ODG Eats

 At some point last year, I bought a big pack of frozen chicken breasts. I know it was last year because I've only been buying whole chickens this year. I say "at some point" because fuck if I can remember when it was. Maybe last summer? Or Spring? It's been a long damn time. Anyway, I'm out of fresher meat, and there were two breasts left in the bag that didn't look too terrible, so I'm eating those for a couple days. I decided to make some soup, because, yeah, it's late May and getting pretty warm in general around Memphis, but we've got thunderstorms cooling shit off, so soup didn't sound too terrible. Sticking with the veggies from my $25 Kroger run last weekend, I went with  diced radish, diced mushroom, whole cherry tomatoes, sliced carrot, diced yellow bell pepper, roughly chopped spinach, and crushed and sliced garlic for the soup. While the KISS rule is generally good to follow in any case, it is even more so with soups in my opinion. ...

I had some chicken wings thawed (the last bit of my last $8 chicken), some leftover rice, and a few veggies, so I made chicken and rice.  A couple radishes, some cherry tomatoes, a couple cloves of a garlic, a little yellow bell pepper, and a few mushrooms seemed like they'd do the trick. I crushed and sliced the garlic, diced the pepper, sliced up the radishes, diced the mushroom into sizable pieces (maybe 6-8 pieces per shroom), and left the tomatoes whole. Of course, I also had some spinach handy. I seasoned the wings with the M9 seasoning I've used a few times before because it's fucking delicious. I just pan fried them in olive oil (normal, not extra virgin). It took a few minutes and a little bit of manipulation to get it cooked all the way (and all over...), but I finally got it done. Also, notice those little feather spiny things there? I took those off after it was cooked.  Once the chicken was cooked (and removed from the pan), I dropped in the garlic and about a ...

Sometimes money gets tight. Almost all of us have to deal with that for various periods of time. Those who don't can suck a dick: this one goes out for all the normal folks. My fridge was almost bare, so I had to go grocery shopping. Having just paid for some car repairs, my budget was quite limited, but I managed to pick up a few veggies for under $25, and I've still got a little chicken, steak, and pasta left from last week (hooray, freezer!). A box of mushrooms, a box of spinach, some cherry tomatoes, a bag of radishes, a couple bell peppers, and a few heads of garlic for under $25? Sure, I can work with that. I used just about every veggie I had: a radish, 3 mushrooms, some of the yellow bell pepper, some of my last green onion, a handful of tomatoes, a few cloves of garlic, and a handful of spinach leaves (not pictured). Also, I had chicken thighs thawed, so that was my meat du jour.  I diced some of the pepper and sliced the radish (blue bowl), sliced the mushrooms fairly...

 This isn't really  coq au vin, strictly speaking, if you want to be particular. It is, however, similar enough for comparison, but takes a lot less time. Hence "cheeky." I'm starting to hit the bottom of the barrel on my veggies. The celery is about done sitting around, I used my last 3 cloves of garlic, the last handful of wood ear mushrooms, and half of a carrot I had in a freezer bag, plus a few grape tomatoes because yum. The tomatoes and mushrooms I left whole, everything else I sliced for a nice little mix of random. I seasoned my two chicken legs with salt and pepper, then dropped them into a small pot with some hot melted butter. The important thing is browning the chicken, not cooking it all the way through (that comes with the braising), so I had the heat up a bit higher than I usually use for cooking chicken since I wouldn't be running that rewardless risk of burning the outside vs undercooking the inside (usually both).  I flipped the chicken around a...

 Told you there'd be one more. So, if you remember way back in Part 1 , we broke down a whole chicken. We separated out the tenderloins and skin , two   breasts , two wings , two legs , and two thighs , and we were left with the rest of the carcass: bones, a little bit of meat, a patch or two of skin, some crushed organs up in there, etc.  So this is what I used for making broth. Broth is super useful for soup bases, sauce bases, or just to sip on if you've got a sore throat. It's relatively low effort, but can take a bit of time depending on how you want it to go. If you make your own, you can season it however you like and really come up with some fun customizations. You can include veggies, bones, odds and ends; I keep a ziploc of veggie scraps in the freezer for broth and highly recommend it (PSA: cut down on food waste!) I kept it simple this time, though - just chicken carcass. For a basic broth, I just rub down the carcass with some extra virgin olive oil and seaso...

I forgot to thaw out meat for dinner last night, I was hungry, I didn't want to wait to eat, and my motivation is still running low. Solution? Oven roasted veggies. I've got a plethora of roots on hand because they keep pretty well and I keep forgetting to use them, so I decided to go with parsnip, carrot, potato, and radish. I peeled all but the radish, then chopped them all up into various sized chunks and dumped them into a casserole dish. I poured a couple tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil over the top, dumped in a tablespoon or so of kosher salt, and cracked a generous portion of black pepper across, then mixed it all up. Finally, I dumped a bunch of shredded parmesan on top because cheese is life. Half an hour in the oven at 350 worked out pretty perfectly. The veggies still had a little crunch to them (important to me), the cheese got just a touch crispy (also important to me), and it tasted pretty damn good. I would recommend that you dunk the veggies on top into th...