I don’t do well with deadlines, and when I know I’m running out of time to finish something I panic and try to cut corners on my once elaborate plan. When I was younger, this led me to produce shoddy work or, at the worst, not finish the project at all, and more recently I’ve learned to start early so I have plenty of time to finish what I’m doing long before the deadline. Yet sometimes, that’s impossible: We simply have too much to do and not enough time. So this weekend, I had plenty to get done and only half an hour or so to make dinner, and I wasn’t interested in getting takeout or unceremoniously shoving food into the oven. So I worked fast enough to finish what I was doing without thinking about it, keeping in mind a few quick principles for making a satisfactory meal. (Use salt; spoon vegetables on top of the protein to set up an interesting contrast in colors.) I ended up with chicken slices baked in a lot of olive oil, creating a thick crust, and topped with spring onions.
(Photo: Perennial and herb garden, June.)
365 Days of Food 