Baked chicken thighs with fried artichokes and roasted pepper, corn, and pinto bean salad

Zack and I randomly picked up some ingredients from the store, including canned pinto beans, chicken thighs, and artichokes. What am I making with these ingredients? Good question.

I decided to make a salad using the beans and some peppers and canned corn I already had in my kitchen. I roasted the peppers and tossed the peppers, corn, and pinto beans together with some sour cream and red wine vinegar. This is a fantastic combination of vegetables.

I had no idea how to cook artichokes so I looked up a recipe in the Joy of Cooking and came across a fried artichoke recipe. I just trimmed, quartered and removed the choke from each artichoke. Then I coated with seasoned flour and dipped them in beaten eggs. I dropped them into a skillet of hot oil and fried them for about five minutes. The artichokes were full of flavor from the fried batter.

Last but not least, I looked up a baked chicken recipe in the same cookbook. I love baking chicken and other kinds of meat in the oven because it's easy to prepare and you just have to wait for it to bake. I basically tossed olive oil, rosemary, shallots, salt and pepper and coated the chicken thighs with the mixture. I placed them in a baking pan and put it in the oven for about 50 minutes.

I also love the fact that the whole apartment becomes filled with this rosemary garlic aroma after about half an hour of baking. The chicken came out perfectly cooked and the skin was nice and crispy. Mmm...