Well, not quite. I wish! Before I get to that, let’s recap my afternoon snacks, shall we?
Half a grapefruit…
Handful of whole-grain goldfish…
A candy cane, after reading Meghann‘s post… NO PICTURE – it went straight into my mouth 
I was so excited to make dinner so I had everything prepped by 5:30 so that I could have dinner ready for Bill when he got home. Unfortunately, I got the call that he had to work a little later so I was anxiously awaiting his “I’m leaving work now” call since he works about an hour away from home.
While I was waiting, I got the idea to make polenta since I had bought cornmeal. For my first attempt, it wasn’t bad, in fact, I was actually kind of pleased with how it came out. I think the only thing I will do differently next time is add spices to the mixture before chilling it. Instead of frying it in oil, I wound up grilling it in panini pan.
For our main course, I decided to attempt “Blue Corn Fried Chicken with Red Chile Honey” from Bobby Flay Cooks American cookbook. Although I can’t post the recipe since it’s directly from his book, I did change a few things. Instead of buttermilk (because I forgot to buy it), I used skim milk + plain Chobani, which was a substitute I found from a google search. Another sub you could use is milk + white vinegar (however I didn’t have any of that on hand either!). I also used whole wheat flour in place of all-purpose flour, which perfectly aligns with my “goals” that I have about trying to avoid refined white flours and sugars.
The recipe was a lot of work, well not really, but I definitely couldn’t make this on a normal Monday thru Thursday; however it was a nice treat to actually take my time making dinner and not rushing around throwing stuff together in a jiffy on a weeknight! Here’s the finished product – keep in mind I used an extra large dinner plate because all of our normal plates are in the dishwasher!
The results? It was fabulous! It’s definitely not “health food” or a “light dish”, but it used all natural ingredients so I don’t mind some of the heavy ingredients but it was amazingly flavorful – the perfect combination of sweet & spicy! Bill really enjoyed it too – he loved the combination and the fact that it was “fried” chicken! Even after we ate, he still said was talking about how delish it was! He even, surprisingly, liked the polenta.
The pictures just simply DON’T do it justice though…
On the side, I had leftover mashed butternut squash and brussels sprouts alongside the polenta.
I’m stuffed! We didn’t get to eat dinner until nearly 8:15pm by the time Bill got home so now we are going to relax and watch a CSI episode
On a funny note… are any of you fans of a team whose city you don’t live in (or even remotely close to) besides Erica, who I know roots for the Eagles ?
While I cooked, I had our local news on and they were recapping the Eagles game and the fans yesterday. I am sharing this with you because they were interviewing fans who had traveled from Arizona, Washington, California, etc. I found that so interesting, but then I thought back to our honeymoon and realized that we met a couple from Canada who were HUGE Eagles fan, which is even more interesting!
