Recipe round up

I've been reading a lot about quinoa lately. Recipes for it have been showing up a lot in my food network magazine. People seem to be talking about it. Apparently it's the hot new 'healthy' thing to eat these days. First couscous, now quinoa. I decided to get some and give it a try.

I marinated some chicken in olive oil, balsamic vinegar, lemon thyme, dill and spicy oregano (all herbs from my little garden). That was thrown on the grill and I made the quinoa w/roasted garlic, olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper.  The veggies I cheated on, they were just frozen microwave veggies.



I have to say, I don't think a huge fan of quinoa. It just tastes...healthy. I think I'll stick with couscous. The herbs were great on the chicken though.

Recently for dinner I made this recipe. Italian Baked Chicken and Pastina (sorry, no pictures). I changed it just a wee bit based on the reviews. I used two cans of diced italian tomatoes (to avoid the dryness people complained about), two chicken breasts, bow tie pasta and a healthy squeeze of my sun dried tomato paste. It's a pretty tasty recipe. It's light since there aren't any heavy sauces involved and it makes a crap ton. Definitely enough for leftovers for a few lunches. It's super easy and great to throw together when I don't want to be too involved for dinner but want to make sure there's something leftover for lunch.

Lastely, this morning I tried a little trick I've read on the internet in a few places. Candied bacon. Basically you sprinkle bacon with brown sugar and bake it until crispy. Kev's out of town this weekend so I figured it would be a great time to try it (he'd never understand). It was mostly out of curiosity. It was...ok. I thought it'd be more nirvana like based on the way people rave about it. Honestly, I think I prefer my bacon straight up fried and salty. What can I say, I'm a purist.