Barbecued Chicken

You guys.  I am so overwhelmed by my life right now that I'm treating myself to a few minutes of blog time to cope.  Plus, you need to know that this chicken is delicious and pretty fool-proof and pretty easy.  It's your basic American delicious kind that wants to have all the fresh veggies beside it and some potato salad.  It's not fancy, just satisfyingly good.

I hope you can get some on the grill before grilling season is over.  The overnight brine/marinade is the key to succulent chicken, and the BBQ sauce gets put on at the end of grilling for just enough char.

I see that my sidedish here is coleslaw with wakame (seaweed) in it - a happy discovery from our Maine vacation.  Which, I'm sorry, will have to wait for another post because I need to go wake the napper and pick the big kids up from the pool.  August, you are nuts.


Summer BBQ Chicken

Marinate overnight in the fridge:
3-4 lbs. chicken parts, bone in, skin on
1-2 cups thin yogurt, kefir, or buttermilk
1 Tbsp. salt

At some point, mix up the BBQ sauce in a small saucepan:
1 cup ketchup
1 Tbsp. olive oil
1/4 cup white vinegar
1/4 cup brown sugar
2 Tbsp. paprika (bonus if it's smoked!)
1 Tbsp. chili powder
2 tsp. garlic powder
1/2 tsp. cayenne, or to taste, optional

Simmer sauce for 5-8 minutes.  Cool.  Keep in jar in fridge. Enough for 9 lbs. chicken or for other recipes.  (You could probably use commercial BBQ sauce - I don't keep it on hand.)

So, back to the marinating chicken. . .
Thirty minutes before grill time (about 1 hour 10 minutes before you want delicious hot chicken), drain off and discard marinade.  Allow chicken to sit at room temp for 30 minutes.

Preheat grill to 400F.  Sear chicken pieces on each side, about 3-4 minutes a side.
Turn heat to low/med and grill for 30 minutes without flipping or peeking. Turn pieces.  Brush topside with BBQ sauce. Continue to grill for 5 minutes.  Flip pieces.  Brush topsides with BBQ sauce.  Grill 5 more minutes.  Done!

Typing

In a suddenly adult moment, I realized that my children were not going to be taught how to type by their schools.  I guess the schools can only focus on state testing? Expect students to use their texting thumbs forever? It was up to me to launch them into the world as typists.  I expect this skill to be useful for at least a few years until whatever new mind-blowing device appears that we can't even imagine yet. I decided it was worth it. 

I scrolled through a few free typing programs and settled on BBC's Dance Mat Typing.  This proved to be too silly for Genevieve, so I let her switch to this program, but the rest of us go around cooing "type on me" in a British accent.

I make Genevieve and Ben work on their typing every day as part of their chores.  They complain about it.  They don't see the need for this skill (please weigh in if you think this a useful skill anymore!). I was hoping they'd be great typists by summer's end, but they're both only about three-quarters of the way through memorizing the keys.  Oh well.  There's always next summer.