Meatless Monday

Yesterday I opened a wrapped pack of 2 chicken quarters I'd purchased only to discover that the meat was off.

I'd bought the chicken at a small Whole Foods in Boulder. The store is closing soon and I wondered if that had anything to do with the meat-counter associate's carelessness.

Selling meat with a high stench factor is an enormous liability.

I simply cannot understand how the chicken pieces passed within range of the associate's olfactory sense without him realizing that the chicken belonged in the trash and not in a customer's grocery cart.

Needless to say I returned the meat to the same store. But I was so put off by having been sold it in the first place, rather than exchange it for more meat, since none of the meat or fish looked
fresh, I asked for my money back.

There is no better deterrent to eating meat than being around bad meat!

That said, I had my meatless Monday meal, last night, Sunday. The vigorous color and freshness of the vegetables in the meal above were a delicious alternative to my proposed chicken dinner.

Grilled Asparagus atop Fried Bread with Tomato Salad

1) Place several pieces of bread onto a baking tray and drizzle with olive oil.
2) Bake in the oven until the bread is golden. Or you can fry the bread in a pan on top of the stove.
3) Snap off woody bottom part of asparagus spears, wash, and then toss them into a heated skillet lined with olive oil.
4) Shake the skillet about so that the asparagus char grills evenly.
5) Meanwhile top fried bread with lashings of garlic-infused chic-pea hummus, then lay asparagus across the hummus toast.
Note: Or you could spread the bread with an easy variation on Welsh Rarebit: to grated cheese add seeded mustard, S&P, cayenne pepper, bind with an egg yolk, spoon atop bread and bake in the oven till golden.
6) Sprinkle hummus fried bread with your favorite cheese and some chopped green onion.
7) Drizzle with olive oil and lemon juice, season with salt and pepper.

To Serve: You can either serve this dish plain (pic to left) or with a tomato salad, as in the pic above.

For the salad, I simply chopped a large fresh tomato and added green olive chunks, and a dressing of squashed capers, olive oil and lemon juice.