Arroz con Pollo

The "No Box/No Restaurant" Challenge is still in effect.  Except I'm sucking at it.  It's harder than I thought.  Especially since, when I threw my back out, my mom brought me a box of Cheez-Its to cheer me up.

Blessed woman.

I am proud to say that I haven't yet eaten those Cheez-Its as a meal, though.

While trying to not eat out unless necessary for social/business purposes, I've been taking advantage of the stockpile of leftovers in my freezer.  Among them was a portion of  Arroz con Pollo leftover from a dinner party.  I was delighted to find I had enough for two meals, and since I live alone, I don't have to share.

Living alone is flipping AWESOME!

Until you find yourself congratulating yourself for a meal well cooked.  Out loud.  To yourself.  As in, "Awesome job, Shan!"  But I digress.

Arroz con Pollo is, simply, chicken and rice.  Most Hispanic cultures have a version of this.  I make a Puerto Rican version that is really delightful.  I actually learned how to make this in the first place, not from my island-born Grandmama, but from an episode of "Throwdown with Bobby Flay" a handful of years back.  This is a fantastic one-pot meal that feeds a large crowd and freezes beautifully.

See the recipe after the jump...

B-L-Tarian

I decided to go without eating meat for a week or so, to force me to eat more vegetables and cleanse my system a little bit.  It's going well, except that I keep eating bacon.  So I guess I'm not totally successful in my temporary vegetarianism.  Unless we can all just agree to call bacon a vegetable.  In fact, let's just do that.

The reason I keep eating bacon is BLTs.  Tomato season is drawing to a close (*sniff*), so I'm trying to make every last one in my CSA box special by crowning them with bacon and lettuce and enrobing them in crispy, golden bread.  But these BLTs are special.  They include the usual suspects, but with a special component - a cream cheese spread that will knock your socks off.  And the option of a scrambled egg.

Also, I fry the bread in the bacon grease.  Don't judge me till you try it.



BLT on a Barbra Streisandwich plate.  Not kosher.



Pollo en Fricase

One of my favorite places to visit is the beautiful island of Puerto Rico, which I've written about before (many times).  I'm not ashamed to say that one of the reasons I love to vacation there is the food.  My beautiful grandmother is from San Juan, and I was no stranger to Puerto Rican cooking, but it wasn't until I visited the island and ate traditional dishes with the smell of the ocean in my nose and the sound of the Coqui frog in my ears that I really experienced Puerto Rican cuisine.

On one trip, my good friend Cindilah and I were ravenous after a morning spent wandering around Old San Juan, and found ourselves in a little cafe near or on the Plaza de Colon (I think it was there, anyway, because no matter where we went, we somehow always ended up in that Plaza).  We took a chance on the day's special, pollo en fricase.  It was a thick and hearty stew with a rich, flavorful base, chicken, potatoes, and spices - perfect for two hungry sight-seers.  We spent the lunch in relative silence, punctuated with a lot of "OH MY GAW!" and "mmmmm..."  That was a good day.

Out of nowhere, I had a hankering for the stew the other day.  One can make and eat stew in summer, right?  I searched for a recipe online, found I had all of the ingredients on hand, and decided to go for it.  I adjusted the recipe based on what I had, what I prefer, and how my grandmother taught me to cook Puerto Rican food.