Tag: #ricebowl

Summer Food

Posted on by The Retired Alchemist

There isn’t anything much better than lounging in the yard in the early evening, sipping a glass of chilled white wine and taking in the aroma of something grilling on the B.B.Q. THAT is summer. It is the perfect option for cooking when you don’t want to heat the house up with the oven or even stove top. It has been exceptionally hot here in our neck of the woods these past couple of weeks – up to 103 degrees yesterday. Even too hot for Mr. U to slave over the B.B.Q. So, I have been trying to come up with some cool meals that don’t require a lot of cooking.

And just for the record, I am not complaining about the heat. I think you can only complain about one extreme weather condition and mine is the cold/gray weather. The main concern with this much heat and no rain are wildfires. Our beautiful tall pine trees get dry and there are a lot of forests full of them in our area. One lightning strike or careless person can cause a lot of damage. Enough said about weather. Back to food.

This week I decided to try making a rice bowl. I know I am waaay behind the eight ball on this one. (Does anyone even use that term, “behind the eight ball” anymore?) But I have never made a rice bowl before. Thank goodness for Google. I looked at a few recipes and then opened my frig. I did not want to make a run to the grocery store, so I decided to use what I had in the frig or garden. I opened a can of black beans, boiled up some brown rice and added some avocado and feta cheese.

I picked some cilantro and green onion chives from the garden. The chives are good on so many different dishes and I use them all of the time.

I added some left-over teriyaki chicken thighs that we had grilled earlier in the week, and it made a delicious, easy, cool meal. The only other thing that would have been a great addition would be some grilled corn, cut off the cob.

I decided to take pictures before I mixed it all together.

I wasn’t sure what to use for a dressing. But my favorite salad dressing that I make with olive oil and peach balsamic vinegar seemed like it would taste good with it. Oh, soooo good. The recipe for this dressing is in one of my previous posts, Living Organically. There are so many uses for this balsamic vinegar. I have not tried drinking it straight from the bottle yet, but… it might be that good. (The heat must be getting to me.)

Do you have any favorite summer dishes that hit the spot in this hot weather? It is time to whip them up and stay cool out there!