So, this Sunday we have a chicken in the oven. Now, a thrify individual would simply grab a pie pan and a beer can and do some beer can chicken (or soda can). Me, I had to go the Ren Fair yesterday and spend $35 on a beautiful handmade bowl with a place in the center for holding liquid and spices that you use to impale the chicken. Yup, overpriced lovely single use pottery to make…beer can chicken. I don’t care. The pottery/crockery/thing is lovely to look at.
I filled the liquid reservoir with rosemary and parsely from the garden, plus white wine, lemon juice and topped it off with some mojito that I was drinking. I seasoned the bird with random jars of poultry seasoning from the spice rack. I put a whole head of garlic (split into the cloves) in the bottem, along with a chopped carrot. Should be ready in an hour or so.
Sides will be garlic bread, roasted taters and a bag of salad (bag of salad is “free” from the Scout-o-Rama tickets). Probably crack another bottle of white wine with dinner.
Hope everyone enjoys their Sunday, be it a decent dinner at home / with others / leftovers / takeout. Sit back, enjoy the meal, and ponder the imponderables (like, if I feed Mrs. Algher and pour enough wine…)
Man, your dinner sounds great! I had a bottle of wine (oops) after being out in the yard all day. (I went out to do twenty minutes of weeding, and the next thing you know…) Had some yummy chicken stew from yesterday for dinner, though!
For me, Sunday is batch cooking day. I made the following:
Baked penne pasta with marinara sauce and cheese
A small ham with apricot glaze.
Grilled marinated (garlic red wine vinaigrette) chicken breast
Mashed taters with onion and garlic
With this, and a few other side dishes and green salads, I hope to have lunches and dinners for the rest of the week.
Since we are taking Mom out to dinner tomorrow, to avoid the crowds, tonight was rather light. We did baked potatoes and Chef’s salad. Easy, minimal prep and somewhat healthy.
For this evening’s repast I mesquite smoked 3 racks of baby back ribs and a chicken. Nothing on the ribs but fresh ground pepper and a bit of garlic salt. The chicken got a dusting of rosemary and tarragon. Corn on the cob and devilled eggs completed the meal. By all accounts, it was “delish”.
It was a rainy day today. Luckily I had a fabulous recipe to make - black bean soup. It’s a new recipe for me, and it smelled absolutely heavenly when simmering. Even better, though, is that it turned out beautifully - thick and bean-y.
Then for dessert, another new recipe - Chocolate Chunk Oatmeal Cookies with Raisins and Walnuts. I was good, and only had one. The rest go in to work tomorrow.
I took out what I thought was pork chops and when I went to cook them, figuring 30 minutes of cook-time, they were actually pork spareribs requiring 3 hours. Then I didn’t have any barbeque sauce like I thought I did, so I had to make some. Fortunately I make a good one with ketchup, Coke, brown sugar, and spices, and even though dinner was very late, it turned out really good.
This morning as a Mother’s Day treat, my boys let me make them all homemade waffles with strawberries and whipped cream (again, homemade). Those were delicious, too, when I finally got everyone else’s done and had my own. How come in the commercials it’s always the kids making the breakfast on Mother’s Day but at my house it’s always me? Ah well, it was good.
I made bbq baby backs and some smoked sausage. Also grilled corn on the cob, Ranch Style Beans, and a tomato/cucumber salad. I’m the mom, but I’m the cook, too!
Saturday night I got taken out to Carraba’s - very good!
Taco Salad. Well, sort of taco salad. Lettuce and tomato and green onion topped with homemade guacamole and taco cheese and salsa. Real taco salad should have ground beef and kidney beans, and I didn’t start defrosting the ground beef in time. But since I have lots of guacamole left over*, I’ll have taco salad for dinner tonight with ground beef and kidney beans.
It feels weird to make guacamole with fewer than 2 avacados or to buy fewer than 2 avacados for that matter. But living by myself, I really don’t need two avacados worth of guacamole.
I’m learning how to smoke - so we had two racks of smoked spare ribs yesterday. Came out perfectly, if I do say so myself, after 4 1/2 hours on the smoker. My family isn’t always enthusiastic about my experiments in cooking, especially on mother’s day, but this was a winner.