I am officially a working woman again! On Monday I start working at one of my favorite companies! I am so thrilled and looking forward to working with a few former co-workers from my other favorite company. It will be a definite change in my daily routine of watching The View from my couch while sipping Starbucks, running errands in the middle of the day, working out whenever I wanted, watching Oprah & the Food Network, and day time drinking with my other unemployed friends, etc. Ah, at least I can say I enjoyed it while I could. In reality, I could only take being a stay-at-home-housewife for so long! I mean let's face it- without other living projects such as a pet or child, it was pretty boring. It was starting to get sad when the only people I interacted with in person each day were Home Depot employees and the mail man. I wasn't off too long since we've been back from our trip, only 6 weeks or so, but I was still getting very depressed with this job market. I know there are tons of people out there that have been looking alot longer than me and I feel their pain.
In preparation for my working woman routine again, I've started pulling out all the quick and easy, week day supper recipes. (Did that just sound really southern? Supper?) Anyway, we had one rainy, dreary day here yesterday and I got all excited for all the warm, comfort food possibilities. I've been wanting to make chili for a while so I thought this would be the perfect chance. Needless to say, as I headed out for the grocery, it was not cold out at all. Oh well, my chili was still delisshhh. Cold outside or not- you got to try it. The recipe is from the one and only, Joy of Cooking. I just grabbed it randomly out of my stack of many. Among a few other things, I collect cookbooks of all kinds and love reading through them to get new recipe ideas. It's so funny because every time I look through the Joy of Cooking, I always think of Rombauer Vineyard now. We were wine tasting in Napa a while back and in the Rombauer tasting room were shelves full of the the Joy of Cooking and I was really confused. Turns out, Erma Rombauer, one of the authors, is part of the Rombauer winery family! As a side note, if you haven't tried their reds you must! They are the most velvety, berries & cream reds we've ever had.
Ok, on to the recipe. So, this is Chicken Chili Verde. (Think inside yumminess of green enchiladas) It turned out amazing and so flavorful which is always a good thing. The other thing that I loved about it was how easy and quick it was to throw all these ingredients together. The grocery had all items except the canned tomatillos. My trick is this: grab a jar of green salsa at the store and substitute a cup of that in. (Turns out, green salsa is almost ALL tomatillos.) I just baked four chicken breasts in the oven while I worked on the other ingredients. The recipe "as-is" is not very spicy at all so throw in some chopped jalapenos if you want. I threw in a drained and rinsed can of white beans too. Corn tortillas would be perfect on the side like the recipe recommends, but I always serve soups, stews, etc with Karl's favorite- Crescent rolls. They really are heaven. What's so crazy, is that without even thinking about it, this is a healthy dinner too! (although, it kind of depends on if you down 3 crescent rolls on the side like we did.) I was thinking if you HAD to add something on top when serving it you could do a spoonful of sour cream and a sprinkle of white cheese of some sort. Ours was great as-is! Enjoy!
Half way around the world!
15 years ago
