Monday, July 28, 2008

When She' Hot, She's Hot!

And boy have I been hot! Went to the grocery store over the weekend where I scored some goodies at some great prices. MJ and I also checked out a few of the local shops like Let's Meat, a new butcher shop in Del Ray. We picked up some Kobe beef for hamburgers and a beautiful piece of flank steak. Next door, we stopped into the Caboose bakery for a ciabatta. All of the sandwiches that people were eating looked fabulous. We'll have to sit down for lunch one Saturday afternoon. Our next stop was Giant, they had a great sale on frozen veggies, beverages, and chicken. We then hit Best Buns Bakery in Shirlington. I wanted some good rolls to showcase the Kobe beef. We also tried the Chocolate Espresso cookie and the Chewy Ginger cookie. They were awesome! There were samples of their lemon bars. Even they were fabulous. Well, by then it was off to Harris Teeter to fulfill the rest of my list. We needed breads, sandwich fixings, wine and a few other items. It felt good to have the kitchen almost fully stocked again. Okay, you know what usually happens when I have a full fridge, freezer, etc.? I get a block. I don't know what to cook first. I stress over there's nothing to cook.

Well, I decided to plan ahead. Go figure! TY and I used to work at one of those meal prep places. Why could we apply the same concept at home? So we did. The first meal up for grabs was a pack of chicken thighs we just poured a bottle of bbq sauce in. I know two steps. How hard is that? The next pack of thighs got a special treatment courtesy of a TY suggestion. She said why not jerk thighs? I took out the seasoning, some olive oil, and a lime. It smelled great. The third and final prep I did was a Chinese 5 spice chicken. Trader Joes carries some tasty sauces. I had half a bottle of the 5 spice sauce, added some sauce, minced garlic, orange juice and olive oil. Into the bag went a whole chicken. All of these entrees are now safely tucked into our freezer. While in the kitchen, I decided to whip up a little dessert for MJ. He is going to have a mango peach sorbet courtesy of a 99 cent box of mango nectar and two cans of drained peaches. I pureed the peaches, mango nector, lime juice and honey in my blender. Twenty minutes in my ice cream freezer and we had homemade sorbet that is absolutely fabu!

My mojo is coming back. Has yours? What can you do to make some quick meals for later? How do you save time in the kitchen? And what would you make for that special someone in your life?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hey, Alicia. Sounds like you *are* getting your mojo back! Doing all that meal prep in advance is a really good tip. One of these days I'll get really organized and plan dinners out a week or two in advance, but until that day comes, I'll continue to wander the grocery store until something jumps out at me (or falls off a high shelf). Good job!