January Food.

One of my favorite food bloggers is (of course), Deb from Smitten Kitchen. How she gets those amazing shots of her food, and sounds so witty in the process! I assumed food that looked good in real life, automatically looked good in pictures, and I've found that is just not the case at all. You can have piles of delicious grub, but somehow on camera, it just looks greasy and unappetizing. I hope to have pics eventually, if I'm going to call this a food blog, but so far, it's better to imagine it in your minds, trust me on this.

This all said, Deb has a phrase called ' January food,' describing the food on the covers of the magazines this month, the spa cuisine that's supposed to help you lose 10 lbs, the food that just seems needed after a month (or two!) of excess. DInner tonite could be put in that category, and it really is one of my favorite dinners in our regular rotation, and never the same twice. It's not really a recipe, more like a composition. And that composition should be attributed to one Curtis Stone. You remember him, right? The Take-home Chef? The Aussie cutie. He would help out distressed home cooks, trying to make a meal for their partners, and help them put together ravishing meals. Anyway, so he was part of this piece in O Magazine, with chefs sharing their go-to recipes for certain situations. His situation was Short-order Cook. Not that our families ever make us feel like that!! Of course not!!

His solution is brilliant, simple, delicious. You can find the link here. It was a bit chaotic in the kitchen tonight, because I had just made some applesauce spice muffins with the girls for Zuzu's class tomorrow, so our turquoise countertops were already very messy, but once I got the veggies roasting and defrosted some chicken breasts, (it works with all kinds of proteins), we were in business.

All you do is cook some quinoa, cook some protein, the recipe recommends pork tenderloin, which is also great, but tonite I used chicken breasts with some old spice rub that I just uncovered when cleaning out the cupboards. (Bonus!) You mix together a little apple cider vinegrette to bring all the flavors together, and roast some veggies. I chose butternut squash and brussel sprouts, but have also done it with sweet potato, sautéed greens, anything goes. Preferably one orange, one green, although I bet cauliflower would also be good. You mix the hot quinoa with the vinagrette and some arugula or other power greens, (POWER GREE NS!) and compose a big platter with the chicken, roasted veggies, and everyone just builds on their own bowl on the quinoa and arugula. For Booboo that means one sprout, one piece of chicken, and barely any quinoa and greens, but Zuzu gets into it, as do the rest of us. You can also add some feta or chèvre to finish it off. And nuts or seeds, but you don't really need them. Definitely January food, but January food I could eat every week!

Menu: Curtis Stone's Quinoa Bowl with Pork (or chicken) and Butternut Squash and some leftover muffins.

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