Thai Chicken Lettuce Cups

Dinner last night was messy.  I blame Shoprite.  It's all because they didn't have the lettuce that I wanted, that Boyfriend and I wound up with sauce all down our wrists.  All I wanted was bibb lettuce, with its nice cup-shaped leaves.  But no, Shoprite had to have romaine, Boston, iceberg, spring mix, everything but bibb lettuce.

Even with all the juices running down our hands, this dinner was delicious.  I always like adding fish sauce into my meals, mostly because it starts out smelling so discusting, but lends such fantastic flavors to my meals.  It's such an amazing transformation!

I wanted a light, yet flavorful dish because I still had three miles to run after dinner.  These lettuce cups were just the perfect dinner to have before hitting the road.

Then I came home and had some chocolate cake.

Chicken Florentine with Pasta

If you've been a long time WITK reader, you remember my early days in Colorado.  I was a year into my Postdoc and was also working as a fitness instructor.  After my move from Colorado to Connecticut, and subsequently to New Jersey, I haven't had the free time necessary to teach classes at the gym.  And I miss it so much! 

I was teaching nine classes a week when I was living in Colorado.  Bodystep, bodypump, bodyflow, TurboKick, bootcamp classes, it was all so much fun.  I had my regulars in each class and the people I gave a hard time when I didn't see them week after week.  We had a party everytime I stepped foot in front of the class, I had a great time making fitness fun with my gym friends.  Maybe some day I'll find the time to teach again.

It's been a year and a half since I started working here in and I've found my groove with work and the commute and I've started exploring the different gyms in Montclair.  And let me tell you, there are a lot of gyms in Montclair!  We have a fitness center in our apartment, it's the group fitness experience that I miss.  You know I've started taking Crossfit classes (and they are so much fun!).  This week I took advantage of an Amazon local deal and got a Barre fitness membership.

If you are a former dancer, cheerleader, baton twirler, you should really give bar classes a try.  There was totally a former ballerina in the back of the class I took this Saturday.  She was making us all look bad!  The bar class I took was a cardio and strength class.  We lifted weights, used slide boards (which I haven't seen in years!), did core work and worked our balance.  It was great and I felt taller and stronger at the end of class.  Plus, it's so fun to work out with a group of ladies and just have fun.

And...  I've signed up for my first HALF MARATHON!  Yikes!  I've got six weeks until I loop around Central Park in the More/Fitness Women's Half Marathon.  Are you in NYC?  Why don't you come out and run with me?  It will be fun... I swear...

I'll be following a fast-paced six-week training program to ramp up my distance to 13.1 miles.  It incorporates running along with crosstraining, so I will still have days to hit the Crossfit and Barre gyms.  To keep myself on track, I've added a fitness link up there at the top!  If you are looking to run a half or just want to workout with me (c'mon, it'll be fun!), follow along and we'll all be on our way to a healthier summer.

Restaurant Wars 2013 - Olive Garden

The biggest problem with going to Olive Garden? Getting a table. It seems no matter what day of the week you go, you will be waiting for a table unless you arrive at three o'clock for dinner. Yet for some reason, people are willing to wait over an hour for soup, salad and bread sticks. Well wait no more, make it all at home.

In order to test out the OG, boyfriend and I ventured out to dinner on a very specific night. February 13th. This year February 13th was both the day before Valentine's day and Ash Wednesday. When we arrived at 7:30, we were escorted right to a waiting booth. That's a first in my book.

The person who really likes OG in my house is BF. He calls it classic Italian comfort food. What you would want your bowl of carbonara to look and taste like. The dishes are all simple, straightforward and require no fancy words to describe. It's not the food your Italian grandmother would prepare, unless she was cooking for two dozen. 

To keep with that classic OG menu, BF and I both got simple dishes. BF went with a chicken Parmesan and I decided on a chicken and shrimp carbonara. Both meals came with the traditional OG soup/salad and bread sticks, and I ordered a cherry Italian soda to round out my meal.

First, do not order the cherry Italian soda unless you have a real love of children's cough syrup. It was dead on in flavor and probably had twice the amount of sugar. I took a sip and ordered a water as replacement.

Next, the general rule with the bread sticks is a follows - eat them before they get cold or prepare to sword fight with them. Once these little gems cool off, they take on a other worldly strength. I had ideas on how to avoid this issue at home.

Our meals were just as expected. BF dove into his chicken Parmesan whole heartily, until he realized he ate too many bread sticks and couldn't eat anymore. My carbonara came out looking creamy and delicious, and incredibly oily. I found out the next day as I had my leftovers just how much oil was in my dish. I love carbonara and this was good, it's just not something I could eat on a regular basis.

The plan for home. Recreate the OG experience from bread sticks to salad to main course. Lighten the fat load and try to maintain the flavors. 

Olive Garden salad at home is pretty easy.  The salad itself is just lettuce, pepperoncini, black olives, red onions and croutons.  Black olives are gross, so I omitted those.  It's pretty true to when I go to the restaurant.  The dressing has quite a few copycat recipes online that I based my final recipe on and apparently those are very similar to the actual OG recipe (I couldn't believe that they actually use mayonnaise in their recipe).  Where I took a big left turn is with my carbonara recipe.

Want easy and delicious bread sticks?  You need two ingredients.  Pizza dough and garlic salt.  I used a pre-made pizza dough from the grocery store and cut in into eight pieces.  I rolled each piece into a bread stick-like shape and spritzed them with cooking spray.  After a light sprinkle with garlic salt and eighteen minutes in the oven, we had bread sticks that didn't harden up in two minutes.  A little denser than the OG variety, but BF and I both liked the pizza dough sticks better.

The OG carbonara dish I received was covered in cheese and dripping in oil.  I made a simple and classic carbonara with grilled chicken.  BF was a little sad that my version wasn't under a layer of cheese, but it was something I could actually have before going to the gym.  After our dinner at the OG, we went home and melted into the couch.

Next time you want some Olive Garden and don't want to wait for a table, just pick up a few ingredients and make it at home!  Or you could sit in the bar area, they serve the full menu at the bar and the wait is usually much shorter!

Restaurant Wars - Chipotle

I first stepped foot into a Chipotle restaurant over ten years ago in the city of Madison, Wisconsin. I was a first year grad student and had enough of my friend Bhavesh tell me how many burritos he'd eaten that week. I had to try it out for myself. There was only one problem, I'd never had a burrito quite like this before.

In Western New York we grew up eating Mighty taco. There were few other options when it came to quick tacos. Their menu consisted of soft and hard tacos, filled with beef, cheese, sour cream and "Mighty sauce." Whatever that was.

During my college years, at UB in WNY, a burrito place opened up boasting burritos the size of your head. Being of the female persuasion, that didn't really appeal to me. My guy friends were happy to go there and eat six pounds of runny beans, poorly cooked meat and scorched cheese but I begged off and stayed home those nights.

With grad school came a broadening of my palate and the introduction of healthy burrito options. Bhavesh dragged us all to Chipotle, where he really did eat five burritos a week, and introduced us to what would become a weekly treat. Sometimes twice weekly when we had late exams and only time for one meal.

Chipotle has really spread across the country since my first visit back in 2003. Even Amherst, NY now boasts a location and they're always the last to get anything good! I have gone from solely eating soft tacos, to only getting the spiciest fajita burrito. After the advent of the online calorie counter my order swiftly switched to the chicken salad and these days I'll go back and forth between a salad and a bowl. I'm sure your own ordering process has changed through the years too.

I was more than happy to have Chipotle as the first restaurant on my war list. bf and I go there a few times a month and my coworkers regularly visit for lunch. I could definitely go for a burrito bowl or salad without the long drive! I decided to try and recreate my two go-to dishes for this challenge. Here's the verdict.

First, it took forever to prepare everything that I needed to make these two dishes. I made three salsas, salad dressing, chicken marinade. I prepped and chopped lettuce, tomatoes, untold numbers of jalapeño pepper and squeezed more limes than I can count. I actually ran out of limes and had to go back to the store for more. I really could have used a staff to help me prep everything. I planned on making this meal for dinner Monday, so I spent two hours on sunday afternoon doing all the prep work.

Next, dinner came together really quickly Monday night, though I nearly drove us out of our apartment. The marinade for the chicken smelled wonderful, but when the chicken came in contact with the grill pan - it was like I set off a pepper bomb. BF and I were both coughing because of the spiciness in air. Maybe grill your chicken outside, or you'll this the police have sent the seat team to your house.

Lastly, adobo seasoning is not the same as adobo sauce. I looked everywhere for a jar of adobo seasoning. I knew it existed because my grocery list app had it programmed into its memory. However, after six different grocery stores I had to give up. Maybe I need to locate a well stocked Hispanic grocery in my area? I wound up buying a jar or chipotle peppers in adobo sauce and fishing out he sauce I needed.

You can totally cheat on the prep work and buy your favorite mild salsa or salsa verde. I even shredded my own cheese mixture, which you could skip and buy a pre-shredded Mexican-style cheese blend. For the Chipotle flavor though, you can't skip marinating your chicken, making your own fresh corn salsa, tossing your rice with lime juice and blending up a batch of their salad dressing. At least make the salad dressing, after a bit of tweaking of some other recipes I found - it's almost like being there.

One year ago: Chocolate-Peppermint Marshmallows
Two years ago: Homemade Butterfinger Bars

Chipotle recipes - These have all been adapted from so many different "Copy-cat" recipes online. I changed them all a little to try and get as close as possible to the real thing. Be sure to go out and get yourself a bottle of green Tabasco sauce too, because it isn't complete without a dash of heat!

Salsa verde

4 tomatillos, husks removed
1 small white onion, peeled and quartered
3 cloves garlic
2 Cubanelle peppers
2 chipotle peppers in adobo sauce
1/4 cup fresh cilantro
Juice from 1/2 lime

Turn on your oven broiler.  Place tomatillos, onion quarters, garlic cloves and peppers 4-5 inches below the broiler.  Broil for 5 minutes, turn the vegetable over and broil for another 5 minutes.  Remove from the oven and let cool for 10 minutes.

Peel the charred skin from the peppers, chop in half and remove the seeds.  Combine all of the ingredients except the salt in a food processor or blender.  Pulse to combine, leave the salsa a little chunky.  Give the salsa a taste, season with salt if you desire.  Transfer to an air-tight jar and keep in the fridge.


Mild tomato salsa

4 Roma tomatoes, seeded and chopped
1/4 red onion, chopped
1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and chopped
1/4 cup fresh cilantro, chopped
Juice from 1/2 lime

Combine all ingredients in a large bowl and toss to combine.  Transfer to an air-tight jar and store in the fridge.
Cheese blend

8 ounces Monterey Jack cheese
8 ounces Mild white cheddar cheese
Place cheese blocks in the freezer for 10-20 minutes.  This will make it easier to shred.  Shred and combine both cheeses.  So simple!

Chipotle brown rice

1 cup brown rice
2 cups water
Juice from 1 lime
Juice for 1/2 lime
1/3 cup fresh cilantro, chopped

Pour 1 cup brown rice into 2 cups water.  Bring to a boil then lower heat to low.  Let simmer for 40 minutes.  Once the rice is tender and the water is absorbed, add citrus juice and cilantro.  Toss to combine.
Fresh Corn salsa

2 cups corn kernals (fresh or frozen)
1 jalapeno pepper, diced small
1/4 red onion, chopped
1/4 cup fresh cilantro, chopped
Juice from 1/2 lime

Combine all ingredients and transfer to an air-tight container.  Store in the fridge for 1-2 hours before serving.

Chipotle Chicken marinade

1 ounce dried ancho chilies
3 ounces chipotle peppers in adobo sauce
1 teaspoon black pepper
2 teaspoons cumin powder
2 tablespoons fresh oregano, chopped
6 cloves garlic
2 teaspoons salt
1 red onion, quartered
1/4 cup oil (canola/vegetable/olive)
4 chicken breasts

Add boiling water to dried ancho chilies and let hydrate for 2 hours or up to overnight.

Combine all ingredients in food processor or blender and transfer to a large bowl.  Poke chicken breasts with a fork and pierce all over.  Add chicken to the marinade and toss to coat.  Cover bowl with plastic wrap and let sit in the fridge overnight.

When ready to cook.  Remove chicken from the marinade and shake off excess bits of pepper.  Grill in a well-ventilated area!

Honey-Chipotle salad dressing

1/2 cup red wine vinegar

1/3 cup honey

1 tablespoon adobo sauce

1 tablespoon Kosher salt

1 teaspoon ground black pepper

1 tablespoon fresh oregano

1 1/2 cups extra virgin olive oil

Combine first six ingredients in a blender.  Pulse to combine.  With blender running, slowly stream in olive oil.  Serve over any salad for a tangy and sweet take on your usual salad.

Yum, delicious.

Green Curry Fritters

When one person works in New Jersey and the other works on Long Island, it means that someone is going to have to make a long trek to work each day.  Since it's easier to get to my office via public transport than boyfriends office, I spend a lot of time commuting each week.  People at my office all give me sad looks when I tell them about my daily travels, but it really isn't that bad.  Let me list all the great things that happen while I ride the train.  Most of which they couldn't do while driving to work in their cars.

1. I can take a nap!  Try that in your car!  No wait, don't.  It usually happens about twenty minutes into my Long Island train ride.  My eyelids start to feel heavy and I begin to nod off during the middle of a paragraph.  It's okay to give into sleep because I have an alarm set to wake me up just before I get to my stop.  Do I have to worry about getting to my stop before the alarm goes off?  No.  The LIRR is never early.

2. I prepare powerpoint slides for my weekly meetings, because there are always meetings and there are always slides to be made.  I apparently should have taken a course in powerpoint slide preparation in grad school.  I thought it would be all chemistry and making compounds.  Nope, it's half that, half talking about doing chemistry and making compounds in meetings.

3. I watch movies.  In fact I watched one yesterday.  Thank you Netflix and 4G.

4. I read a lot of books.  My kindle has an ever rotating group of books from the Amazon store, my friends kindle loans and the NJ digital library.  I've spent time this year learning about the inticacies of cancer in The Emperor of All Maladies.  I stood by Nick as he was accused of killing his wife in Gone Girl.  I helped solve a World War II mystery with the War Brides.  And recently I've been hearing Anthony Bourdain in my head while reading his 2011 book, Medium Raw.

I'm about halfway through Medium Raw and it's funny, witty and sounds entirely like Bourdain.  As I read through the chapters, I can hear his voice in my head, narrating the book like he does throughout "No Reservations."  Bourdain has an opinion on everything food, I'm sure he has plenty to say about food bloggers.  All I know, it's a lot of fun to read and makes my train ride seem much shorter.

5. Finally, I plan my weekly meal plans.  I have five different cooking magazines on my iPad and I have clipped so many recipes to make!  (Want to know how to 'clip' a recipe on your iPad?  Just take a screen capture and it will send a copy of the recipe to your photo library.  To screen capture, hold the top power button and tap the home button.  You'll hear a camera noise and you know you've got it!)

I clipped this recipe for green curry fritters a few weeks ago and have been thinking of making them since.  Boyfriend and I both enjoyed this meal, though we both decided that these fritters would be even better if made into sliders.  Next time!

Southwest Chicken Burger

When I was a first year graduate student, living alone for the very first time, the Better Homes & Garden cookbook fed me all year long.  How I managed with just one cookbook and a minimal knowledge of online recipe websites, I'll never know. 

I grew up, making very few dinners myself. My mom worked evenings for most of my childhood so we were often left with two options for dinner. 1. A casserole that was prepared by mom and waiting in the fridge for us to heat up in the oven. 2. Dad was cooking.

Now, my dad is great. He's a smart guy, a chemical engineer in fact, but cooking just isn't his forte. Even to this day, he likes meals that require no more than four ingredients. His specialty is a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. And many a times I've seen him eat Perry's ice cream for dinner. If dad was 'cooking,' that usually meant we were having a frozen dinner or some soup. He heats and eats, no prep required.

The only thing I ever did in the kitchen was bake and the recipe was generally from the back of the chocolate chip bag.

The last Christmas before I moved to Madison was used to prepare me for my eventual move out of the house. I got pots and pans, towels, a laundry basket and the BHG cookbook. All a single girl needs!

These days I have cookbooks for anything I'm looking to prepare, but I still enjoy looking back at my first cookbook, leafing through its wrinkled, sauce-coated pages, my own handwritten notes adorning the margins. I think of the time I spent in my closet-like kitchen, cooking on my 1950's stove and turning out my first meals on my own.

Why Bother? 2012 - Coconut Milk & Thai Chili Sauce

I have been having pretty good luck with the challenges so far this year.  Most of the items on my list, I would probably make again.  Some of them I already have duplicated.  This time I can say with absolute certainty, I will never make coconut milk again.  I'm going to stock up on cans of coconut milk and coconut cream and never look back.  Why am I so certain?  Let me walk you through the process I went through to get 2 cups of coconut milk.

Since boyfriend and I were going out of town last weekend, I decided to make my coconut milk before we left.  We tried Whole Foods and only were able to locate young coconuts.  The flesh of a young coconut isn't what I needed to make coconut milk.  We stopped at Pathmark and surprisingly came home with two, whole coconuts!

I brought my coconuts home and drained the coconut water out.  It looked a little cloudy, but I've never done this before, so who knows what to expect!  I took out my favorite hammer and pounded on the coconut until it cracked open to reveal...  rotten, moldy coconut flesh.  It was gross.  Luckily I had gotten two coconuts at the grocery store!  I drained the second one, cracked it in two and discovered... a second rotten coconut!  Pathmark must have gotten a bad batch.

This sad turn of events meant that I was going to be making coconut water in Buffalo.  Thankfully, Buffalo is home to Wegmans and Wegmans stocks coconuts.  As a lifelong fan of Wegmans, I knew that they would not disappoint and sell me rotten coconuts.  My parents were a bit confused as to why I was making coconut milk when they sell it in every grocery store.  After three hours, I would be asking myself the same question.

Draining and opening the coconuts was the easy part.  Although my dad wondered what all the noise was about and I scared the dogs out of the kitchen.  When it came to prying the flesh out of the shell, I got a little frustrated.  Videos on youtube suggested keeping the shell whole of prying out the flesh with a knife, while others told me to break the shell into smaller pieces, then remove the flesh.  All I can tell you is, it took me over an hour to remove all of the coconut meat from the shell.

After the meat was freed, I spent the next hour and a half peeling the brown skin from the while flesh.  After spending all this time trying to get clean coconut meat, there was no way I was going to hand grate it.  The food processor was put into action and I finally was able to make my coconut milk.  Once the coconut is freed and grated, it's easy to make the milk.  Just a little boiling water and ten minutes time and it was done.  Took long enough!

Chicken and Broccoli

That's right.  You read the title correctly.  This Wilde girl is heading home to Buffalo this weekend!  I'm very excited.  There are plans in the works for lunch at my parents house (it is rumored to involve apple cobbler), breakfast at my favorite local restaurants with boyfriend and dinner with the in-laws.

This visit was only planned last Saturday, as we were groggily trying to acclimate ourselves to the eastern time zone.  Did you know that Alaska is in it's own time zone?  One hour further west of pacific standard time!  Couple that with the fact that the sun gets up much later in our New Jersey apartment than it did in our cruiseship stateroom and you've got two people waking up at almost 10am.  This is a huge deal for me.  I'm usually up by 7:30 on the weekends.

I suppose that the idea for the visit was hatched a few weeks ago, when I said "we could go to Buffalo for labor day weekend."  While on the cruise, boyfriend said "I looked at flights for next weekend, we should book tickets soon."  Come Saturday, boyfriend was sitting at his computer and booking the 8pm flight for Friday night.  Why the ticket says we take off at 8:01 and get to Buffalo at 10:05 is beyond me.  The flight is only an hour.  Those airlines are padding their time to make me feel better when we land "early" at 9:45, even though we took off 45 minutes late.  I'm not fooled airlines!

Moving on...  Other than spending time with my parents (who I haven't seen since Christmas) and boyfriends parents (who I can't remember when I saw them last!), we have no plans for our little weekend getaway.  It will probably involve getting a Ted's hotdog while drinking an overly sweet loganberry, chowing down on some John and Mary's chicken tenders while eyeing up Nina's ice cream across the street and driving by the now empty lot that used to hold the Swiss Chalet, wiping a tear from my eye.

Oh yes, there will be cobbler too.  I have a text message confirmation.  Bring on Friday!

And...  I get to see these little ladies.  They're one year old now!

And they're pretending to be little old eastern European ladies...

Tortellini and Artichokes in Walnut Sauce

I'm not here right now, I'm in Alaska!  Please leave a message!  Beeeeeeeepppp...

I left you some pasta to eat while I'm gone.  Don't burn the house down!

Wegmans Buffalo Chicken

I'm ready to go on vacation, it's been a long few weeks at work!  Yesterday was another long day in the lab and at my desk.  Before we sail away into the Alaskan wild tomorrow, I have a few things to accomplish at work.  I'm always responsible for doing chemistry and making new compounds every week.  In addition to that, this week I have to finish making a presentation so that it's ready for when I return from vacation.  Since I don't want to do too much work while on vacation, I'm working long hours this week!

At least I've finished packing my suitcase!  I keep going back to it and trying to decide if I have enough layers, socks and workout clothes.  Boyfriend was very jealous that all of my stuff fit into my suitcase, with room to spare.  That's the bonus of being a girl, our clothes are smaller so we can pack more! 

The cameras are charged, lenses are cleaned, my Kindle is stocked with new literature (chick lit and fashion magazines) and the apartment is almost ready for us to go away.  Just a few more turns around the house to clean up and empty out the fridge.  Not that we have much in the fridge this week anyways, I bought bananas at the grocery store this week, but I don't really want to return to fuzzy limes and milk that is more yogurt than milk.  Luckily, dinner was made up of items that I always have in the house.  And it's one of boyfriends favorite meals (minus the carrots).

Curried Chicken with Coconut Rice

I have been cohabitating with boyfriend for just over a year now and while we have lots of fun and it's great to see him every day, there are some things that I miss...

My mess.  When living on your own, any mess you make is your own mess.  It's your own responsibility to clean up, or not clean up, your living space.  My apartment was tiny, so it got dirty and cluttered pretty quickly.  During the week, I would treat my apartment as a landing pad.  I would throw down my stuff, eat a bowl of salad, change into my PJs and go to bed.  Things would pile up.  Dishes, clothes, books.  Come Sunday I would clean it all up and start fresh.  Now there is my mess and boyfriends mess.  You don't even want to see our apartment right now.

My big fluffy bed.  I bought a grown-up bed my second year of graduate school.  It was a full size, double-pillowtop cloud of a bed.  I had to climb into it at night and jump down in the morning.  I piled it high with pillows and covered it in a white, king size, down comforter.  While it was the most amazing bed ever sewn, it would be a little cozy for two people.  I sold my beautiful bed to a fellow grad student and moved my fluffy pillows to New Jersey.

My all day cooking sessions in my tiny studio kitchen.  When living in 300-square feet, with a kitchen that took up half of that space, the cooking took over the entire living space.  I would have marshmallows setting on my TV stand, a cutting board on my tiny cafe table and two burners running on my stovetop.  With working long hours in the lab all week long, I had to cram all my cooking into one day.  These days I can cook dinner every night and spend my weekends with boyfriend.

All in all, I'll take the two-person mess, less fluffy bed and spread out cooking schedule.  Boyfriend is a pretty fun roommate.

Chicken Stuffed with Peppered Goat Cheese

Since I just celebrated my one year anniversary at work, I thought I would take a minute to reveal...

My top ten favorite things about working in industry!

(for those of you who haven't taken the long road through grad school to your job, working in industry means working in the public sector, rather than in academia or for the government!)

1. The first time I heard "Your time is too valuable to spend it doing X.". When I heard this I just about fell over. No longer would I have to do menial tasks to save a buck. No more cutting TLC plates, no more pulling spotters, no more making Dess-Martin! (all very time consuming things that are terribly boring)

2. Paid time off. And you're urged to take your time off so that you don't lose it at the end of the year! Three weeks where you don't want me to come in? Deal!

3. Bagel day. What? Your company doesn't have bagel day every Thursday? Mine does and it's awesome!

4. Dressing up. Gone are the days of wearing the standard t-shirt and jeans to the lab everyday. Now I get to wear button down shirts, pressed pants and nice shoes. Sure, I could wear jeans to work, but when I dress nicely people don't ask why I look so nice.

5. Work hours. What does your standard grad student work week look like? Usually between 60-80 hours a week, depending on your advisor. Never again.

6. Coworkers that care! In grad school you want to work hard and get out. There is competition, gossiping and sometimes back-stabbing. In industry, teams work toward a common goal, the whole "we all succeed together" motto goes here.

7. Free lunch. That's right grad students of the world, there are
Lots of free lunches in industry. Usually they are associated with lunchtime meetings, but not everything can be great!

8. Mr Softee Wednesdays. Yup, you read that right. The ice cream man comes to my office on Wednesday during the summer and gives us I've cream. For free.

9. Robots. Robots to do work for me, save me time and make my life better. I'm going to name them all this coming year. That way I can say "Hi Bert! Ready to run that purification for me today?"

10. All of the learning I still get to do on a daily basis. Pharma is an ever evolving industry and you've got to keep on your toes to stay in the game!

It seems that three of my favorite things involve food... Well, here's a recipe for the food you saw throughout the post, we'll keep up the theme!

Chicken Tacos and Corn Relish

What happens when it's time to celebrate something huge?

Taco night!!!

That's right, we're celebrating in the Wilde household today because I've made it one whole year at my new job!  Well, technically my anniversary was July 6th, but we were busy doing the fourth of July thing, then I was busy being sick, so TODAY we celebrate.  (And by today, I mean we had this for dinner last night...  Stay with me on this one).

Yes, I have passed the one year mark as a medicinal chemist and it feels great! 

When I was a student for all those years, I looked forward to being done and moving on.  The five years I spent as a grad student in Madison were great, but I couldn't wait to defend my thesis.  The two years I spent as a postdoc were fun, busy and intellectually stimulating, but I couldn't wait to start job hunting.  Now that I'm in the real world, with a job working in my chosen field, it's a total change in perspective - I want to stay right where I am.

I've learned so much this year and there is still so much more to know.  My job is special.  Why is that?  In order to become a really good medicinal chemist, I need to know what is going on in every facet of a project.  I need to not only understand the chemistry and chemical matter, I also need to know the biology, pharmacology, genetics, clinical indications, formulations and still more things that I don't even understand yet.  I've still got a lot of information to stuff into my brain!  Here's to another year working hard in the real world.  Let's celebrate with tacos!

Peanut Chicken with Asian Slaw

Happy birthday America!  You're looking pretty fine for being over two hundred years old!  As a patriotic citizen of your shores, I plan to spend your big day enjoying the glory of the outdoors.  I'll be biking over your hills, playing frisbee on your glens and resting under your trees.  Thanks America!

How are you spending your Fourth of July?  Personally, boyfriend and I went to see fireworks on Monday, along with hearing the musical stylings of the Glenn Miller Orchestra.  There were little kids running around, families picnicking on the lawn and adorable older couples dancing at the stage.  Come sundown the announcer called for fireworks and we enjoyed a serious half hour of colorful explosions, loud bangs, crackling sparkles and arches of fireworks that looked like "anti-aircraft fire" according to boyfriend.

For today we'll be taking it easy and not fighting with the crowds of folks heading to Manhattan and Hoboken for the Macy's fireworks (we did that last year!).  Whenever you drive to fireworks, you wind up spending just as much time waiting in traffic to get home.  Luckily the events on Monday were at a park that was only three miles from our house.  Boyfriend and I biked ourselves over to the park, a workout and fun, all in one!

I hope you have a great Fourth and get to have some relaxing time of your own!

Pesto-Yogurt Chicken

It's been almost a year.  An entire year at my new job.  A full loop around the sun living with boyfriend.  And it's nearly my anniversary of doing a double-river commute through Manhattan.  Whenever I tell anyone where I live and where I work (my commute being from New Jersey to Long Island) they gasp, wince or give me a look of pain.  Everyone feels sorry for me and my long commute, but I have learned so much in this past year.  I have also read A LOT of books (and cooking magazines!).

What have I learned?  Having the right attitude about being a commuter is half the battle.  Being positive and relaxed about my commute helps to make the days go by easier.  It can also be a lot of fun if you look at it as a casual observer. 

Commuting has the inevitablity of being very predictable.  Here are a few things you can always count on...

~ Someone is always late.  Inevitably, at almost any time of day, there will be someone running through Penn Station to catch a train.

~ That guy next to me is in a hurry.  How can I tell?  As soon as the track number for his train is called, he takes off running.  Usually swearing out loud if it isn't on the track he's standing near. 

~ When I need to be at a 9:00 meeting, the trains will conspire to make me late.  Always.

~ Trains can be late for a wide range of reasons.  Each more ridiculous than the last.  The LIRR is often prone to "rain conditions," "heat conditions," "police activity," "wind conditions," "signal problems," and my favorite "DELAY."

~ The Starbucks near the ACE subway has a shorter line than the one in the center of the station.  Don't tell everyone my secret!

~ People riding peak trains are quieter than those riding off-peak trains.

~ The person who sits down next to me thinks their headphones contain the extremely loud "music" to their earbuds.  The "music" is terrible.

~ If there is only one train line that is delayed, re-routed or cancelled, it will be my line.

Are you a long time commuter or are just starting out your weekly treks to work? What have you learned in your time on public transportation?  Do you find yourself a magnet for talkative types?  Does your train always have a few empty beer cans rolling around?  Does your bus driver think he knows your name?

If you're not a commuter, enjoy the quiet solitude of your car.  And don't pity us commuters, we read a lot of books.  Or take a lot of naps, try doing that in your car!  Wait, don't nap while driving.  It'll be better for everyone.

One Year Ago: Baked Pasta Casserole

Pesto-yogurt sauce

Inspired by Easy Everyday

I always have a container of Greek yogurt sitting in my fridge.  It's useful in so many different recipes and I reccommend getting yourself a container of plain yogurt as well!  This pesto yogurt sauce can be used to marinate chicken or you can toss cooked new potatoes in it for a tangy side dish.
1/4 cup Greek yogurt
2 tbsp basil pesto
1 clove garlic, minced
1/4 tsp kosher salt
1/8 tsp freshly ground black pepper

Combine ingredients and use!

Pesto-yogurt chicken

Inspired by Easy Everyday

This dinner was very fast to put together.  I left boyfriend a note to put chicken in a bag with the sauce an stick it back in the fridge.  That way the chicken was marinated and ready to go in the oven when I got home.  The sides you see on the plate are simple glazed carrots and sauteed spinach.  While I went with chicken legs this time, I would definitely use chicken breasts next time around!

6 Chicken legs
1 batch pesto-yogurt sauce

Toss chicken legs in pesto-yogurt sauce and cover with plastic wrap.  Place in the fridge for 1 hour to marinate. 

Preheat oven to 425 F.  Line a baking sheet with foil, then parchment paper.  Place chicken legs on top, being sure that they aren't touching.  Bake for 30 minutes, turning over halfway through cook time.  You want the meat to reach 165 F.

Paradise Chicken

Since I shared with you an island drink yesterday, I thought that today I would tell you a little bit about that island.  St Kitts, home of Ting, is part of the Caribbean country including its neighboring island Nevis.  Boyfriend and I spent a week there a few years ago and loved every minute of it.

If you are looking for a quiet island with lots to do, this is the place to book your next vacation.  Boyfriend and I were drawn to St Kitts with its promise of lush rain forests, clear blue waters and monkeys!

Yes, monkeys!  The monkeys that live on St Kitts are not naturally from the island and were brought there by the French as pets in the 1600's.  Now they abound in the rain forests and you can even find them by the beaches, drinking your cocktails.  (Enjoy a laugh and google drunken St Kitts monkeys!)

You should definitely judge your vacation location depending on its lack or abundance of monkeys.

We also spent a good portion of time hiking through the rain forest and walking through Basseterre.  We ate locally made ice cream in the port during the day and barbecued chicken on the beach at night.  There was always an abundance of empty beaches with calm water for snorkeling and wave-filled beaches for the acrobat in your family.

We lived on chicken while we were on St Kitts.  The many different beach huts we frequented all offered their delicious poultry options.  For our Caribbean dreams menu, chicken had to be the main course.  I chose a dish with heat, traditionally found on St Thomas.  If you're not a fan of spicy foods, just remove the habanero pepper!