Shopping When Hungry

Going to the grocery store when you are hungry is always a bad idea. You'll make impulse purchases, spend too much money and worst of all not be able to decide what to eat for dinner therefore postponing eating time even longer.
Last night Ed and I wandered through Trader Joe's hungry and indecisive. We picked up pre-cooked curry chicken as a fast meal, lentils for a Indian curry sauce, ground beef for meatballs, potstickers for fun, chicken pate for an appetizer, wine, beer and more beer, a salad for lunch and yoghurt becuase its yummy. Then we got home and had to deciede which delicious item to make as fast as possible to quench out hunger.
We chose spaghetti and meatballs as our main course. And becuase we were starving the impulse buy of chicken pate was already on the table. While the water was boiling, the meatballs baking and the frozen homemade sauce was defrosting in the microwave we had a mini feast. Chicken pate, leftover stilton bleu cheese and Espiral Vinho Verde (a portugese slightly sparkling, crisp white wine that has become my new favorite aperitive, thanks mom).
Eating these three appitizers together reminds me how much I LOVE food! We moaned and groaned over the delicious pairing until the oven timer went off and we cleared the table for the main course.
Spaghetti and meatballs made on the fly may not be nearly as elegant but can satisfy a craving just as well. I was craving meat, why? I don't know. But the meatballs in meat sauce made my mouth very happy! My stomache was not quite so happy with me though and wished I had stopped after the first two meatballs due to lack of room after so much pate and cheese.
MMMMM...food is soooooooo good! I Live to Eat! Throw caution and money to the wind and don't go hungry when your shopping. Buy what you want and eat what you please but remember, everything in moderation.

Sitting on the Can

Cooking the same thing the same way all the time gets boring. Sure, you can change up the main ingredient but you really only have baked chicken, baked fish, baked lamb or grilled chicken, grilled steak, grilled pork chops or sauteed chicken, sauteed vegetables, sauteed ground beef. Sometimes you have to mix it up a bit, sometimes you have to be different, sometime you gotta be crazy. What about cooking it on a beer can? Beer can chicken has become quite popular. I even saw Target carrying a wire device that held the beer can and helped steady the chicken on the BBQ. Normally beer can chicken is prepared on a covered BBQ with a whole chicken on a 40 ounce can of beer. Ed decided to go crazy on an already crazy idea. He made beer can game hens. Cornish game hens were placed on normal sized beer cans and cooked in the oven (so yes, they were baked). As funny looking as they were they tasted great! The beer cans should be only about half full of liquid when the hen is placed on top making some pleasurable work for the chef before hand. The left over liquid is then absorbed into the chicken (or the hen) during cooking making the meat tender and moist!
Good weather means its grilling season! Get out there and make some beer can poultry of your own.

Catching up

How sad is it that I haven't written in five months? Hows sad is it that I have also never posted a meal consumed in our new(7 months ago) apartment.
This is what happens when I change jobs and and homes and am much more sane and happy.
So what have I been eating? What has Ed been making?
Bleu cheese topped grilled pork chops served with sweet potato fries and their own bleu cheese dip.
40 Clove Chicken. Guess what? It is crazy garlicey! The garlic becomes so tender we spread it on crackers!
The good ol' Jambalya! nice and spicy, made from scratch and provides awesome leftovers for days.

Poultry

Ed was looking for a healthy game hen recipe and found the perfect one in a food and wine paring book my parents gave him a few years back; Cornish game hen with sage and grapes. We don't normally have sage or grapes in the house. The sage was on sale, an herb we don't often use, we went for it for a change of pace. And the grapes are a diet snack-food must-have.
I have become exactly what I hoped I wouldn't. The person who stars a blog then abandons it when she gets busy. I'll try and update at least once a week.
Ed has been doing great on his infomercial diet/exercise program. He has lost 10lbs. to date and he's not yet half way through! I'll have myself a muscular man on my hands come summer!