Food Doof Challenge, Day 2: ChickiParm

In case you missed the beginning of The Food Doof Challenge, you can read about its humble start here.

Because I am not Harry Potter and thus cannot magic bizarre culinary oddities into unexpected deliciousness, I did not spend all day slaving away in the kitchen, waving a wand in an attempt to piece together a nutritious and delicious dinner from cranberry sauce and refried beans. However, I did spend all day obsessing over it. My biggest concern at this stage of Food Doofery* is that I will use up all my useful ingredients, the ones that I could actually build a meal around, in the first three days. By Thursday, if this were to happen, dinner would be brown rice pilaf with a Cheerio crust, glazed with an orange marmalade-chili bean sauce.

Fear of Doof disaster has led me to ration my ingredients that don't actively suck, breaking them into portions that are proportionally different from what I'd normally serve. For example, I had a 1.25 pound package of chicken tenderloins in the fridge that needed to be cooked sooner rather than later (read: immediately), and in my regularly scheduled programming, I'd dedicate them all to one dish. But as a committed Food Doof, and with the specter of orange marmalade chili beans lurking behind me, I decided to stretch the chicken by making it more of a splashy accent to the dish for two nights, as opposed to the main dish just once. The Watson to the plate's Sherlock Holmes, if you will.

What, would you not call Watson "splashy"? Clearly you missed the "Watson Gone Wild" Vegas special. Might I suggest Tivo?

I knew I wanted to bread the chicken and serve it over pasta, so I breaded half of it using some long-neglected Italian breadcrumbs I found in the cabinet. The other half I sprinkled with a little salt and pepper, so that I could bake it tonight, then shred it, season it, and mix it with the refried beans to serve as taco filling tomorrow night. It's like killing two birds with one stone...except for it's one bird...with one stone...hm.

For the main attraction, I had bowtie pasta and the remains of what used to be tomato bruschetta. A couple weeks ago I had served tomato bruschetta over goat cheese as an appetizer, and to keep the bruschetta from oozing everywhere, I had scooped it out with a slotted spoon, leaving several cups of bruschetta juice in the jar. Then, it seemed completely reasonable and economical to save the bruschetta juice for a later use, because I was apparently high at that time. Had I not stepped up to the Doof Challenge this week, I would have done like any normal person and poured the bruschetta juice out when I came to my senses, but staring into my fridge and receiving the cold stare of a tub of Cool Whip and three dill pickles in return, bowtie pasta in bruschetta juice sounded simply divine.

So while the chicken baked, I cooked the pasta, scalding myself on the cooking water, then put it back in the cooking pot with the bruschetta juice. I added some reserved demonic pasta cooking water, and stirred in a bunch of grated Pecorino Romano cheese (just about the end of my stash of that gem, by the way). After just a couple of minutes of bubbling, stirring, and intense praying, I had bowtie pasta in a thick, creamy tomato cheese sauce, to top with strips of breaded chicken. I hesitate to call it chicken Parmesan, since 1) it wasn't, and 2) no Parmesan was harmed in the making of this dish, but since it was so similar, I've named it ChickiParm.

And here I am, two nights into this potential foodie fiasco. Tomorrow I'm trying to magic up some tacos with the shredded chicken, but I have no idea what to serve as a side dish. Suggestions would be super!

The problem I have already noticed is that, aside from some beans, two packs of frozen spinach (which cook down into approximately two tablespoons each), and cranberry sauce, we don't really have any vegetables, not counting potatoes, so I've been nagging LB to make sure he eats lots of roughage at lunch. Otherwise, he'd come home and try to call four servings of beans his daily quota, in which case I'd refuse to sleep in the same room with him.

Scratch that. I'd refuse to sleep in the same house with him.

Stay tuned for tomorrow's installment of The Food Doof Challenge! I assure you that this will become progressively more squirrelly as the week goes on...such that I am not entirely ruling out the possibility of eating squirrels. In orange marmalade chili beans, natch.

*One of my friends recently questioned my use of the word "doofier," which is not exactly recognized by Merriam-Webster, per se. Every time I spin "doof" or "doofus" into a new vocabulary bit, I see his eyebrows raising and hear his voice of reason scaling up, asking "doofier?" So of course I try to use it in casual conversation at least three times a day.