The Lazy Chef at Wine O’Clock

Whenever the husband is out of town and I have no one else to cook dinner for, I always have this urge to gorge on totally non-dinner foods. Yogurt and cereal for dinner? Sure! A breakfast muffin and a bottle of wine? Why not! And I may have downed an entire box of Annie’s Shells & White Cheddar during one or more of his business trips…no shame!

I discovered Annie’s Shells and White Cheddar while babysitting two neighborhood children about a million years ago. I was 15 or so and their parents didn’t want them watching TV. But, I got to read them Harry Potter before bed, which made my then-closeted nerd girl self very happy. This was back when the only thing I could cook was boxed mac and cheese anyway, so every dinner time was a chance to showcase my talents. They were tiny little humans, so there was always left over Annie’s. I’d wait for them to go to bed, put a movie in my portable DVD player (oh, the early aughts!) and get down on some Annie’s pasta. I was fired from the job shortly after hire for wearing what the parents called an “inappropriate shirt” to the job one night. I hope you aren’t picturing a scantily clad, bubble gum popping teenager who would bring her boyfriend over after the kids went down. No, I was what the 90s would have called “angsty”, with no boyfriend in sight, and a big fan of Hot Topic t-shirts which featured some snarky, mildly sexual reference that I probably didn’t even get. This one had a cat sleeping on a big, cushy pillow and said The Pussycat Lounge in a retro font. So, I lost the job, but my love of Annie’s pasta carried on.

Now that I’m a big kid I try to avoid binging on entire boxes of prepackaged pasta, no matter how good and wholesome the bunny on the box says it is. So tonight I got my priorities straight and opened a bottle of wine, then promptly prepared the simplest, yummiest, most idiot proof chicken recipe I have ever found. It is so easy and so delicious, that it would actually take me more effort to stir powdered cheese into a pot of shells.

Stupid Easy “Crispy Italian Chicken Thighs” courtesy of Stupid Easy Paleo

• 1 lb bone-in chicken thighs
• 1 Tbl garlic powder
• 1 tsp red pepper flakes
• 1 tsp dried oregano
• 1 tsp sea salt

1. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees
2. Mix your spices together in a small bowl or empty spice bottle
3. Place the thighs on a baking pan with foil or parchment paper, and pat them down with a paper towel. This is where the “crispy” comes from, so don’t skip this step!
4. Sprinkle with the seasoning mix. Flip and repeat. (I almost always have left over seasoning, but use as much or as little as you’d like. I save my leftover seasoning in an empty spice bottle for future use.)
5. Bake for 25-30 minutes in a convection oven or 35-40 minutes in a standard oven.
6. Throw a salad on your plate and enjoy!

Easy and CHEAP! Sure, we’re living the DINKY lifestyle, but we certainly aren’t made of money. Which is why I stopped buying my other Annie’s obsession – gluten-free ginger snap bunnies – since I can only find them at Whole Foods and seriously, who makes enough money to shop there on the regular?!

R procured season 2 of Bates Motel for me before he left for his trip, and I now have a meal that totally qualifies as dinner. And I love dinner. And TV. Marathon commence! Thanks for listening – A

How creepy is that??

 

Cooking While Grumpy

I had a bad day. I had an Office Space type of day. A Dilbert day. How adorable is Dilbert, by the way? It’s cute and sad how miserable he is at work. Most days I like my job, but today, I feel you Dilb. What do I do, you ask? I read articles about people getting fired for this exact type of thing, so let’s just say I am middle management. And let’s also say that if tomorrow I woke up independently wealthy, I wouldn’t be too sad about getting off the grind.

To cure my grumpiness, I went to barre class, buying into the lies my friend/personal trainer (for other people, not me) tells me about endorphins and exercise. Barre is like ballet, but with crappier music, older ladies who make weird faces and Pilates torture devices. After so many “tiny pulses” and plies that I thought my legs might fall off (seriously, they’re harder than they look), I was still grouchy. Maybe even more grouchy, actually.

So, I came home, put on some Adele and baked a cobbler. And then R brought home the wine. Heaven is a place on earth after all!

I love to bake when I’m grumpy. How can you be angry when your house smells like apple berry cobbler, and your husband keeps pouring you wine? It just really reinforces for me that, no matter how crappy the outside world may be, home is (almost) always my happy place. I would never lie and say our home is 100% sunshine and rainbows, because I am a classic type A (see: naggy beeze) while R is a left field type B (see: messy as all hell). But almost always, home is my favorite place in all the world.

Wow! This post went a little all over the place, didn’t it?? I bet you’re still thinking of the cobbler.  And you should be, because it will cure your woes, like it did mine. Here, I got you:

Strawberry Apple Cobbler, courtesy of the Civilized Caveman:

• 3 cups of fruit, your choice
• 1.5 cups almond flour
• 0.5 cups water
• 1/3 cup honey with cinnamon
• 1 egg
• 2 tbsp melted coconut oil
• 1 tbsp ghee or clarified butter

1.  Preheat your oven to 350
2. Cut up your fruits to the desired chunkiness
3. Put the fruit, water, honey and cinnamon in a saucepan and bring to a boil – stir frequently!
4. Simmer for 10-12 minutes
5. Melted your ghee or butter in the bottom of a cake pan
6. Once the fruit is done, add it to the cake bake and set aside
7. Mix the almond flour, coconut oil and egg in a small bowl. It should be kind of chunky.
8. Scoop the flour mixture onto the fruit and bake for 35-40 minutes
9. Enjoy the goodness!!

 

 

 

*Recipe disclosure: I LOVE to cook. But, I am not a natural chef. Until about 6 years ago, the best thing I could make was Kraft Mac and Cheese. And I wish this was an exaggeration. Because I was not gifted with such talents, ALL of my recipes come from the internet. And I will ALWAYS credit my source. Because I love food, and I love you.

 

DINKY. My first blog post ever.

Well…here goes nothing.

Let me start off this venture by thanking you for your time and attention. Attention is so limited and in such high demand, that the fact that you are devoting even 10 seconds of yours to my blog is very, very much appreciated. Or, maybe no one will ever see this, and I’m just thanking myself and you, imaginary reader. Well, thanks all the same.

Next, allow me to share a little about myself. I am obsessed with food and random bits of pop culture. I am a slightly detached humanitarian and animal lover, sporadic health nut, nerd girl and a California Yuppie from humble beginnings. I am in love with a man who is, on most days, my better self, and on other days, my polar opposite. I am probably not nearly as funny as I like to think I am, and I’m not even a little certain of the direction this blog may take. I could start off with my present mental state of overwhelming confusion and anxiety brought on by attending the first birthday party of a friend’s baby yesterday. Or, I could share the fifteen Paleo recipes I saved for this week’s cooking, or my admittedly overly structured methods of organizing them. Or, maybe I’ll review that new Godzilla movie (spoiler: not that great). The future is wide open for my little fingers! And I hope a manage to squeeze in a little bit of everything, really.

Me, enjoying the giant party we threw for our friends and family in August 2013.

But, the question and conundrum that is children will come up often, I think, since the above mentioned confusion and anxiety served as a muse for this blog and its title. I literally googled “young couple without children” and I found the giggle inducing acronym “DINKY”, meaning Dual Income No Kids…Yet. And that’s where I (we) am (are): At this proverbial fork in the road, where we no longer fit in with our single friends (though I like to think we put in a good effort) and we’re total outsiders with the married with children (MWC) crowd. I can only hope for plenty of time and mental stability to ponder this crossroads.

But for now, my steak is ready and my beer is getting warm, so I will end by saying I’m very much looking forward to this journey. Good night – AY