Dinner

I actually cooked dinner Sunday night. Shock, shock. Cooking lately has been iffy - DH is on Byetta for his diabetes, which has done some strange (and crummy) things to his appetite. Things he used to love, he now can't choke down. The chicken fingers that El Burrito loves, make DH nauseous. And sometimes, it seems like most of what I can cook also makes him green around the gills. I'm hoping that after we move (see future post), we'll get a treadmill, he can drop some weight again, and maybe, hopefully, the Byetta can either be decreased or dropped altogether.

So, my cooking. It was a serendipitous thing - I went to the library and grocery shopping, since El Burrito has been sick since Friday. At the library, I picked up some books I had on hold, and one happened to be the America's Test Kitchen Best 30-Minute Meals cookbook. I looked through it after I got home, and found a recipe for Pineapple-glazed Chicken that seemed (a) pretty simple and (b) didn't turn DH green. And, we had almost all of the ingredients (we have no cayenne, and no cider vinegar).

So, I went for it. And other than flunking out on reading comprehension and starting off with a lidless skillet, it came out pretty good. Next time, I'm adding more pineapple juice, though - the glaze was kind of skimpy, especially since the recipe was for 4 people and I only cooked 2 chicken breasts. With four, the glaze would have been almost non-existent. Another surprise - it didn't take me much longer than the 30 minutes they estimated, if you don't count waiting for the slightly-freezer burnt chicken to thaw.

I served it up with a box of Uncle Ben's wild rice, plus the leftover sides from the macaroni takeout meal I got at Hyvee to tempt El Burrito into eating (which didn't really work).

I've gotta say, I love the America's Test Kitchen cookbooks. I may have to hunt down copies, or use some of my Amazon certificates to buy some. Their explanations are interesting, educational, and helpful. (Alton Brown's Good Eats is the same way - I like to know the whys behind the methods.) Plus, Christopher Kimball, the host of ATC, rides horses, which gets him bonus points with me.