Today: Add a dash of cinnamon

I still haven’t finished reading Julie & Julia.   I find myself skimming and skipping entire paragraphs, and in the meantime have finished two other books.  Not a good sign.  I loved Julia, but I just can’t seem to fall in love with Julie.  I hate to admit this, but I might throw in the towel and just see the movie.

I am dying to see if Meryl Streep can hold a candle to my older brother’s rendition of Julia.  I don’t think he’s done this impression since he was a child.  A child pretending to be a Child.  We were enthralled by her on PBS.  She used some sort of mallet to pound chicken cutlets into submission.  And she was really, really tall.

At 5’4″, my recipes and stature fall short of JC’s (Julia Child, not Jesus Christ… although I surely fall short of him, too), but I’ve been cooking up a storm of my own.  This weekend, I discovered that corn off the cob comes from corn on the cob.  Who knew?

For dinner Friday night, I whipped up some grilled chicken (for my non-vegetarian boyfriend… and for the record, it was grilled before I bought it) with cilantro and lime rice, black beans and sauteed vegetables.  Sound good?  Read on.

I prepared the brown rice as directed, stirring in juice from 1/2 a lime and a few tablespoons of freshly chopped cilantro.  I then intended to stir in a few dashes of Cajun spice, but inadvertently grabbed the cinnamon.  Whoops.  I then tried to mask the cinnamon with a whole heck of a lot of Cajun.  It didn’t work.  We ate it anyway.

While all of that was happening, I cooked five small ears of corn and chopped an additional bunch of cilantro.  Once the corn was ready, I cut the kernels from each ear and divided them into two bowls, drizzling the corn with a touch of olive oil and a generous amount of chopped cilantro and fresh lime juice.  I think the corn was the best part.  Mostly because I didn’t ruin it with cinnamon.

Also On Tap for Today:

• Consider entering NPR’s fiction writing contest
• Run 4.5 miles… indoors
• Check out the Red Sox starting line up… from 1982

Have you broken up with a book lately?  Did you leave it for another book? And what’s cooking in your kitchen, good lookin’?