Barbecued chicken was on the menu tonight, a narrow opportunity to prepare a proper meal, and to eat a proper meal together between a busy week of classes for me and Eileene’s trip to DC/Maryland. Rather than a more traditional barbecue sauce, I wanted to experiment with a more Mexican flavor, and made my own sauce by pulping a couple of canned chipotles. Into these went some lime juice, sugar, oil, and finely minced dried tomato, too, but the chiles heavily dominated the flavor.
The result was a big success; Eileene loved it, and the chiles lost their excessive kick on the grill. (In the future, I’ll skip the tomato.) Charcoal magnified the chipotles’ natural smokiness, and the lime worked excellently well. The chicken sure smelled good coming off the grill, and as I brought the plate of fresh chicken back into the house I paused to poke my nose down to the plate and inhale deeply.
To my surprise, all I smelled was flowers. That the chicken quickly filled the kitchen with its aroma, and even could be smelled from the next room, should give you some idea of how strong the floral scent was in our driveway. From that, you might guess how strong my allergic reaction was to the pollen: within two or three minutes, I had gone from perfectly normal to weepy and needing a tissue for the nose.
The unseasonably warm weather has us feeling like we’ve simply skipped spring right into summer. Skipping directly into the smells of summer seemed appropriate, too. But mother nature is not to be denied.
Post a Comment