Dinner

So I've stopped planning dinners. I just walk into the market (usually Central Market) and whatever looks good or is on sale...is dinner. I've found that creating dinner on the fly keeps my mind fresh and keeps me from cooking the same things every week. Also running back and forth around the store as different ingredients I need might help me shed a pound or two.

Speaking of pound or two one of my goals tonight was to eat slightly healthier than I usually do. I decided against a starch. So on the veggie front, I went with some ginormous portabellas, a zucchini, and some baby bok choy.
Walking through the produce section they had samples out of some gnarly looking blood oranges. I decided to make a blood orange vinaigrette to pour over the veggies as they came off of the grill. I grabbed a few lemons to add to the vinaigrette and decided to use some gueuze in it as well. Gueuze works VERY well in citrus and non citrus vinaigrettes...plus any excuse to put the beer in the food column on the budget makes me happy.
Protein was a bit harder. The wife expressed a desire to have leftovers for lunch but ribeyes were on sale for 8.99lb. I vowed to return for the ribeyes and grabbed a whole chicken instead.
There's the little guy, and here's the little guy split in half.It wasn't raining yet so my plan was to smoke roast the chicken on my Big Green Egg. For those of you unfamiliar with the BGE its a 2 inch thick porcelan grill what will gladly sear your steaks at 1200 degrees, or smoke your brisket at 200 for 18 hours. I love this thing. For my chicken I usually aim for 275. Salt, pepper, paprika, a tiny rub of oil and liberal amounts of my secret ingredient. Fine...it'seven Calvin loves it. Calvin is everywhere. Here he is soaking my hickory chips.I'm fairly sure he sniffed this a couple of times too.
So for some reason despite my every effort the BGE wanted to stay at 250 instead of 275...so I just went with it. I like the extra 25 degrees for skin crisping purposes, but it turned out fine at 250.
SO much smoke in this chicken. Veggies turned out fine. Looks a little ugly with the vinaigrette poured on top but the best way to use it to flavor the veggies is to pour it over them straight off of the grill. Off of the veggies the vinaigrette had a great color.
Kinda bummed that Central Market had no fresh thyme...so I had to use the dry stuff. It's not the same. Good dinner.