Fiesta Chicken w/Cilantro Lime Rice

As you can see, I purchased a new frame and managed to get it up on the wall without breaking it (yet). I'm not so certain it won't come crashing down upon the guitars in the middle of the night scaring the you know what out of us and leaving lots of damage in its wake. I'll keep you posted on that.

Since we saw Robert Earl Keen this week, I decided that I would prepare what I am hereby proclaiming to be 'Fiesta Chicken' for dinner on Thursday. This meal is a Tex-Mex meets Southwest meets my slow cooker sort of thing. Before I get into the actual recipe, let me first state my preference for the term "slow cooker" over "crock-pot". Crock-pot is actually a brand name, but it reminds me of the phrase "crock of s---". You can fill in the blanks. Have fun with it!! Feel free to comment on what four letter 's' word your crock would be full of, but keep it clean it as my grandmother may read this. Slow cooker sounds like you've got a plan and like you are just going to sit back and relax, possibly with a tasty beverage of some sort, while your food stews in its own goodness all day. While a slow cooker is usually "full of it", it being what I have chosen to throw in and some might say I too am "full of it", I would rather be a nice, laid-back slow cooker. So there you have it. I used my slow cooker last night.

In order to make cleaning up your slow cooker a little bit easier, I recommend using a slow cooker liner. It's essentially a big baggie that fits inside the pot and when you are done cooking and eating, you just throw it away. There is usually some liquid that has gotten out of it somehow, but nothing like what it would look like had the liner not been there.

The ingredients for Fiesta Chicken are:
- 6 chicken breasts (about 2.5 lbs)
- 2 cans of Campbell's Cheddar Cheese Soup
- 1 can of Ro*Tel Original
- 1 can (8.75 oz.) of Whole Kernel Corn, drained
- 1 jar (4.5 oz.) of Roasted Red Pepper Tapenade
- 1 can (4 oz.) of Diced Green Chiles (mild)
- 1 medium yellow onion, sliced
- Juice of 1 lime

The corn is not a necessity but it doesn't do any harm either. I also am aware that the tapenade defies the fiesta theme, but it is at least roasted red pepper. I would prefer to use Campbell's Southwest-Style Pepper Jack Soup, but I can never find it and the cheddar does just fine. There is apparently a Campbell's Fiesta Nacho Cheese Soup, but I cannot find that either nor have I tried it. I'm sure it would work as well.

I suppose there does not really need to be a method to putting everything in the slow cooker, but for me there is. I start with one of the cans of soup at the bottom of the slow cooker followed by three of the chicken breasts. I make sure to press the breasts into the soup so that some of it covers the top as well. Then I put in half of the canned/jarred ingredients and half of the onion, followed by the other three chicken breasts and the remainder of the canned/jarred ingredients. I have no idea whether this layering technique makes any difference, but I'd like to think that it does since the chicken on the bottom gets the same amount of stuff. When everything is in, then I add the lime juice and cover it. I cooked it on low for 8 hours yesterday, which makes for super tender chicken that shreds very nicely. I have also cooked it for 6 hours on high before and I recall that the breasts held together a little better with the shorter cooking time. So it's just a question of whether you want to shred the chicken or not. The shredded of course works better for tacos and burritos. The picture to the right is what it looks like when done cooking.

I came across the recipe for Cilantro Lime Rice after deciding to take a stab at making rice similar to Chipotle's. I know at least a couple of my readers are avowed Chipotle fans so this may be of particular interest to you. It's very simple and super tasty. The ingredients are:
- 1.5 cups of cooked rice
- 1 lime
- Zest of 1/2 a lime
- 1/4 cup of fresh cilantro, chopped
- Salt and pepper to taste

I prepare the rice as normal except I add the juice from one lime a little before the water comes to a boil so that it gets cooked into the rice. Once the rice is cooked, I mix in the lime zest, cilantro, salt and pepper. That all there is to it.

I decided to go for a burrito bowl and put the chicken and rice in a bowl along with some green tomatillo salsa and some shredded Mexican cheese blend. I highly recommend this meal.

Robert Earl Keen

So I mentioned that we were going to see Robert Earl Keen at the 9:30 Club last night. The show was great. This was the fourth time I have seen him this year and this was probably the second best show behind the one in Bryan, TX (College Station really) with Joe. Of course multiple $6 pitchers of Shiner Bock could have influenced my opinion of the Bryan show, but I remember it being fun and rowdy, especially since it was a few hours after the Texas A&M spring game.

Last night we got to hear some of the new stuff that he has been playing and I am looking forward to finding out when a new album is coming. He is playing at least 5 or 6 new songs pretty regularly so a new album must be taking shape. This knowledge though brings me to a realization that I know Joe can sympathize with, the realization that I have possibly entered into "fanboy" territory.

If you have been to visit us recently you know that our guest bedroom serves as the guitar room/Wake Forest room. I have a 5 guitar stand set up with a few more in cases in the room. Last Christmas my Mom gave me a framed poster from a music festival in Winston-Salem called "Music Downtown". The poster is very cool and is hanging above all of the guitar stuff, along with a small 4 x 6 picture of me playing with my band in high school. There is an empty space above the guitar rack between these two items and when I saw the poster for the Downtown Hoedown in Lufkin, TX, which Joe and I also attended in April, I knew it would fit in perfectly with the existing musical decor. However, I forgot about this plan and never got around to putting it in a frame.

While going through luggage recently, I discovered my ticket stub from the Lufkin show, which set my plan into motion. After every show, Robert Earl Keen signs autographs. I have never partaken in this ritual before....until last night that is. The guys in the band actually set up and break down their own gear so I talked with Rich Brotherton, who plays lead guitar, after the Bryan show. Joe tried to take a picture of this but the video card was full and we were too intoxicated to realize it.

Unbeknownst to Julia and Sally, I had two objectives heading into the show last night, which were 1) get Robert Earl Keen and Rich Brotherton to sign the Lufkin ticket stub and 2) find out how old Rich's Epiphone Riviera is.

After the last song, we lingered a bit so I could get the ticket signed. There was a line to meet Robert Earl Keen but Rich was breaking down his stuff on stage and signing stuff for people from there, so I decided to head his way first. When I walked up, there were two highly intoxicated girls talking to him, one of whom was telling him that she was about to divorce her husband and that this show was exactly what she needed. He took it all in stride and tried to carry on some semblance of a normal conversation with them, which was pretty amusing. Eventually I handed him the ticket stub and asked how old the Riviera is. He signed the ticket and said it is actually a 1996 reissue. Objective #2 had been fulfilled and half of #1 as well.

We then made our way through the now shorter line to have Robert Earl Keen sign stuff. Julia waited beside the line but Sally went through it with me. Sally tried to claim that my "man crush" is on Robert Earl Keen, but I corrected her as I think it's actually on Rich Brotherton, as he is the superior musician technically. He's no Josh Howard though Joe..... Anyway, Robert Earl Keen signed the ticket and we made our way out. The ticket stub has now been framed along with the poster. Please note that I managed to break the glass while putting it all together so I will have to get another super cheap frame for it tomorrow, at which point I will hopefully have a picture of it on the wall for my loyal readers.

Just to complete the fanboy extravaganza in one post, I went through recently to figure out how many times I have seen them, as Julia and I discussed it at some point but weren't able to nail down a number. To the best of my knowledge and research, the list is as follows:
10/10/00 - Ziggy's, Winston-Salem, NC (Alan went to this one with me)
06/03/01 - Ziggy's, Winston-Salem, NC
05/03/03 - House of Blues, Chicago, IL
09/02/04 - The Birchmere, Alexandria, VA
08/13/05 - Recher Theater, Towson, MD
04/13/06 - The Birchmere, Alexandria, VA
11/14/06 - The Birchmere, Alexandria, VA
11/14/07 - The Birchmere, Alexandria, VA
04/18/08 - Pitser Garrison Civic Center, Lufkin, TX
04/19/08 - Texas Hall of Fame, Bryan, TX
04/20/08 - Toyota Texas Bass Classic, Quitman, TX
11/12/08 - 9:30 Club, Washington, DC

For dinner tonight, I've got something special cooking, which I will detail tomorrow. Thanks for reading this whole thing if you made it this far.

Update from the weekend

Before heading out of town on Friday, I snapped the first picture on the left, which is the front of our building. The second picture is the same scene from back in the spring. I am showing these because the color in the tree in the back was done in the middle of last week and it's pretty much bare now.

We loaded up on Friday night and picked up our friends Jen and James and headed down to Winston for the game. We stopped for dinner at Sonic in Fredericksburg, where I ordered a Bacon Cheeseburger Toaster Sandwich and tots. The sandwich was just OK. I had higher hopes for it as I usually enjoy the Texas Toast there. Oh well. Somewhere between Petersburg and South Hill I also mashed a bag of M&M's.

On Saturday, we got out to the tailgate around 9AM and began to enjoy the ham biscuits I put together on Friday afternoon. I purchased 2 lbs of the thinly sliced Virginia country ham from Balducci's and put it on some Martin's Famous Party Potato Rolls. I didn't think to take a picture of all the biscuits as I was putting them together, but it was quite the undertaking. Julia did manage to snap the picture to the left of what they looked like before they disappeared at the tailgate....both trays of them. People really seemed to enjoy them so perhaps we have found our food niche for Almost Gold. I ate some pigs in a blanket and some homemade chicken nuggets at the tailgate, but basically just stuck to the ham biscuits I guess.

After the game, we went out to Ted's Kickin' Chicken and then stopped by Cook Out for a milkshake. I had the caramel cheesecake shake for the first time and was very pleased with it.

On Sunday, we headed down to Lexington and hit John Wayne's Barbecue, where Sally had taken us before. I had the chopped bbq plate with mac & cheese and deviled eggs (both of which were classified as "veggies") and some hush puppies. I drank sweet tea of course. It was all super delicious.

We made our way back to DC, but not before stopping at Jersey Mike's in Ashland to grab a dinner, and in my case, also lunch for today. I selected the giant Original Italian and happily enjoyed it.

That wraps up the weekend recap. I am not preparing anything for dinner tonight and we headed to the Robert Earl Keen show at the 9:30 Club (technically named Nightclub 9:30) on Wednesday night so it may be a light week here. Be sure to check back just the same.