Tuesday, April 28, 2020

Quarantine Roast Chicken

When you make a roast chicken in quarantine, you use what you have. Roast chicken is so flexible with the flavors. It is also so easy.





On a short break between my many video conference calls today, I took 15 minutes to prep the chicken, pop it into the oven, and go back to my conference calls. About an hour and a half later, it was ready!

Ingredients:

* A whole chicken I had on hand from my Whole Foods/Amazon Prime delivery this weekend
* Had no onions so normally that would be on the list, but wasn’t
* Had no thyme so normally that would be on the list, but wasn’t
* Yellow potatoes
* Carrots
* Lemon
* Head of Garlic

During that 15 minutes between calls;

* Preheat oven to 425 degrees
* Rinse off the chicken, take out the bag of stuff in the cavity 😳, pat dry with paper towels and tie the legs together
* Peel and cut about 1-2 lbs of carrots and about 2 lbs of potatoes
* Put the carrots and onions into a baking dish with some cooking spray and salt
* Cut a head of garlic into half and put inside the cavity
* Cut a lemon in half and put into the cavity
* Melt butter (about 2 oz) and then brush over chicken
* Salt generously
* Put chicken atop potato/carrot mix
* Pop into oven


Go back to your conference calls and let the smell of amazingness fill your house. About 90 mins later your chicken is ready. Flip it over for about 15 mins to brown the bottom. Or don’t.

Let it cool. Cut (google that) into 8 pieces.


Wednesday, April 15, 2020

Spicy Macaroni Quarantini

It doesn’t GET any easier than this. Are you ready for it? It’s 3 ingredients.




1) Boil pasta and drain
2) Cut Velveeta into chunks and add to pasta and stir over low heat
3) Drain a can of rotel, than pour into pasta

Stir.

That is all. You are welcome!

Monday, April 13, 2020

Shrimp Scampi Quarantini

It’s about a month into the quarantine here in Atlanta, and I’ll just say one of my favorite things about being home every night, is slowing down to cook dinner. I’ve enjoyed making up my own quick recipes and was quite pleased with this quick dinner I made tonight. Once I realized I had enough ingredients to make a version of shrimp scampi, off I went. This isn’t a precise recipe. Anything goes. Add, take away, make it your own.




Items I found:


  • Box of Spaghetti 
  • Garlic
  • Lemon
  • Kale
  • Shrimp
  • Parmesan cheese 
  • Salt
  • Red pepper flakes
  • Butter
  • Olive oil



How I made it:


  • Boil and salt a big pot of water
  • While waiting for water to boil, pat dry the raw shrimp, and pull the tails off
  • Slice the lemon into thin rounds 
  • Peel and chop some garlic (maybe 5 cloves. The more the better)
  • Wash then chop the kale
  • Boil spaghetti 
  • In a heated pan, pour some olive oil (maybe a TBLSP), let it heat, them sauté the kale with a little salt until tender 
  • In another heated pan, pour some olive oil (maybe a TBLSP) and some butter (maybe 2-3 TBLSP) and cook the shrimp. Add the garlic. Add a pinch of red paper flakes. Then lemon slices. Then the cooked kale. 
  • Drain pasta, and add to the shrimp mixture
  • Top with Parmesan cheese

Easy peasy quarantini.