PINTEREST INSPIRATION... PINSPIRATION?

Naw, that sounds too much like perspiration, which doesn't sound quite so appealing!

Last night's dinner was completely inspired by my new-found Pinterest addiction... if you haven't jumped on that bandwagon, you'd better get to it!

The inspiration piece... yum!

My poorly-lit version

And our extra healthy side!

4pm

I don't want to....

answer the phone

design a flyer

rearrange anything

clean anything

write emails

update the website

reorder anything

read anything

follow up on anything

or stay here for another 90 minutes

Weekend please?

IT'S HARDER THAN YOU THINK...

...to take photos WHILE cooking. I kinda suck at it, actually. I'm right handed, and my camera fits perfectly in my right hand. Snapping non-blurry photos with my left hand while pouring ingredients with my right and not chopping important parts out of the photo and NOT dropping my camera in the mess is HARD WORK! So for this post, I'm stealing google images, okay? My camera remains in its special case free of barbecue sauce and salad dressing and flour, and that's the way I like it.

Impossible to do on your own...

Last night we hosted dinner at our house. Nick's parents, his aunt Becky, and cousin Ryan joined us for Barbecued Chicken, Greek Salad, Potato Salad, and Garlic Flatbread followed up with Brownies & Vanilla Ice Cream! This may sound like a big job for a girl who works until 6pm and wants to have dinner ready by 7! It's all about efficiency baby!

At lunch I stopped by Mike's Meat & Farmer's Market to pick up a few things, including their ultra delicious, ginormous boneless skinless chicken breasts. (If you haven't made any purchases there, get to it!). Afterward I ran home and put my chicken breasts in a brine which consisted of:

Brine:
2 quarts water (I used some leftover vegetable stock too)
2 TBS salt
A handful of fresh Thyme (I didn't bother stripping the leaves from the sticks)
Fresh ground pepper (probably a Tbs)
About 1TBS Garlic Powder (although if you have more than the 5 minutes I had, some fresh minced garlic would be great!)
(Cutting corners = efficiency (and yet still delicious))

You could probably do this in a large Zip-Lock bag, but I had a big plastic bowl that I put mine in. Place your breasts in the pool (haha) and put it all in the refrigerator. Don't skip this process, even if you only have 15 minutes. I left mine there for about 5 hours and ohhhhhh my goodness was it worth it! (Prep at lunch time + marination = efficiency)

Fast forward 5 hours and as soon as I walked in the door Nick started up the grill while I patted my chicken dry with some paper towels. I arranged them all on a cookie sheet to take outside and let Nick do the fun/hot job of grilling them for 10 minutes. 5 minutes, flip, 5 minutes. PERFECT GRILL MARKS ARE VERY IMPORTANT TO ME, so do us all a favor and make sure your grill is clean-ish and if necessary, wipe the grates down with olive oil PRIOR to turning it on to make sure things don't stick/rip/get messed up. Actually though, it will taste great either way. The point of this grilling process is not to cook your meat all the way through, but rather to crust up the outside and give it pretty grill marks. Got it? Good. (Letting your husband do the hard stuff = efficiency) While he's working on that, I preheated my oven to 350º.

Sidenote: We love PAM Grilling Spray! Also: The best part about
 google images is that I can change Nick's ethnicity at will!

Okay so once 10 minutes has passed feel free to put them back on the same cookie sheet to bring them back inside (don't worry, it's on its way to the oven, so no bacterial worries!). (Fewer dishes = efficiency). I slather the chicken in my favorite BBQ sauce, which you can purchase jarred at Country Boy's Barbecue. I just realized that my last food post was all about their BBQ sauce too... what can I say, it's delicious and we like meat! Anyway... make sure you get the sauce ALLLLLL over the meat and then stick 'em in the oven. I baked them for 20 minutes, flipped, added more sauce, and baked for another 10 minutes. Depending on the size of your breasts you may want to adjust the timing but mine were huge (haha) and I wanted to make sure they were fully cooked.

I love this photo because this is EXACTLY what they looked like! 

While the meat was in the oven I prepared the potato salad, which was a recipe that I came up with on the spot based on all the crap I needed to use in my fridge -- maybe I'll share that later. Nick's mom brought the salad. (Taking advantage of guests who offer to bring a side = efficiency).

When your chicken is done, take it out and let it hang out on the counter for a while to seal in all the juiciness. This is when I popped the flat bread in (actually, I'm going to be real honest with you here and mention that this was a fresh, but pre-made basil pizza dough that you can purchase in the bakery at Mike's Meat). I put a little butter and minced garlic on top and baked it at 450º for about 5 minutes while I set the table.

Voila! Dinner was ready in less than an hour!

After we ate I mixed up some brownie batter (Umm... hello giant box of Ghirardelli brownie mix from Costco). Why make brownies from scratch when they've completely perfected it in a box? I do add some chopped walnuts to the mix, because I like 'em. But I buy those pre-chopped too... efficiency might be turning into laziness, but I'm not ashamed!

Success! We love love love having people over for dinner, even on a Thursday night. I extra love my hubby who is going to finish up those dishes today =)

RANTING

There is nothing more infuriating than a customer trying to talk to you and to someone on the phone via their bluetooth device. I CANNOT TELL WHO YOU ARE TALKING TO, SIR! Please do not expect great service if you can't show me the respect of hanging up the phone. The end, amen.

THE GAME OF LIFE

WARNING: MAY CONTAIN GRAPHIC MATERIAL

My family (and I) are all still recovering from the events of Saturday. My parents were in a vehicle about a half hour ahead of Nick, Ward, and myself heading home over Blewett Pass. They were one of the first vehicles to come upon a terrible, horrific scene. A man on his motorcycle was hit by an oncoming car and killed. When my parents arrived at the scene of the accident my dad realized that the man had been decapitated and was laying there for all passerbys to see. My poor dad. He pulled a sleeping bag out of the back of the truck and covered the man's body, but not before being exposed to a scene that no person could be mentally prepared to encounter. I can't imagine what it must be like to be a paramedic, firefighter, police officer or soldier that comes to expect to see these kinds of things. My prayers go out to the family of that man, the driver of the vehicle who hit him, the emergency responders that had to deal with the situation, and to my parents whom have not slept since. The next day I was searching news websites for more information on the crash and realized that this was just one of many horrible events of the weekend -- there were stories of stabbings, drownings, fires, shootings, and just a tiny blurb of the accident that had such an effect on my family. So often we read these headlines and don't think another thought about it. There are so many very real, very difficult situations that families and friends have to come to terms with every single day. Be thankful for the days that we are given, for they are numbered and uncertain.

I am very thankful for my brother's decision to sell his motocrycle after seeing the aftermath of the accident. No amount of preparedness could have protected that man. I am glad that I won't have to watch Ward ride off into the sunset on one of those things again!

And to add yet another happy note to this post, the reason we were coming over the pass was that we had attended a funeral that morning in Enumclaw. A second cousin of mine, Jazmine Walker, lost her life to a rare form of brain cancer earlier this month. She was 23. She was also the captain of her cheerleading squad in high school, prom queen, a double major graduate of WSU, and working on her Masters degree all while undergoing surgeries and trial treatments with a big huge smile on her face. I think she was an amazing girl. I'm glad to know that she is in heaven now without pain and looking as beautiful as ever!

"Jazz"