Not so Atsui

Atsui means hot. Its not so hot today. Its 81'F and Dad and I have the house open, letting the breeze traipse through, gentle as you please. Its hazy out. For whatever reason, the haze is too thin to appear on radar, yet thick enough there are no shadows outside right now. This is not helping my laundry dry on the line. Oh well.

I'll be cooking Sweaty Chicken tonight. Sweaty Chicken is fun. It starts with vegetables, sweated in a pan with a lid on low heat until the juice comes out and they soften a bit. Scrape to one side, offset the pan, add oil to the clean spot and turn up the heat to fry rice. Once that browns enough add water and chicken.

I generally sweat the French Trinity of Onion, Carrot and Celery. They are excellent savory companions and do good things to meat. I'll also be making rice o roni, mostly because it tastes good and Dad and I both need to eat enough. The chicken is already defrosting with soy sauce because the soy is an appetite enhancer. Mom did not need marijuana to eat after chemotherapy. I was cooking the meals and soy sauce did the trick.

All that rice leaves a fair bit of leftovers and the sweated veggies make the rice taste better, particularly since you cook the chicken in the same pan, so it gains from the flavors too. Its a one-pan meal. And one container for the leftovers. As a home cook that's valuable to me. Cuts down on cleanup time. That plus salad and maybe some broccoli and its well covered. The best part of the above dish is once you cut up the veggies its pretty easy to do and hard to screw up even with minimal attention.

Hah! There's a slight shadow now. Looks like the sun is trying to come out after all. Doubt it will get much warmer. And I'm glad the smoke is going somewhere else. Its good to breathe.