Spiced Chicken with Black Eye Peas and Rice

People ask me all. the. time. "what do you eat" or "what can you eat" or some variation on those. I have been a recipe collector for many years--I don't make the majority of them but I sure do have a lot of them! I have a collection of cookbooks that I'd like to thin out. And I'm looking at buying a couple more.

I went to Half Price Books to see if they have a book I borrowed from the library. I didn't have a chance to make any recipes from it but I think it will be a good book for me to use: Primal Blueprint Quick and Easy Meals (Mark's Daily Apple). I also wanted to check out Practically Paleo (Balanced Bites) but there seems to be a waiting list; it has great feedback everywhere I've looked and it has an autoimmune protocol section so I think I might purchase it as well. I didn't find what I was looking for but they had some Mark Bittman books on the clearance rack. I have How to Cook Everything and How to Cook Everything Vegetarian and I almost always check them when I have a random ingredient that I'm not sure how I want to use. So I thought, eh, I don't need another but I'll check out these two they have for $2 each. And I got How to Cook Everything Quick Cooking. It breaks my "must have many photos rule" but his other books do too, and as I flipped through this one, he kept the recipes simple enough that I don't have to make a lot of substitutions on many of them.

When I had lunch with J last week, she mentioned that her guy had made dinner and she commented that it was something I could eat, just as it was, no modifications. Apparently they have the 'what can V eat' conversation when I'm not even there. A lady I used to work with would tell me that she would think that while they were making dinner at her house--can V eat it? So J's comments reminded me that I want to keep going back to my old cookbooks to see what I really have that I can make without minimal changes.

I love, love, love Cooking Light. I got their magazine for years and still have stacks of them as well as a binder and a box of pages I tore out. Yes, seriously. Have I not told you that I'm a recipe hoarder? I do not lie!

Tonight, I pulled out one of my CL cookbooks and found a recipe for Spiced Chicken with Black Eye Peas and Rice. I read the recipe, considered what I had in the house, and got started. I started some Trader Joe's quick cook brown rice which takes about 10 minutes. I did it with just water and a little salt so I'd have leftover rice I could use later.

Next I trimmed the chicken, mixed my spices (Old Bay is gluten-free). I heated my brand new 12 inch cast iron skillet, brushing the olive oil up the sides since I haven't used it before. (It is seasoned but still, that's me, okay.) Then in the chicken went. Ah, I've missed you, cast iron. I waited a couple minutes and turned it, waited again, then put it in the oven.

When the chicken was done, I put it in a dish with a lid to stay warm while I "fried" about half my rice in the skillet, adding the seasonings (Franks Hot Sauce is also gluten-free) from the recipe. I knew that Mick wouldn't want the black eye peas so I added a half can of peas and carrots. After I had his out of the pan onto his plate, I added black eye peas to mine to warm.

This is his; mine is better!

The verdict: naturally gluten free and very, very tasty. That's some yum--expect repeats. The hot sauce does NOT make it spicy; it just adds some flavor.