I haven’t done much cooking lately. For the last two months, it’s been mostly the same things over and over — baked chicken and roasted potatoes. Every other day, with leftovers on the odd day. These are two dishes I do pretty well, to my own taste anyway, and they’re both easy. If I can season something up, stick it in the oven, and forget it for forty minutes, I’m satisfied.

But eventually it gets a little boring, eating the same thing every day, even if it’s good and easy. The other day in the mail I got a solicitation from a neighbor (someone I don’t know, but then I don’t know any neighbors except my landlord). He asked for money for cancer research, and as a bit of extra incentive there was a recipe in the envelope.

Since I haven’t watched any cooking shows lately I haven’t seen a new recipe for a long time. This one caught my attention because I already had most of the ingredients and it was another oven recipe, so I picked up an onion and a couple of chicken breasts at the store, and tonight I plunged in.

It’s been long enough since the last time I chopped an onion that I’d forgotten what it does to me. My eyes burn almost every night anyway, and by the time I’d prepared this small onion, I was stone blind and stung teary-eyed. It took me a few minutes before I could continue.

I got everything in the casserole dish, and then I read the instruction to cover it before putting it in the oven. I nearly panicked, because my dish doesn’t have a cover. I was thinking of running out to the store and buying a new dish (one with a cover, don’t you know) before I came up with an ingenious solution. Aluminum foil. That’s not too obvious, is it? But it’s obvious I haven’t done much cooking lately.

Anyway, it came out all right, even if I did have to wait until 10:30 pm to eat it. I think I’ll turn the heat up a notch next time. It was just the tiniest bit too juicy, so I’ll either have to use less broth or cook it down longer. Other than that, it had good flavor. It’s made with stewed tomatoes and roasted red peppers and brown rice, along with a bunch of standard spices. I put paprika in almost everything I cook anyway, and there’s always dried oregano in the cupboard.

The dish is called Red Pepper, Tomato and Chicken Pilaf. And the best part, as usual, is that there is enough left over for at least two more meals. I could probably portion it out even longer than that if I wanted to. But I think after two or three more days of it, I’ll be ready to try something else. I had two big helpings tonight, but I figure that if the recipe comes from people trying to fight cancer, it must be healthy.