Quick and Easy Meals for One, Bachelor Style

Here's a good one for a hot afternoon when you don't want to cook in the kitchen:

Bacon Wrapped Chicken

Ingredents:

2 raw skinless, boneless chicken breasts
1/4 cup sharp cheddar cheese, grated
As many pickled jalapeno slices as you want
4 strips of bacon, use what you have but thick cut is best
Salt, black pepper, cayenne to taste

Git'r Done:

Pound chicken to 1/2-inch thickness, if you don't have a meat tenderizing mallet wrap the face of your engineer's hammer or a brick in plastic wrap but be careful not to pound too hard. If you hit it too hard you'll have chicken paste splattered all over the place (if this happens defer to you canine clean up crew).

Sprinkle chicken with salt, pepper, and cayenne then spread the cheddar over each chicken breast followed by jalapenos. Roll up the chicken and then wrap each piece of chicken with 2 strips of bacon barber poll style then use toothpicks to secure the roll.

Cook over indirect heat on your grill or for a real treat smoke these over mesquite and hickory in the smoker. Because the bacon will drip fat into the heat source it's a good idea to put foil under the food or hang around the grill and put out the flare ups with water in a spray bottle. Remove from the grill or smoker when the chicken is done and let it rest for a few minutes so the cheese has a chance to coll slightly, otherwise you'll bite into an explosion of molten cheddar! Pull out the toothpicks and enjoy!

I like to wrap these in lettuce leafs (why waste a perfectly good paper plate?) with some salsa and guacamole but they are good with out the extras too! If you don't do hot/spicy food (btw, what the hell's wrong with you?!) consider using onions or bell peppers instead of the jalapenos. I like cheddar but Monterrey jack or other cheeses could be good too. Goes well with refried beans and Spanish rice if you need to serve more than one person. Leftovers make nice burrito but I rarely have any leftovers when I make this meal.

Hungry for a snack but don't want to cook a full meal? Pork rinds and hot sauce hit the spot! Try out this line of products http://www.microwaveporkrinds.com/asccu ... tegoryid=2 or hit your local market and get a bag of rinds and some hot sauce (Texas Pete's or Franks are my favorites)!

Chicken Wings - The Basic Anchor Bar Recipe

Sometimes you just have to have some authentic wings...

What you need:

Chicken wings, raw and room temprature, if eating alone a dozen is plenty but add more if you have guests. Most people can eat 10 to 12 wings, even though some won't admit it.

Frank's Redhot sauce (use your own favorite if you like but it won't be authentic to the original recipe).

Butter, melted and equal in liquid volume to the amount of hot sauce, a half cup is plenty for two dozen wings.

Vegetable or peanut oil in suffice quantities to fill your Dutch oven 3/5th's full (cook 12 wings at a time).

Carrot and celery sticks.

Bleu cheese dressing (ranch if you must but why ruin a good thing?).

Git'r Dun

Break out the Dutch oven, make sure it's clean and ready to go. Set up your frying station, pay particular attention to the surrounding area. Nothing will ruin your day more than a spilled pot of hot oil that catches fire and then burns down your porch, house, neighborhood... You get the idea. Have a dry chemical extinguisher at the ready and be prepared for a fire as if it will happen, not just in case.

Bring the wings and oil to the frying station, keep your other ingredients at arm's length but away from the heat. Pour oil in to the Dutch oven start with a half full pot and bring the oil up to 400F (you will need a thermometer or some experience in frying or both). Depending of the size of your wings you may need to add oil, put in the first 8 or 10 wings and see how high the oil is in the pot and then add oil, or more wings, or not. The last thing you want is to have the oil boil over and start a fire!

Let the wings cook for 10 minutes, smaller wings cook faster while larger wings take longer. After 10-ish minutes pull a wing from the pot and check it to see if it's done or not and fine tune your timing. In the meanwhile combine the butter and hot sauce in a large bowl that you can cover with a plate or a lid and mix well. When the wings are done drain them of oil and then add to the sauce and mix well to ensure each wing is well coated.

Serve with the veggies and bleu cheese dressing on the side. While you're at it and the oil is hot you could whip up some Tempura batter and make some awesome zucchini blossoms (in the fall), zucchini slices, mushrooms, and onion rings. Heck even some hand cut fries would be a good call... But those are a bunch of other recipes!

The hot weather is on the way, nothing like a nice cool meal for some relief from the heat.

Gazpacho

What you need:

4 cups tomato juice
1 medium onion, peeled and coarsely chopped
1 small green pepper, peeled, cored, seeded, and coarsely chopped
1 small cucumber, peeled, pared, seeded, and coarsely chopped
1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
3 cloves garlic, minced
Hot sauce to taste
Fresh ground black pepper to taste
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper (more if you like)
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 large tomato, finely diced
2 tablespoons minced chives or scallion tops
1 lemon, cut in 6 wedges

Git'r dun

Put 2 cups of tomato juice and all other ingredients except diced tomato, chives, and lemon wedges in the blender and puree until smooth. Slowly add the remaining 2 cups of tomato juice to pureed mixture. Add chopped tomato and chill mixture for four hours or as long as overnight.

Serve icy cold in individual bowls garnished with chopped chives and lemon wedges, some like sour cream on top. Freezes well so if you aren't up for a gallon of cold vegi-soup all at once you can always portion it out into containers, thaw in the fridge overnight and eat when ready! Really good with a chunk of crusty bread and some real butter.

Tacos? Fajitas? I Dunno, But They Are Good!

What You Need

Beef Skirt or flank steak - watch the bargain bins, sometimes these get discounted!
Corn tortillas
Onion, thin sliced and then diced
Jalapeno, diced
Shredded Cheddar
Vegetable oil
Salt
Black Pepper
Chipolte in Adobo sauce (one can is plenty)
Citrus juice, I like pineapple or lime juice

How It's Done

Get out the blender/smash-o-matic/big knife and chop up all the veggies. Put the Chipolte and sauce and citrus juice in a gallon ziplock bag of pan, season the steak with salt and pepper then add to the pan and add enough vegetable oil to coat the meat. Marinate the meat for at least 24 hours.

Heat up your grill, charcoal is best, gas grill augmented with some wood chips in a smoker box is second best. Once the grill is hot place the steak directly on the grill and cook over high heat, 5 minutes on one side then 2 on the other. Remove steak and let it rest. Meanwhile coat each tortilla lightly with oil and then quickly warm on the grill until soft. Once tortillas are ready stack on aluminum foil and keep warm.

Once the steak has rested slice in thin strips across the grain. Serve on your kitchen counter or table as an assembly line; each guest can get a couple of tortillas add, steak, onions, cheese, Jalapenos as they desire. Great with guac, sour cream, refritos, and rice but let's face it, the basics are good enough for a bachelor.

I don't don't know but they are good? Eating things and you don't even know what they are. LOL

CinnamonGirl wrote: I don't don't know but they are good? Eating things and you don't even know what they are. LOL

You name it and that is what I'll call it. IMHO it's a taco, with leanings toward other stuff...

You are such a guy. LOL Not a judgment just an observation.

CinnamonGirl wrote: You are such a guy. LOL Not a judgment just an observation.

I been called worse than that today by folks who were pretty serious about it. Call it a taco, it's more taco than anything else... Unless you roll it up and bake it with more adobo sauce, then it seems like it would be more of an enchilada. I just enjoy eating them and that's all I really know for sure.

I was just enjoying giving you a hard time.