I realize that none of these ingredients are considered wild like the things I usually write about, but it keeps within my love of frugal foods. I love turning leftovers into something that makes people say you made this with what?

Leftover grilled chicken is a great starting point. I use it on top of salads, or as a great starter for fajitas. Endive, along with its cousins frisee, radicchio, and escarole, is a relative of the plant chicory, which is seen along roadsides all over the country. Don't expect to pick and eat wild chicory though. It is almost always too bitter to use. I will cover other uses for it in a later post. A few years ago I had the pleasure of attending an event at an upstate college where the chef went crazy on endive hors d'oeuvres. This wasn't one of his creations, but that event inspired me and started my love of this wonderful spoon-shaped green.

Separate your endive into individual leaves. Lay a thin slice of cheese (I used an aged swiss) along the bottom of each piece of endive, then add two to three small chunks of your grilled chicken, a small slice of avocado, some chopped sweet onion, and cover with alfalfa sprouts. Drizzle some olive oil over each one, and a small amount of sea salt and ground pepper. Serve any extra ingredients around the stuffed leaves.

I guarantee that your leftover-phobic family members will be cured after trying this.

I'm not gonna pretend that this picture is pretty, or in the least bit appetizing, but I will note that the results are disturbingly delicious. The heart of the matter is that I went to a cookout a few weekends ago and was offered a grilled chicken heart by a friend who has yet to serve me anything that is less than madly tasty. Emboldened by this, I picked up a package of chicken hearts on a shopping jaunt this week, and started perusing my favorite recipe sites for marinades. It didn't take me long to find a 1956 James Beard recipe suggesting that these would make a dandy appetizer for a group of 25. Twenty-five of whom, I'm not entirely sure, 'cause even as staunchly carnivorous as my pals tend to be, few of 'em dig getting their offal on as much as I do, and I wouldn't subject them to it. There are exceptions, though.

Some friends came over this afternoon to serve as panel members for AOL Food's upcoming Hot Dog Taste Test. As I tended the grill between rounds, one of them began holding forth about how methods of barbecuing and grilling really were born of the necessity to bring greater flavor to cheap and previously discarded cuts of meat, and how folks were getting way too fancy-schmancy with the whole thing these days. I left my post at the flames, walked him to the fridge, pulled out the plastic container full of marinating hearts and started putting them on bamboo skewers.

He shut up and started eating.

James Beard's 1956 Grilled Chicken Hearts Recipe on Epicurious

(Note: In the above pic, I was out of sherry and subbed in brandy, which proved perfectly yummy.)

Writing in Slate, urban farmer L.E. Leone describes her emotions when killing one of her own chickens: "I kneel in the dirt, holding the body still while it flutters, and hyperventilate... I feel alive and in love and closer than ever to death."

Which got me thinking: how would I feel if presented with a live bird and a sharp ax?

I'm pretty darn sure I could do it. I certainly eat enough meat that I should be able to deal with where it comes from. While, like many people, I've got issues with the meat industry as it exists in America today, I'm pretty comfortable with the concept of the food chain. I don't get grossed out by blood. I used to drive an ambulance. I grind my own sausage. But I've never directly killed anything bigger than a trout. Would it be weird? Would I cry, as Leone claims she does each and every time? If I didn't get teary, would I feel guilty for being an insensitive killer?

What do you think? Could you kill a chicken?

So you overcooked the chicken. What are you going to do, cry?

If there's one thing that's better than a good chicken recipe it's a good chicken recipe that rhymes.

This is from the Cooking For 2 blog and is called Quick Chick. It combines two of my favorite things: one I eat all the time (chicken) and one I don't enough that often, for obvious reasons (bacon). This is a deceptive recipe: very, very easy to do but it has some clever ingredients to make it seem to slaved over it all day (white wine, chicken broth, a splash of lemon juice just before you serve), cooked in a skillet for about 20 minutes.

This week, the Seattle Times devotes the entire food section to stretching your food dollars in anticipation of tight financial times:

• An excerpt from Nancy Leson's blog, All You Can Eat, with a bulleted list of tips
• Tips for savvy shopping at the grocery store
• How to figure out which is better: cooking from scratch or buying prepared
• Save with bargain wines

And one of the better ways to save when cooking at home is to use less expensive chicken over more expensive ingredients:

• Chicken Alfredo Boboli
• Cashew Chicken Salad with Broccoli
• Fusilli with Chicken and Pesto
• Chicken & Olive Salad Sandwiches
• Chicken & Mozzarella Quesadillas
• Italian Chicken Soup
• Cashew Chicken Salad with Broccoli
• Chicken & Mozzarella Quesadillas
• Chicken & Olive Salad Sandwiches
• Fusilli with Chicken and Pesto
• Italian Chicken Soup

Looking for more economical recipes that don't involve canned chili or hot dogs? Kevin Weeks, a food writer at Gather.com, does a twice-monthly column called Paisano, which offers luscious-yet-affordable rustic recipes from culinary traditions worldwide. Think rich, slow-cooked, peasant-y foods - sumac-spiced chicken kebabs, steak and mushroom pie, lamb with caramelized onions. Stuff from cultures that, out of necessity, invented really really tasty ways to use up that cheap cut of beef.

I might try the Middle Eastern-inflected chicken kebabs, marinated with yogurt, garlic, lemon juice and spices, over green salad for a quick warm-weather dinner. Do you have any favorite peasant recipes in your repertoire?

Grilling season is nearly upon us and what better way to open the season with a grilled beer can chicken? Thanks to Another Pint Please... for the tasty bird.

You can't help but really like Ellie Matthews. Ten years ago, she won the Pillsbury Bake-Off with her Salsa Couscous Chicken recipe, a blend of salsa and the flavors of Morocco.

Now she's written a book about her experiences: "The Ungarnished Truth: A Cooking Contest Memoir."

NPR's Steve Inskeep recently chatted with Matthews. Turns out, she's an unbelievably down-to-earth, sweet woman with a self-deprecating streak that you can't help but appreciate. Throughout the interview, she insists that she's not anyone special, that she "doesn't claim to be a better cook than anyone else." Typically, Matthews says, she will "buy ingredients that look good, wrestle them into a pan, and serve a meal."

"I'm not a fussy cook," Matthews said. "I don't put four different kinds of sea salt into something, or 18 different kinds of vinegar" (it could be assumed that the book title partially refers to the fact that her final recipe for the contest wasn't garnished or artfully arranged, but she won anyway).

What's more, she didn't even really seem all that impressed with the prize money. She simply enjoys cooking, and was a little disappointed when she won because she knew it would disqualify her from participating in the contest again.

As for what she did with the money? She admitted, "I'd like to think my life is just more than just what I buy on a whim or how I indulge myself," and then said that if she was, say, at a plant nursery, she could maybe splurge on a new plant for her garden.

Again: how can you not like this woman?

One of my favorite cookbooks is The Comfort Diner Cookbook, by Ira Freehoff and Pia Catton. It has a ton of comfort food recipes from the famed New York City eating establishment, everything from classic American sandwiches and breakfasts to pies and other desserts and great side dishes. This one sounds especially intriguing. It's the Cobb Salad Sandwich. Hey, why have a salad as a salad if you can have it as a sandwich?

• How to make tortillas and frittatas.
• Foods gone wild.
• The Plonk of the Month.
• The world of gastropubs.
• Who has the best hot dog in America?
• A review of Fast & Fit.
• Restaurants reviews: Village Grille and Cafe Italia.
• This week's recipes: Five Spice Lamb, Spicy Chicken with Orange-Mustard Sauce, Aromatic Couscous, and Lemon-Pepper Fettuccine with Asparagus and Shrimp.

Well, not really.

However, in an effort to woo back customers who have denied the fried for health reasons, the fast food fried chicken joint will start adding grilled chicken to their stores. The chicken will be called Kentucky Grilled Chicken (so it is KGC), but the company will continue to serve its namesake, fried chicken. The new grilled chicken has been and is currently being tested in Indianapolis, Colorado Springs, San Diego, Oklahoma City, Jacksonville, Fla., and Austin, Texas, with plans for the full national rollout in early January 2009.

And as we all know, Coq Au Vin stands for...um...

Actually, according to the people at Wikipedia, it stands for "rooster in wine," but I'm going to assume that most people who make it nowadays will use chicken. It's not the quickest recipe in the world to make, but if it was they'd be selling it at the Arby's drive-thru ("yeah, I'll have the Coq Au Vin Mega Meal").

Food Network has a recipe, as does Epicurious.

Chefs in some smaller upscale bistros double as waiters, creating an intimate, dinner party-like ambiance. Only the host never sits down to eat.

Animal rights activists are using hidden cameras to document slaughterhouse abuses, like sick cows being dragged with forklifts. Still hungry for that sloppy Joe?

An ode to pasties and other savory portable pies. Yum.

Frank Bruni continues his coast-to-coast tour of his favorite new restaurants: Fearing's in Dallas, Michael's Genuine Food & Drink in Miami, and Cochon in New Orleans.

The Minimalist does chicken with tomatillos for St. Paddy's day.

Restaurateurs are growing annoyed with online table reservation scalping.

Pickle ice pops? If you say so.

Driving through Nashville yesterday, I stopped at my favorite fried chicken joint, famous for its cayenne-laden, demonically spicy "hot chicken." Having had the "medium" and "hot" before, this time I went for the "x-tra hot."

The woman behind the counter looked me up and down and said "mmm hmm."

That should have been a warning.

Now I love spicy food. Love it. Drown my scrambled eggs in Valentina hot sauce, eat the extra jalapeños out of my friends' enchiladas, order my lamb vindaloo "as hot as possible. Seriously, as hot as possible."

But this chicken darn near killed me.

Biting into its crispy, cayenne-orange skin, a mushroom cloud exploded in my sinus cavity, my lips went numb, my feet began to sweat. I stuffed my mouth full of white bread and Diet Coke to stifle the battery acid burn on my tongue and gums and prayed I wouldn't pass out. Seriously, I can't believe that chicken isn't regulated by the government as a chemical weapon. When the pain finally subsided and I could move, I slunk back to the counter and ordered a "mild."

The woman behind the counter laughed.

Next time, I'll order the regular "hot."

So I was wondering: what's the hottest dish you've ever tasted? And what are your favorite remedies to cool the heat in your mouth (I've tried milk, bananas and bread in the past)?