Delicious meat cookery doesn't have to be complicated. In fact, with quality ingredients, it can be down-right simple. Our Chimichurri Chicken Kabobs start with moist and flavorful chicken thighs marinated and sauced with a jar of fresh and vibrant Argentinian chimichurri. Making your own chimchurri is easy. Raising your own chickens, on the other hand, and ensuring top flavor, moist meat, and ethical animal husbandry, requires a whole different level of DIY commitment. When sourcing your chicken here are my top 3 tips:

1. Don't compromise freshness. As chicken ages under cellophane, its quality declines and the tender muscle fibers begin to lose both moisture and flavor. Similarly, each time meat is frozen and thawed, its texture and moistness is compromised. Buy the freshest meat you can find that has been stored carefully without freezing.
2. Keep processing to a minimum. Each processing step risks compromising quality and increasing cost at the register. Try to avoid buying meat that has 'stuff' added or injected. As much as you are able, do your own processing (partitioning a whole chicken, deboning thighs, skinning breasts, doing your own grinding, etc.). Not only will this give you more control over your meat, it will give you 'extras' to freeze or use for unrivaled homemade broths and soups.
3. Find a brand or farm you believe in. Animal husbandry is tricky business, and so is finding meat at your local grocery that you can feel good about. Understanding how each company balances issues of animal well-being, human health concerns, taste, texture, environmental impact, and cost, is generally not decipherable from the labels and buzzwords found on packaging. Do your research, it's easier than you think. 

With Rebecca out of town recently, I found myself on a quest to identify the best supermarket chicken.  I'm not even going to share how much chicken I single-handedly cooked and consumed, but a clear winner emerged. In a funny small world kind of way, it's a family business from my hometown: Miller Poultry. From classic roast chicken to smoked wings, from chicken schnitzel to Chimichurri Chicken Kabobs, this is can-do chicken! While Miller's can be found in many Whole Foods, I found that it is also available in our local Shop N'Save.

Yesterday was our 6th Wedding Anniversary: a day of serious highs, and gastronomical lows. After a wonderful weekend spent at a family reunion in gorgeous Colorado, our luck ran out on our return journey home. Mechanical failure on our plane resulted in a "temporary" hold on the tarmac, which turned into an overnight wait in the Denver airport. In the wee hours of the morning, huddled by the gate and desperate for good news, hunger pangs finally overtook us. Some scrounging in our bags resulted in a disappointing assortment of stale lifesavers, minty gum, complimentary water and unsatisfying little packets of peanuts.  By the time we made it back to Pittsburgh, we were hallucinating food, specifically steak.   We satiated our droopy and famished selves with a belated (and large) anniversary grilled steak with chimichurri sauce. What a revival!  

Chimichurri sauce, if you are not familiar with it, is a powerhouse parsley and garlic studded condiment of Argentine origins typically served as an accompaniment to steak.  We were originally introduced to Chimichurri sauce by my sisters' fiance, who makes a mean Chimichurri. Whenever he serves it to us we generally douse everything in sight with the flavorful sauce.  We are pretty sure our version is not authentic (garlic scapes, really?), but we do assure you it is addictive.  The sauce is both versatile and forgiving.  Our recipe is adapted from Serious Eats.