Up to a point, today was a very typical day in the life of this single career girl/woman/no-labels-at-this-age-thanks.
I had a very full - one might go so far as to say relentless - day of work. I managed to get out for 15 minutes somewhere in the general vicinity of lunchtime to go to the ATM and grab a wrap from one of my favourite cafes in Centre Place/Degraves St (post to come, I'm sure), which I ate at my desk.
I left work at about 6.45 fully aware that I had nothing in the kitchen for dinner.
In this case the lack of groceries came about from the following series of events: kitchen cleaned to within an inch of its life for the purposes of pre-sale inspection (apartment now sold!); unwillingness to cook or eat anything in said kitchen because it was so clean; a few naturally occurring meals out including a dinner meeting last night.
That unusual set of circumstances notwithstanding, the weeknight no groceries situation is actually not all that unusual, largely because I've been putting in an effort to cook a wider, and fresher, variety of meals which means more frequent shopping and fewer stand-by items in the fridge. Also because sometimes I am lazy or uninspired.
Tonight I was uninspired, but not sufficiently so to warrant vegemite toast for dinner, so this seemed to be the perfect opportunity to, on the tram on the way home, make use of the Jamie Oliver iPhone application which I had downloaded a few weeks ago and scrolled through but not yet used.
I settled, quickly, on Herby Grilled Chicken Kebabs.
Of course, I then did it my own practical/lazy way.
First, the actual skewers? Um, no. See above re being single. Single means not needing to present chicken on skewers that you're just going to pull it off anyway. Thus I also skipped the zucchini intersects, though if I make this for others - which I probably will - I'll be perfectly happy to do both.
Second, I also skipped the coriander. Those of you who know me will be immediately saying "that's because Uli doesn't like fresh coriander", but in this case it wasn't that. I'd have been happy to try it out in the context of this recipe (as it's a new recipe and it would be partly cooked and I have no issue with cooked coriander (the reason I have an issue with fresh goes back to an incident involving tequila that may or may not be told later)), except there was none in the store.
This is another point about the whole work/life/cooking thing; sometimes I don't have the luxury of heading to the market for herbs and have to rely on the supermarket. In my current apartment-living location growing my own is also a challenge, one that I plan to overcome when I buy a house some time in the next few days/weeks/hopefully not months.
Anyway, no coriander.
It might just be my anti-coriander bias, but totally not necessary.
So, leaving the lack of coriander and skewers aside, I followed the chicken part of the recipe. Up to and including the point of blitzing (yes, yes, I watch a lot of English cooking shows) the herby mix in the food processor. This might not seem so dramatic, but think about it for a moment. Lazy career person who has not arrived home from work/supermarket until after 7pm actually getting out the food processor as part of the evening meal for one.
That's not typical, I promise. But it seemed ridiculous to try chopping this by hand and the food processor is right there.
I mixed it up with the chicken pieces and left it to sit for half an hour or so while I caught a little of Masterchef Professionals on Lifestyle Food and had a glass of wine. And answered a few emails. See, the food processor was an anomaly, and normality quickly reasserted itself for the evening.
I then ignored Jamie's salad recipe - don't like avocado and don't need a recipe for a side salad - and mixed up a quick one of my own. Baby cos, Lebanese cucumber, tomato, spring onion and a balsamic mustard dressing I'd be happy to make myself but have in a lovely bottle from Milawa Mustards.

I didn't grill the chicken in a pan. I don't have a decent grill pan at the moment - though I intend to buy one - and, as previously mentioned, I'm lazy. So I covered a tray in foil, spread the herbed chicken pieces out over the tray and put them under the grill. Easy, less washing up, still moist (the only circumstances in which I can cope with the use of that word is in relation to the cooking of meat), and crisped on the edges. And can I say how fantastic I smelled while grilling? So fantastic.
So, here we have it, my lazy weekday version of an already very easy dish, and it tasted really, really good. I will make it again.
Tomorrow, normality, and a whole different style of eating, continues when I take a day trip to Brisbane for work.