Grilled Bruschetta Chicken

Our tomatoes aren’t quite ripe yet.  Every day I go out and water the big green plants with prayers and pleading.  In the meantime, my father-in-law has given me tomatoes to tide me over until mine come through.  C’mon , little buddies.  Ripen!

                Food is miraculous. Tomatoes are the only vegetable (fruit?) that we grow in our tiny yard, so the miracle unfolds in front us under the spray of our water hose.   I buy my tomato plants in the plant stage because I have no green phalanges.  The way they start out as little plants, stretch up through their inadequate cages, and push out tomatoes bursting with the flavors of summer – it all makes me pause in admiration and gratitude. 

Chicken Soup with Spinach and Orzo

A number of years ago, I called my mom and boasted, "I just roasted a chicken!" 


She was nonplussed.  "Anyone can roast a chicken.  It's taking the meat off the bones that is the hard part."


There is something to that.  Deboning a chicken is greasy, mindless work.  When we were kids, my parents would scare us into doing homework by regaling us with stories of chicken factories.  Now I pull meat off the pokey bones off a chicken and mutter, "I went to college...I went to college." 

The Best Grilled Chicken He's Ever Had (and I made it!)

We bought a new grill. Not just any grill – a Bayou Classic Cypress grill. Maybe it is my Michigan sensibilities, but the name of this makes me picture a man in denim overalls and a red trucker hat, grilling road kill as he takes in a view dank and heavy with Spanish moss. Recently it has been me in black dress and sweater, barefoot, grilling chicken as I gaze out over the rooftops of the office park next door. My high heels shoes are inside, resting haphazardly where I kicked them off under the dining room table on my way out the door with the 20 lb bag of charcoal (not just ANY charcoal – cowboy charcoal).

My friend Jennifer commented that if lightening struck our grill tomorrow, we'd still have gotten our money's worth.  In the one month we have had it, we have grilled two steaks, five chickens, one pizza, a bunch of asparagus, two racks of ribs and countless marshmallows. I even went so far as to make my own marshmallows. (I later saw in a magazine that homemade marshmallows are a rising food trend for 2012. Who knew I was trendy?). I’ve had to make the chicken five times because not only is it easy, delicious, and quick; but I’ve been determined take it from “the best chicken we’ve ever had” to “the best chicken anyone has ever had.” I obsess.

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