Today's Lunch and Dinner

Rotisserie Chicken with Rosemary Steamed mixed veggies Tossed Salad Homemade No Sugar Vinaigrette So my husband has decided he wants to do the South Beach diet. I am not a dieter myself, but I want to be supportive of my husband whilst still preparing foods my kids enjoy and need. For instance in the first phase of the South Beach diet (hence known as SB) you aren't supposed to eat ant fruit, which would be terrible for children. Frankly I am not convinced it is awesome for adults either, but like I said, I want to be supportive. For example, today for lunch I made chicken breast tenderloins, dusted with BBQ rub and cooked in a TB of olive oil, in the same pan I cooked the chicken I wilted some baby spinach and seasoned it with salt and pepper. I served that with a big mixed green side salad and hubby had 2 TB of a sugar free vinaigrette while I had Raspberry vinaigrette (yum!) and the kids had strawberries and grapes. So he gets to diet and we get to eat and hopefully everyone will be happy. Tonight's dinner according to the SB plan is supposed to be Salmon with Rosemary. We don't have any salmon and frankly for what it costs down here, especially if you insist on wild caught salmon as I do, we're eating chicken and are glad to do so. Take a whole chicken and rub it all over with a mixture of 2 TB olive oil, 1 1/2 tsp. of salt and 1/2 tsp black pepper and half a teaspoon crushed rosemary. I usually place a half an onion, a bay leaf, a fresh rosemary sprig or two and a half carrot in the cavity of the chicken before I rotisserie or oven roast the chicken for added flavor. You could also use a pierced whole lemon, some celery or even a medley of fresh herbs such as sage, thyme and parsley. It usually takes anywhere from an hour to an hour and 20 minutes to rotisserie a chicken depending on how big it is of course, just make sure you cook it until it reaches an internal temperature of 165 degrees F. Hope you have a lovely dinner tonight too!

Weird Wednesday and Thirsty Thursday

Last night's (Weird Wednesday) chicken did not go as planned. What was weird was that I got all riled up over a truly regrettable t-shirt I saw on JC Penney's website. Okay, me getting riled is not weird, me deciding to take time out of my day and throw a RIGHTEOUS AND UNHOLY FIT ABOUT IT is pretty weird. I mean, I usually am good to just write a sternly worded e-mail and then let it go, but something got to me about that shirt and unlocked a part of me I thought I tossed out with my last pair of Doc Martens, basically the part that doesn't worry about speaking up and speaking loudly even if it was over an idiotic t-shirt. I plan on exercising that part of me a little but more from now on. It felt good.

But in typical suburban Mom fashion I also had to take the kids to two different gymnastics classes, supervise homework and try and get dinner started and I had basically made a complete and utter mess of things because there I was at 3 o'clock in the afternoon with a wrecked kitchen and a frozen solid whole chicken. I needed to leave in half an hour. So, I threw the chicken in the microwave to defrost, and started unloading and loading the dishwasher. Seriously, if you are ever faced with a kitchen where things are so chaotic you don't know where to start, just do the dishes, everything else will fall into place. Once the dishwasher was running again I looked at the chicken and it wasn't completely defrosted. I was basically out of time by this point, so I placed it on top of thick slices of onion layered in the bottom of my crockpot, seasoned it all over with adobo, splashed on quite a bit of mojo criollo sauce and set it on high and left. When my husband got home he called me and I told him where the rice, yellow squash, and artichokes were. We decided to split the artichoke down the middle, baste it with olive oil, salt and pepper and roast it under the broiler, when I got home we also roasted the now cooked chicken under the broiler to crisp the skin and give it another layer of flavor, otherwise that would have been a pretty bland looking bird. We ate only the chicken quarters last night, drumsticks for the girls and the rest for us, steamed yellow squash circles, roasted artichoke and rice. Tonight I will take the rest of the chicken meat off the bone for reheating and serve it with a zucchini casserole recipe I just got from my grandmother.

Zucchini Casserole:

zucchini
tomatoes (fresh or canned)
onion
butter
salt
pepper
mozzarella
cracker crumbs


Simply take zucchini, cut it into rounds and layer it into the bottom of a lightly greased loaf pan, add diced tomato, chopped onion, dots of butter, salt and pepper and then repeat layers, on the top add mozzarella shreds and cracker crumbs dotted with more butter, bake covered for 30 minutes at 375, remove foil and bake until mozzarella is browned and melted, another 10-15 minutes.

Today I traded 6 pounds of starfruit off of our tree for a bunch of red bell peppers, red onion, gorgeous beefsteak tomatoes, an acorn squash and I promised to come back tomorrow with some key limes for the guy so I can get more goodies. Here's where I live, we can barter for fruits and vegetables, by the side of a major highway where the tiny miniature Key deer are nibbling delicately at a cantaloupe rind. Its like Little House on the Prairie mixed with a Carl Hiassen novel over here just about all the time so in honor of the amazing place where I live I offer this Key Limeade recipe for Thirsty Thursday!

Key Limeade:

Key limes
simple syrup
water
ice

Squeeze your key limes into a small strainer set over a small bowl to catch the seeds. Add somewhere between an 1/8 of a cup to 1/4 C of key lime juice to an 8 ounce glass filled with ice. Add 2 oz. of simple syrup and then top off with water till glass is about 2/3 full. Mix and taste and adjust lime juice and syrup till you reach tart/sweetness you desire.