Cooking For Yourself (Recipe Included)

An advantage of cooking for yourself is you nourish more than your body. The food doesn’t have to be difficult or elaborate to be delicious and nourishing. You can give yourself permission to slow down.

Hear the sound of the sizzle. Feel the rhythm of the process.  You create. You know what food is going into your mouth. It’s made with love, care and attention. This matters.  It matters in the way we perceive, digest, and enjoy our food.

Often food cost much less than if you purchased it from a restaurant. Once you know how a concept or a recipe works there is a point at which it becomes your own. Think about it. Mom’s spaghetti. Grandma’s chicken soup. The simplest food made with love and care often brings a quality of rest and nourishment to it that feeds our soul.

Read: Getting Back Into Cooking

So where do you start when you haven’t made something in your kitchen in a long time?

Lemon Chicken with Peppers & Onions

Serves 2  20 minutes

Ingredients:

• 1 cup of Rice
• Olive oil
• 1 Chicken Breast
• 1 Onion
• 1 Bell Pepper
• 1/2 Lemon- zest & juice
• 1 teaspoon of dried Thyme
• ¼ teaspoon of Red Pepper flakes
• ½ teaspoon of Garlic Powder
• Salt & Pepper to taste
• 2 tablespoons of Parmesan Cheese

Directions:

Read this recipe through then begin. Boil you water first. Whenever you enter the kitchen, think about what is going to take the longest and make sure that you work to prepare that first. Cook the rice according to the package directions with a little salt and pepper.

Then we will start the chicken. Heat your pan on medium-high heat for about 3 minutes. You can turn it off and come back to it if you need the time to cut through the chicken. Chop your chicken into bite sized pieces.  Add oil to the pan about 2 tbs. Watch and wait until the oil has some movement or starts to shimmer. Add the chicken and stir. Both heating your pan and waiting for the hot oil will help it achieve a nice browned quality and help it not stick.

Add the thyme and salt and pepper to taste, along with the red pepper flakes and garlic powder.

Add minced lemon zest, here’s how: Rinse your lemon take off any stickers, and use your peeler to take just a strip of zest – the lemon skin- off (Not the white part it’s the pith and too bitter). Then take that to your cutting board chop until it is finely minced and add it to the pan.

Chop the onion into small pieces and add to the chicken stirring often to prevent sticking. You can always back the heat down if it is sticking or browning too quickly and add more oil- a tablespoon or so.

Chop the pepper and add it to the pan. I like to cut mine in half and pull out the seeds and the top together then slice into strips and crosswise into bite size pieces.

Add the juice of half a lemon into the pan. Continue to sauté until it is cooked through. This should be about 10 minutes in all, which means if it has taken you a little bit to go through these steps you probably only have a minute or two until it’s finished. When your chicken is white through and the vegetables are soft it’s ready.

To finish the meal, plate a spoonful or two of rice, and top it with half the contents of the pan, then add a few shakes of parmesan cheese to bring it all together.  Make sure the stove is off and grab a fork and a glass of water.  Slow down and savor all your hard work.

Enjoy!

A few variations:

If you don’t have a lemon in your fridge, you can substitute 1 tbs. of apple cider vinegar.

You can substitute, Italian seasoning for the single spice Thyme.

If you have chicken stock on hand – using that as a substitute for the water in your rice adds a lot of flavor for a little swap.