Lemon

The rush of the unexpected taste fills my mouth and makes me salivate involuntarily. For a moment it is all that I can taste before it mingles with the saltiness and sweetness, becoming a good halfway between the two, muting them and bringing them together at the same time.

I love lemon. I am not one of those people who can eat it straight, biting into it. My taste buds are far too sensitive for that. But I certainly love cooking with it, and find it to be a good ingredient to cook with. I tend to use it often, probably too often for the liking of my housemates who have to endure my cooking!

One of my favourite things to do is to replace oil with lemon when I am cooking chicken. It works just as well, but gives the chicken a lemon flavour and is far healthier. What I tend to do is squeeze some lemon juice into a pan, sprinkle in a fair amount of Italian herbs and then fry the chicken up with the herbs and lemon, leaving out the oil bit. Forget Nando's chicken and herb. I far prefer my own :) Once the chicken is "fried" I either roll it up in a tortilla with lettuce and tomato, or I add some veggies into the pan and make a quick stir fry. Each way provides healthy alternatives to the regular chicken dishes that I used to cook. Plus it is far tastier.

There is also another recipe that I have not tried since my uni days, but used to work well enough then. I would place some lemon juice into a bowl and marinade the chicken in the juice before placing it in the oven on grill for 10-15 minutes, turning every 5 minutes ago. What I ended up with was lovely juicy chicken breasts, bursting with flavour and perfectly tender. I usually served that with either baked potatoes or mash.

You can expect to see quite a few of these kinds of food tips over the next few weeks, since I am now participating in a challenge issued by one of my "Korean" friends (aka. friend who I met in Korea who is not actually Korean) involving a healthier lifestyle in terms of both cooking and exercise. I am not convinced about the exercise, since I can hardly get myself to cook when I come home from work being utterly exhausted and all, but I can certainly try to cook as often and possible, and when I am not the one cooking, I can get Grant to do the cooking for me, and get him to cook as healthily as possible.

Unfortunately, I already see a problem day in the horizon, since the girls are coming over on Saturday night for home made cocktails, and you know that is going to involve more than a few calories. I only found out about the challenge after I had arranged the cocktail evening though, and it is something that I have been trying to arrange for at least a month and a half, so there can be no backing out now! Oh well, cest la vie!!