Here’s a delicious recipe for garlic mashed potatoes.

Oh yeah, you’ve got to have garlic. I’m not so sure you need to potato ricer though.

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Last week I saw the most delicious chicken recipe on the Cook’s Illustrated podcast, so I decided to make it tonight. I made a couple small changes to the recipe, but it came out very delicious. The recipe below can be found, unchanged, on the Cook’s Illustrated website. The photos are mine.

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups orange juice
1/3 cup light corn syrup
3 Tbsp honey
1 Tbsp Dijon mustard
1 Tbsp distilled white vinegar
1/4 tsp red pepper flakes
1/8 tsp salt
1/8 tsp black pepper
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts
2 tsp vegetable oil
1 medium onion, minced

Procedure:

1. Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 375 degrees. Whisk 1 1/2 cups orange juice, corn syrup, honey, mustard, vinegar, pepper flakes, salt and pepper together in medium bowl. Place flour in pie plate, then season chicken on both sides with salt and pepper. Working with one chicken breast at a time, coat chicken with flour, patting off excess.

2. Heat oil in ovenproof 12-inch skillet over medium heat until shimmering. Add chicken breasts skin-side down; cook until well browned (8 to 14 minutes). Turn chicken and lightly brown other side, about 5 minutes longer. Transfer chicken to plate.

3. Pour off all but 1 teaspoon fat from pan. Add onion and cook until softened, 1 to 2 minutes. Increase heat to high and add orange juice mixture. Simmer, stirring occasionally, until syrupy and reduced to 1 cup, 6 to 10 minutes. Remove skillet from heat and tilt to one side so glaze pools in corner of pan. Using tongs, roll each chicken breast in pooled glaze to coat evenly and place skin-side down in skillet.

4. Transfer skillet to oven and bake chicken until thickest part of breasts registers 160 degrees on instant-read thermometer, 15 to 20 minutes, turning chicken skin-side up halfway through cooking. Transfer chicken to platter and let rest 5 minutes. Return skillet to high heat (be careful-handle will be very hot) and cook glaze, stirring constantly, until thick and syrupy (heatproof spatula should leave wide trail when dragged through glaze), about 1 minute. Spoon 1 teaspoon glaze over each breast and serve, passing remaining glaze at table.

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My wife made some plain old white bread the other night. It was quite bubbly.

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I am so itching for a road trip. One of my favorite things to do is to pack an overnight bag on Friday afternoon and drive somewhere for the weekend. Since our kids were born we don’t get to do that as often as I would like. In fact, with the exception of visiting the mountains just 2 hours north of us, we haven’t gone on a weekend roadtrip for almost four years.

When I lived in Las Vegas, one of my favorite destinations was San Diego. I would get off work around 2 in the afternoon and drive for several hours just to find myself sitting in one of the best san diego restaurants by dinner time.

While I would travel up and down the California coast on my weekend roadtrips, I always liked visiting San Diego. I don’t know what it is about that city, whether it was the beautiful beaches, the weather, or the downtown san diego restaurants that kept me coming back.

There was a time when I knew all the hot spots, where to find the best seafood, which places required me to wear socks (which I don’t like), and how much money I needed when I went out at night. It’s been years since I have been there and now I would need a san diego dining guide just to find the local diners.

I am really wanting to take a roadtrip. Maybe I can talk the wife and kids into going somewhere this weekend.

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If you haven’t noticed, I love taking pictures with my Canon SD1000. I love that little camera. Anyway, I have been experimenting lately by holding a magnifying lens between the object I am photographing and the camera.

It makes for some interesting photos.

Yes, we’ve been eating more fruit and vegetables. In fact, I am fixin’ to get a bowl of sliced peaches to eat right now. I wonder if there are more calories in the fruit I am photographing?

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For the past week and a half the wife has been baking all kinds of breads. White breads, wheat breads, and now multi-grain breads. I must say, my wife definitely knows what she’s doing when it comes to baking bread.

We’re still following our new “eating right” diet, and the bread she’s been making has been making our meals that much more delicious.

The one thing you won’t find in our house is any “low-carb” diet, that’s for sure.

Don’t worry, as soon as she gets her five weeks worth of “meal planning” done, I will get to start posting the recipes that go with these delicious photos.

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Do you want to know what peeves me? When a store advertises something, that just isn’t what they say it is.

While we were walking through our local Publix store, I noticed a sign for one of my favorite foods ever.

I was so excited I made an immediate detour from the tomatoes to pick out a couple of delicious California Hass Avocados. The problem I found out, was actually finding one in their store. It turns out the entire display was filled with avocados from Mexico. There wasn’t a California Avocado to be found. How depressing.

I should have asked for a raincheck, but I bet I’d be waiting a long time until they got any avocados in that were actually from California.

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Okay, so you can’t eat “healthy” all the time, can you?

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