I need a cooking icon.

A couple of people on IRC seemed interested in my baked BBQ chicken recipe, so I thought I'd share it here. I like it because there's no set amount of ingredients, and I can use as much or as little as I need (which helps since most of the time I'm only cooking for two people, one of whom has a smaller appetite than me).

I use drumsticks, but you can use whatever sort of chicken you like, though you might have to adjust cooking times accordingly.

Preheat the oven to 350ºF.

Take out a broiler pan, and in the drip tray/bottom part pour enough white vinegar to cover the bottom, or a little more than enough to cover the bottom. Place the top part back over the drip tray and place chicken on top.

Season chicken if desired (I just use Nature's Seasonings). Cover with aluminum foil and place in oven. Bake for 45 minutes - one hour.

When done, remove foil. With a pastry brush, brush on BBQ sauce on top side. Place in oven for ten minutes. Brush BBQ sauce on the same side, flip over, and brush on more BBQ sauce. Place in oven for another ten minutes. When done, add more BBQ sauce to both sides if desired.

And that's it. I never really taste the vinegar at all, but it does keep the chicken juicy and flavorful.

I really love how easy it is to make this. I can set the chicken in the oven to bake, do dishes/put laundry on/read a book to the kiddo/etc., and when it's closer to time for the chicken to be done, I can put any sides on to heat on the stove. Tonight it was Italian cut green beans and creamed corn. Last time I made this, I made home made fries with red potatoes.

Health experiment.

I've cut soda out of my diet entirely. Back when I was taking care of Dad, I started drinking A&W root beer. I mean, I was drinking a lot of soda before then, but after Dad got sick, I was drinking almost nothing but root beer. I'd cut back some, but after a recent attempt to collect soda cans for school, I realized just how much root beer I was drinking, and it scared me. So, as of Sunday, there's no longer any soda in my house. Instead there's filtered water, milk, orange juice, apple juice, chocolate milk (really, only the kiddo drinks it as a treat), and there'll be the occasional pitcher of sweet tea sitting in the refrigerator (hey, I'm Southern, you can have my sweet tea when you pry it from my cold, dead hands).

I'm not going to deny myself the occasional root beer when I find myself on an outing to Aiken or Augusta, though usually when I'm out I treat myself to a pink lemonade if we stop off at a gas station, and when I go out to eat, I drink sweet tea. I do plan to work on cutting down a bit more on the tea consumption too, but I don't always make it at home because I'm lazy. I really ought to up my water drinking; I've never in my entire life drank the recommended amount of water. It sounds weird, but even as a kid, water had a tendency to make me feel a bit nauseous. I've noticed it's gotten better as I've gotten older, but I'm still working on forcing myself to drink water, and buying myself a Brita water pitcher has helped. I can taste a difference, even though I have well water out here that I know tastes fine. Eh, maybe it's a psychological thing?

I'm going to work on making more fresh foods and relying less on the processed stuff. So far, that's been the easiest adjustment to make because I actually love cooking real food (I could do without the dishes though). I only wish I had a better source of produce within a reasonable driving distance. There is a local produce market, but it's not very good. Mom and I usually stop at a little place on the way to Aiken/Augusta, but it's really far out of the way and so not worth the drive if we're not already heading out to Aiken/Augusta. He has the best sweet potatoes, onions, and slicing tomatoes (though I prefer Roma tomatoes for cooking), plus other assorted veggies/fruits that are in season. The red potatoes I get from there make my mouth water just thinking about them.

Enough rambling. We'll see how long I can keep this up, and I hope I'll start to notice a difference in a couple of weeks (once I've been off the root beer for a while). I know it plays hell with my body's chemistry and affects my moods. It's way past time for me to come off it.

And now, I go to bed.