New Recipe

This is Chicken Street Corn Skillet, a recipe I got via a friend from Pioneer Woman. I don’t know who Pioneer Woman is, but I have heard the name, or term, or whatever is appropriate here, before and now I know she has a fine recipe for chicken street corn. I have seen pictures of Mexican street corn and I don’t understand how all the stuff doesn’t fall off. My butter falls off. Butter is my favorite food (no, I do not eat it alone, but oh, my, it makes everything it’s in taste good, doesn’t it?) (Popcorn) (which I used to think was my favorite food, but I was just confused due to its proximity to butter. I do like popcorn without butter, too. I even like it without salt. So. Mmm. Maybe popcorn is my favorite food) (No. I’m going to stick with butter, because I used to think caramel was my favorite food, and butter is integral to caramel. Just imagine putting caramel and popcorn together!) (I know. I did not just invent that) (Sugar is not my favorite food, lest you jump to the conclusion that because of the caramel thing sugar is actually my favorite food. Sugar is not a favorite food. It is an extra), and I would very much not want it to fall off my corn. But its viscosity is considerable when on hot corn, so it makes sense it falls off. Mexican street corn stuff seems to have more substance, but it remains that corn is round and stuff falls off round.

Anyway, back to the recipe. I like chicken, I like corn, I have a skillet, so this recipe seemed like a good idea. I secured the chicken on Friday and needed to get making this deal. I diverged a bit from the original recipe, which is not something I usually do on the first try. It called for frozen corn with onions and peppers. Is that a thing? I didn’t know. I had frozen corn, and fresh onions and peppers, so I thought I would just create my own by sautéing the veggies. I think that was a good thought, but I didn’t have that thought again until it was all done. So, no onions and peppers. It also called for Cotija, which Keith called an audible on at the grocery store. Cotija was twice as much as queso fresco and he thought I didn’t really like Cotija, so we went with queso fresco. Keith is in charge of knowing what I do not like, so this all made sense to me. When eating it, he commented on the taste of the Cotija, so I reminded him we hadn’t used it and he said he was glad, because it would have been too strong. I had no opinion because as far as I know, I’ve never had Cotija. Or queso fresco, for that matter.

Interesting thing about new recipes and me, I always think they are going to magically take ingredients and do some kind of chemical reaction and make them better than just the sum of their parts. This doesn’t really happen; stuff just tastes like the stuff you put together and heated. Today was better than expected. I liked it a really lot. I had seconds, then when Keith left I had thirds, fourths, and fifths (each serving getting progressively smaller, but with the same amount of the crispy cheese on the top. Shhh. Don’t tell) (Keith certainly doesn’t care if I had fifths, but I would rather he not know that I ate all the crispy top bits. He has met me, though, and knows that crispy top bits are my favorite, so he really isn’t even going to expect there still to be crispy top bits when he has leftovers tomorrow). I am going to make it the next time people come (Donna and Michael, be ready).

Speaking of Keith leaving, he didn’t go far – just out to the deck for deck painting day. The deck painting was soooooooooooo much easier than expected, because I did absolutely none of it. Keith is collapsed in the chair as I write this. The paint he got was suuuuuuuuper thick and hard to put on (and is theoretically going to last MUCH longer than the dumb solid stain that did not last at all). He rolled on the top of the decking (although the thick paint wouldn’t even get on the roller at first when he tried. He said it was like painting with pudding), but had to use the brush to get down between all the boards. Our deck is pretty big, and it grows as you are painting. I can confirm this from the first time we painted it. He conquered the top part – intentionally leaving the lower section to do later because there is so much stuff to move. Look how much better the top looks than the lower section! Good job, Keith!