Pulled Pollo Tacos for Papa's Day

Dear me, I have been trying to get this posted for quite a while. Every time I go to do it, though, it's late and I become overwhelmingly tired when I go to click on the button for creating a new post. It's no mystery, really. I've been running myself too hard, as I am wont to do. One really great thing (and by really great I mean really ANNOYING!) about writing a blog that talks about your life is that you have a published record of past stumbles and cycles and whatnot. So, for example, if I review last August's post about Baltimore Peach Cake and it's all like "I am so freakin' busy, I can barely see straight. I am training for a marathon and going to school and working too much and also only sleeping five hours a night. Oh hee hee , silly Kelly - it's no big deal though. I'm fine, really..." and then note that a few months later I'm posting about my digestive system going on strike, it's kinda hard to keep going on that trajectory without clear knowledge that I am being a total psychopath. (Or sociopath, whatever you call it when people do blatantly stupid things that they know will cause trouble.)

The thing is, I love training for marathons, and I really like my job, and I am over the moon about starting school, and I love to read and hang out with my friends and go to the beach which is two hours away but since I am even in love with the drive I don't mind so I'll just go ahead and make the trip down and back TWICE in four days instead of just asking off for work Monday and taking a four day vacation. I have so very much love for everything in my life and only 24 hours in every day and, as three different people helped me to realize this month, this lifetime contains far fewer of those 24 hours than we need to express everything that's in our hearts. How, then, do I make it count without running myself ragged in the process so I'm too tired to enjoy it anyway? No, really, I'm asking. If you know the answer, kindly send it to the e-mail address listed in my profile.

Ahem, now for the biggest non sequiter ever to grace the pages of this blog I'm going to talk about a chicken recipe that I love and that I made my dad for father's day. All that other stuff was just me talking and has nothing to do with the recipe. If you are still reading, thanks for letting me ramble. I know a lot of the food I post about on here is remarkably unhealthy - fried clams, cake, lasagna...I am starting to feel like I may be contributing to the obesity epidemic. But really, I have made an art over the years of learning to cook healthy food for myself that is easy enough that I can make it quickly with little thought. It's so helpful to have enough staple meals to just whip up a menu before grocery shopping and know I've got most of the week's meals covered but also not get bored (which generally leads to eating out more). One of my favorite staples is something I refer to as Pulled Pollo. It's chicken that I rub with a spice rub and then bake in the oven so that cooks in it's own juices and, when it's done, I shred it with a fork like you do with pulled pork and it's super moist and flavorful. It can be eaten in tacos, on a bed of lettuce or if you are feeling like going a little heavier, it's good enchilada filling or an interesting addition to nachos. I prefer the first two options. It just seems so much better in a light meal.

I also like to make sauteed peppers to go with it. I use bell peppers of whatever color combination I feel like eating at the time and saute them with a red onion, sliced thin, and the same spices I used for the chicken. If you leave enough time for them to cook slowly, the peppers become meltingly tender and their natural sweetness really comes through. The spices I use are a fairly classic Hispanic mix, if there is such a thing, of chili powder, cumin, garlic, salt, pepper, and sometimes cinnamon. My dad is a great lover of Latin culture and food. He's traveled quite a bit in Mexico and Central America (and has been kind enough to take me along on two of those trips). I remember the first time I went to Mexico was on a kayaking trip we took with some people from a paddling school in DC. We traveled around a lot, stopping for two days at the most in any one town over an 11 day trip. When we talk about the trip, we always end up talking about the food. It's almost never about the rivers. Instead, it's the langostino soup we ate at a restaurant right next to the river we'd just kayaked (incidentally, the same river where the langostinos and the dominant herb in the soup came from) or the liquados (milkshakes, served in a plastic bag with a straw which were insanely fresh and perfectly flavored with cinnamon and vanilla) or the street tacos which my dad can eat with impunity, owing to an iron stomach. When I had to pick something to make, I immediately thought light, Latin fair and I was right. He totally loved it...and I really enjoyed being able to take the leftover to work for lunch. Perhaps you can make it and enjoy it too. The recipe really does make an easy and healthy meal during the week and almost always provides great leftovers for the next day's lunch.

Pulled Pollo

Ingredients:
1 lbs chicken breast (I like skinless bone-in, personally)
2 T chili powder
1/2 T ground cumin
1/2 t salt
1/2 t ground black pepper
1/4 t cinnamon
1/2 t garlic powder
1 T olive oil

Method:
Preheat oven to 350. Coat chicken with the olive oil. Mix spices together until well-blended. Sprinkle or rub the spice mixture on the chicken breast. I like to rub it directly on, but it's pretty messy, just FYI. Place in a baking dish and cover with foil. Stick it in the oven and cook for about 15 minutes before turning the breasts over. Cook until almost completely finished cooking (either until a meat thermometer reads 160 or whatever method you prefer). I like to cook it for about 5-10 minutes without the cover after that point because it produces these really nice crispy bits of chicken that mix wonderfully with what is mostly a very moist chicken breast. When finished cooking, pull it out and let it cool for a minute. Then, use two forks to shred the meat apart and then mix it with the juices in the bottom of the baking dish and use it however you see fit.

Melty Bell Peppers

Chop 2-3 bell peppers of whatever color (though I suggest including some either red, yellow, or orange because they come out a lot sweeter) into strips a little bigger than a 1/4 inch wide. Slice a red onion thinly. Saute peppers and onions until they start to soften in a bit of olive oil over medium heat in a saucepan. Sprinkle with about 1/2 t of salt so they will release some of their own moisture. Then, add about 1/2 T chili powder, 1 t cumin, a dash more of salt, 1/2 t pepper, and 1/4 - 1/8 t cinnamon and stir to coat the veggies. At this point, you can go one of two routes. One, you could add a tiny bit of water or even none at all, turn the heat all the way to low, cover and let the peppers and onions slow cook in their own juice. Or, to accelerate the cooking process you can add about 1/3 C water to the peppers, let it come to a simmer, turn down to low and let the pepper and onions cook in that until the water has all cooked off. Either way is good, but the slow way is better (which I find very irritating, just so you know). This is a good thing to put on crostini, too, if you cook then down enough. That's actually how I first had then and it was delicious. Ok, that's all. I really need to go get some sleep now. Enjoy!