Simplicity at it's finest

I go through phases of wanting very simple foods or making complicated meals - although, according to my office mate, anything more than take-out after a day at this office should be considered complicated.

I have a couple of super simple recipes to share in this post, all of which follow under the "I'll just throw in some of this, and a touch of that" category - ie, I had no idea what I was doing but the results were scrumptious. This ended up all being one meal, but it felt more like seperate dishes that I happened to all eat at once, not a coming together of great flavors into a cohesive plate.

First up, a refreshing melon salad, which I think can do just as easily as a side dish, or breakfast, or dessert. I found some melon I had never had before, canary melon, and santa claus, along with a seedless watermelon. The rind on the santa claus was so amazing looking! Both of these melons were super sweet, and were in the honeydew family of flavor. The canary had a lovely bit of tartness to it.

For this dish, all I did was squeeze some lemon over to give counter point to the sweet, and tossed in a small handful of fresh mint. The flavor combo was just delicious!
Next, some lovely baked chicken. I could only find a ginormous package of chicken thighs at the grocery the other day. I can't even remember what my original intent was for them, but a few days went by before I said to myself, "self, you best be doing something with all of that chicken because it is going to go bad and then it will be a waste". In the end, I decided I just wanted to get it cooked and I could have chicken salad sandwich, chicken on some sort of salad, maybe throw some chicken in some pasta salad (I'm now thinking that WAS my original intent), so I needed something mellow in flavor.

What I came up with was drizzling a casserole dish with olive oil, thick slicing an onion and laying those down, and topping the onions with the thighs. I went to my garden and picked some fresh rosemary, and added it to the pile with some salt and peper. Finally, I sliced a lemon and put that on top. The whole thing was covered by foil and put in a 350 oven for 30-45 minutes.

The resulting meat was extremely moist - almost too moist with a texture close to what I would expect had I boiled it, but with loads of flavor. the real surprise was the onions. I am not normally an onion enthusiast, but this dish made me change my stance on that. THey were sweet, and creamy (?!) and delish! I ate them all - and spent the rest of the night tooting, much to Eric's delight.

The final recipe follows the same ingredient list as my veggie salad from an earlier post, but add in pasta and feta.

Simple simple, very delicious, and in reviewing the ingredients, pretty good for you to boot.

On the night where I had this colorful cacophony of food, Eric dined on Top Ramen - chicken flavor. At least it was cooked this time. Of course, that is probably because I cooked it...