Posts Tagged ‘cooking’
In case you are wondering why Ms. Smoked Pork herself is going gaga for things like this…
(This, by the way, was a salad with homemade hummus and baked tofu. And, maybe I’m losing my mind, but it was DELICIOUS!)
Don’t worry, though, we’ll be back to making evil things like this soon enough:
(This, for the curious, is Cayenne Toffeed 4505 Meats Chicharones.)
And, no, Rob is not joining me on my grand Vegan Experiment. He’s just sitting across the table and laughing at me. I swear, this veganism thing was WAY easier back in college when one could live on bean burritos, peanut butter jelly sandwiches and beer.
So, I’ll admit it… I have a SERIOUS weakness for chicken skin. I call it “The Bacon of the Barnyard,” though I suppose pigs hang out in the barnyard as well… but for the sake of my cute saying (and it’s correlation to my other favorite– salmon skin, the bacon of the sea), I’m gonna let it slide.
Never is there a greater battle of the wills than in that first five minutes after arriving home with a convenient rotisserie chicken.
Today’s mission: Make chicken pot pies for a friend who recently had a baby without scarfing down on an entire chicken’s worth of salty, crispy skin in the process.
The secret weapon: Sugarfree Gum.
The M.O.: Get home, set down chicken, pop a stick of gum IMMEDIATELY, open chicken container, remove skin and place in trash, remove gum once tempataion is gone so that I can taste the finished product for seasoning.
So much of the temptation comes in the prep-work when you don’t really need your palate to be “on”– popping chunks of cheese you might be grating for a casserole, for example. Or, moms, if you make different meals for your kids– having a cheese doodle here and a chicken nugget there really adds up. Pop a stick of gum while getting their plates ready and feeding them to to make it a non-issue. I find Citrus Mint really does the trick. You can’t really take it out and cheat since the flavor sticks with you for a while…
Incidentally, this tip also helps with my OTHER other meal-prep weakness– Polishing off a big ol’ glass of red before I even sit down to eat. 