Changing up the rotation...

The weeknight meal rotation is a battle that every cook goes through on a pretty regular basis.  It's always "how do I keep weeknight meals interesting and exciting without falling into the rut of eating the same thing all the time?"  We've all been there; you work a full day, run errands, squeeze in a workout and by the time you finally get home there is barely enough energy left to sit and eat a meal let alone stand in front of the stove before you collapse into bed for the night.  This isn't some closeted issue that only some of us go through, everyone at some point is going to suffer symptoms of the weeknight dinner burnout.  Rachael Ray became a millionaire because she came up with the "30 minute meal" concept.  Real Simple magazine would go out of print if they didn't get to dedicate so many articles about saving the sanity of the weeknight dinner cook.  This is why there are so many crappy prepared foods in the supermarket that have a boatload of issues attached to them but people crack under the pressure and get sucked in.  It's hard for everyone whether you are a gourmet cook or someone who doesn't know the difference between a knife and spoon.  So what do you do so that Tuesday's dinner doesn't send you completely over the edge where you want to take a hiatus from the kitchen? (Because don't forget, after that you still have 2-3 more meals to come up with in a given week).  Well you get help and guidance from anything that will make it easier and grab tips from anywhere you can.  I have the "revelation moments" all the time where after I read something or did something for the first time and thought "why didn't I ever think of this before?".  I remember the first time I ever marinated meat in a large plastic ziploc bag and thought "this is mind blowing how easy the prep and clean up is and it feels like you are gaining back minutes of your life".  The great thing about tips like those is that they continue to be there and something is always going to come along and improve your cooking abilities, it's a pay it forward cycle. 

This week I added some new recipes to my weeknight meal rotation and they were really good that I just had to pass them along.  So good that I'm borderline disappointed that I just had them for the first time now but they are here to stay.  Tuesday night I was in the mood for Mexican but wasn't feeling the usual route of tacos or quesadillas that we normally have in our house.  I came across a recipe for Black Beans and Rice with Chicken and Apple Salsa and just subbed out the chicken for shrimp knowing that I wanted to have chicken another way the next day.  It was an easy meal to prepare, involved having to buy limited things at the grocery store and just felt fun to eat once it was presented in the bowl (almost like a fun burrito bowl at a restaurant).  You can either make the meal with a rotisserie chicken like the recipes calls for which if you haven't done it before stop wasting time and go out and buy one today.  It's like the fabulous girl's version of fast food and for $6 it will be worth every minute you save in not having to roast your own chicken.  With the shrimp, I made a simple marinate of olive oil, garlic, lime juice and zest and some chili powder that I mixed all together before brushing it on the shrimp as it was in the grill pan cooking for all of 5 minutes (another huge asset to a successful weeknight meal and grill pans are pretty inexpensive to buy).  I'm not a huge fan of plain rice so I added a little bit of cilantro, lime juice and zest as I finished it off to give it a little excitement.  If we ate a lot of rice in our house, I would totally subscribe to the time saving tip of making a big batch of it at the beginning of the week and just using it as a foundation for other recipes so I wasn't waiting to boil rice every night when I could be doing other things. 

Last night I tried another new recipe this one being buttermilk roast chicken from Smitten Kitchen food blog.   If you are not familiar with Smitten Kitchen, it is a very popular food blog based out of a tiny kitchen in New York City where the blogger does a lot of new takes for comfort food.  This was actually the first recipe I ever made from the blog but her latest post of the fried egg and friscee sandwiches with bacon isn't going to be far behind.  I always use a lot of buttermilk to bake with but the recipes usually only call for a cup or 2 therefore leaving the rest of the carton to go bad in the fridge before it gets pitched a week later.  Well not anymore!  What an amazing way to dress up a run-of-the mill chicken dish.  The chicken came out so tender with great flavors and was a cinch to put together.  The key to success is letting the chicken marinate as long as possible and making the marinade took all of 10 minutes to put together before everything got tossed into a ziploc (remember my favorite tip I mentioned above) and I was on my way out the door.  Chicken only takes 30-40 minutes to bake in the oven which is totally doable for any weeknight and do not skip the step about lining the dish with foil because why wouldn't you want to make clean up easier?  I think this would be a great dish to experiment with different spices depending what you were in the mood for and I served it up along side some simple roasted butternut squash and parchment baked asparagus.  I'm telling you and maybe I'm being a smidge dramatic but one bite and it's life altering.  I honestly can't wait to make it again.

just mix your marinade right in the bag and eliminate another bowl to wash

About to hit the oven.  Don't forget to line your baking dish.

Obviously it's been an exciting food week in my kitchen but here's one more to leave you with.  I stole this off of one of my friend's pinterest boards (the highly addicting online pin boards) but these dried strawberries that I made today were AMAZING!  They are like the adult version of fruit snacks and are super guilt free except that you can eat entire batch pretty quickly.