Grilled Seasoned Chicken with Mixed Veggies and Brown Rice

From fridge to plate in 15 minutes...

Maybe like me, the hardest night to cook at home is Monday night. Let's face it, the last thing most of us really want to do after slogging through a, "case of the Mondays (there is your Office Space reference for the evening) is cook dinner. Dinner does not need to be complicated and cooking dinner should not have to take forever. 

Tonight's dinner was fresh and sure, it involved a couple of "cheats" - courtesy of fresh & easy (if you have one near you, I suggest checking them out).  Here's what you will need...

Grilled Seasoned Chicken with Mixed Veggies and Brown Rice

• Boneless, skinless chicken breast
• Extra virgin olive oil (EVOO)
• Poultry seasoning
• Mixed veggies (the cheat, I used one of the "ready to cook" vegetable sides) 
• Brown rice (the cheat, a package of zap in the bag brown rice)

Preheat grill - since I use propane, I do not count the time it takes to do this as part of the 15 minutes it takes to fix this dinner (seriously, it took me longer to type this sentence than it did to turn on the gas and press the ignite button). While your choice of fire is coming up to temperature, lightly coat the chicken with EVOO. Then sprinkle the poultry seasoning on each side.  Place chicken on grill, turning frequently until cooked to an internal temperature of 165 degrees. By the way, if you do not have a digital thermometer, why not.  Go and get one you cheap...

Since I shop at fresh & easy, I opted to use a couple of their store brand "cheats" to create the sides. For my friends outside of their market service areas, I am sure that you can find something similar in a store near you. Just stay away from the frozen section - stick with stuff that you can find in the produce section and that has ingredients listed on the label that you can actually pronounce.  If you want to avoid the "cheats" then factor in time to slice and steam the veggies and cook the brown rice.

I am not going to get into the whole brown versus white rice debate, what I will say is that, once you get used to the mild, nutty flavor, I think you will pick it over white rice just about any day. Other than the taste, the only difference is that the husk of the rice is the only thing that is removed during the milling, With the bran intact, brown rice retains more fiber, iron, potassium, phosphorus, and zinc than white rice. If you need more vitamin E in your diet then you should note that brown rice is the only grain that contains this antioxidant.

There it is, a fifteen minute, fresh, Monday night dinner...