October 17, 2013  |  News

Even though this is an extremely busy time of year (we’re about 7 weeks into the Fall semester), I still find that cooking a nice hot meal after a long day relaxes me. On Tuesday night I started out around 7:30pm after getting home from teaching. I knew I wanted to try out the swiss chard that Eugene and I had bought at Trader Joe’s over the weekend – I didn’t know how to cook it, but the TJ’s bag conveniently had directions listed right on the back. That was easy! I first had to saute it in olive oil with garlic. Look at the beautiful color of the vegetable as it cooks.

blog 1Apparently the key to cooking this is to add chicken stock after the swiss chard leaves have started to wilt. Then cover the pan with a lid to let the vegetable cook down. Meanwhile I was waiting a long forty-five minutes for my chicken thighs to cook.  I had put them in a plastic bag with marinade earlier in the day – luckily I was thinking ahead. Now I started thinking I needed one more item on the plate – three is a good number, right? So I took a can of garbanzo beans and let them cook in olive oil to get soft. Then I added salt, pepper and garlic salt and mashed them up – they tasted even creamier than mashed potatoes!

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The chicken had a nice crispy and caramelized skin from the marinade.

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This is what dinner looked like – Am I making you hungry yet?

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Another night this week I made a tomato sauce from scratch – now this you have to do when you have a lot of time available to let the tomatoes cook down and simmer. I added fresh tomatoes, onions, red wine and olive oil to this pan. The yellow and red tomatoes have such a gorgeous color that they remind me of Fall.

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I just let them simmer for about 30 minutes and then all of the tomatoes cooked down and wilted into the sauce. I put it over pasta and added fresh grated parmesan cheese. Presto! A home cooked meal that just seemed to melt away all the stress of the day.

Now if only I could hire someone to clean up the kitchen and do all the dishes…