade" nutritionally balanced meal - go easy on the butter, we're just trying to add flavor here, not a heart attack.

The next day, take the second breast for lunch. Add a piece of fruit, yogurt and a bottle of water - DONE!

Dinner the night after...you can shred it into a salad.  You can dice it up and toss it into a pasta dish.  You can stand up in your kitchen and pick the bird clean with your fingers.

So many options!! How do YOU like your rotisserie chicken?!

Mushroom Pomodoro

or, at least that's what I'm going to call it!

Ingredients: sea shell pasta, mushrooms, tomatos, garlic, green onion, red pepper flakes, olive oil, basil, parmesan cheese, salt & pepper.  Adjust ingredients based on how many servings you'd like to make.

Boil pasta, drain, reserve some pasta water
sauté mushrooms & garlic in olive oil (quite possibly the BEST smell on this planet!)
add diced fresh tomato
add pat of butter
little more olive oil
chiffonade basil, add to heated mixture right before you toss with pasta - - give it just a second or two on the heat.
Combine all ingredients.
Add pasta water as necessary - if it's dry.
Grate fresh parm on top, serve immediately.

Delicious!!  Very tasty post yoga vegetarian dinner.  Enjoy!
If you try it out, let me know what you think in the comments.

Car Repair updates & a delicious dish!

Betcha were worried, you hadn't heard from me in awhile!  Well, the SAAB A-C recharge went just fine.  This post is about the most yummy linguini primavera!

I am trying very hard to eat a little more healthily, locally and creatively.  Here's the result!

Ingredient List: linguini, fresh red and green peppers, white onion, broccoli, diced tomatoes, porcini mushrooms, zucchini, parmesan cheese, lemon juice, chicken broth.  I also had a chance to use some fresh herbs from my garden - basil, curly parsley and dill.

Two Year Anniversary

2008 was a Helluva year. First, I got laid off. Then, I caught my kitchen & myself on fire. There are pictures below and they are pretty graphic, so if you have a weak stomach, skip this post!

Here are some pictures of my hand, with second degree burns, after the fire:

Day One

Day Three

Day Four

Looking at these pictures makes my stomach turn. The memory of how painful the burn and healing process were still take my breath away.

As they say, time heals all wounds.  This was taken March 13, 2010.

Suicide by Fried Rice

So, yet again, I tried to kill myself. This time I attempted death by food poisoning, not death by fire. Sorry, that’s a bad joke.

After seeing a clip from Food Inc. and The Cove during the Oscars on Sunday, I was seriously toying with being a vegetarian. I got home and decided to make vegetable fried rice a la Trader Joe’s. Now, a little back story. I SUCK at making white rice. I am a pretty darn good cook, but somehow, rice is beyond me. Tuesday, I got lucky. Followed the ex-boyfriends advice (he made fabulous rice!) and it turned out...OK... I was so proud. I had just watched America’s Test Kitchen make stir fry and (1) made sure my pan was smokin’ hot (2) sauteed onions and more mushrooms (3) stir fried the frozen veggies in batches so as not to steam them (4) cooled my rice before frying it. All was on track to be a tasty meal.

Sometime between dinner Tuesday night and waking up Wednesday morning, my digestive track staged a mutiny. Oye vey.

Later that morning, after I composed myself, I called Mom to whine. Then I posted on facebook that I was sick. I toyed with setting up an out of office email explaining that I was dying. There is something about being sick that turns me a pathetic whiney human being. I want sympathy. From anyone and everyone. There is NO WAY any one else has ever felt as badly as I do in this moment. It's not possible. (See Rougie’s lessons learned about being sick.)

So, I slept. I slept ALL day. My wonderful sister brought over seltzer tonic water (it was supposed to be seltzer), krispy kreme doughnuts (surprisingly easy on the digestive system) and McDonald's french fries. Mickey D's french fries are my magic cure all when I am sick. This may sound crazy when your stomach is upset, but I like to feed a sickness and is usually works. Note, I said "usually!" Not this time, I couldn't eat the fries...or the doughnuts. It was back to the popsicles for me!

Mhaaaawah....

It's Tuesday, which means yesterday was Monday. Not the most shocking revelation, eh? Well, every Monday for the last...I don't know? Two years? My best friend Andrea has been coming over after work. Originally, the plan was to work out and then I would make dinner, she brought the wine. I LOVE to cook and am a fair to middlin' cook. We stuck to this plan for a long time. You may be asking yourself, dinner...wine...exercise, what's the point? Don't they cancel each other out?! Well, sure enough...before long we were opening the bottle of wine when she arrived and ordering take out from the mexican dive down the street. Every once in a while, I would still turn out a tasty dinner. Remember, it's Monday night and we were tired!

Monday nights were just about sacred to me, and I hope, to her. They were something I looked forward to all day on Monday. It's nice to have something to look forward to after work on a Monday. Last Saturday the bitch up and moved! She left town for good. As previously mentioned, she is my best friend so this wasn't exactly a surprise to me. The surprise was how much I missed her.

I boo-hooed a little when we said our goodbyes, but not too much because we promised we weren't going to cry and, we aren't crying kind of girls. We've been friends for 15 years, almost half our lives (holy cow), it's not like we weren't going to see each other again. We both have several very strong long distance and long lasting friendships, so we know it can be done and have no doubts that we will do it.

None the less, yesterday sucked.

Helluva Year

About a three weeks ago, I was cooking dinner and caught a pot, and then my stove on fire. In the process of putting it all out, I severely burned my right hand. Yes, I'm right handed. The only insurance I have is through COBRA, so I'll be paying $400/month for insurance. Ugh. This is the second challenge to overcome.   The good news is that it is healing - slowly - and pretty soon I should have full use back and no longer be walking around with a mummified right hand.

What will the third challenge be???

A Nice Friday Night

Last night, I had two of my girlfriends over for dinner.  We had a great time!  The menu was a mescaline salad, garlic stuffed, balsamic vinegar broiled pork tenderloin with a carmelized onion and red wine reduction, mashed potatoes and broccolini with olive oil and garlic. 

After dinner we headed to the Opera to see Aida.  It was a wonderful opera, but none of us realized just how long it was going to be.  We were pretty antsy after the third scene change and intermission!  The Opera was over three hours.  Regardless, it was a really nice night

It's COLD!

The weather has been blissfully warm over the last few weeks and all of sudden it's winter again! The high today if 40 degrees (F). Yikes. Out came the hat, gloves, scarf and coat.

I'm having a tough time getting into the groove of working again. The last two weeks have been very slow and it's been nice just to maintain deals (i'm in sales). But, the party is over and it's time to start generating business again!

Today has been a good day. I got an appointment from cold calling.

This has been a good week too. Night before last I spoke with an old friend from middle school and had a great time! We talked for an hour and a half. Being in sales, it's rare that I want to spend that much time on the phone after work, however, I throughly enjoyed the conversation. I was also able to use a few "SAT" words. We talked about so many different topics and spent very little time on work talk. I REALLY enjoyed that. More importantly, it was nice to talk with someone who had such a range of interests that you could talk about all sorts of things!

Last night I headed to the local Indian grocery with my girlfriend who likes to cook and began exploring. Last Christmas (2006) a good friend gave me an Indian cookbook and I've finally found a place where I can pick up many of the unique ingredients.

Tonight - I cook!!!