Reward Yourself Chicken

It was almost fun to go back to work today, arranging flowers is not as difficult as painting. Plus there's the pay issue. The paint we've selected for our living /dining room is by a Canadian company C2. The colors are fabulous, the paint is as green as they can make it, so let's do the math: eco friendly paint + beautiful colors = high cost. O Canada. Tonight's reward is a favorite pasta dish with fettuccine and chicken.

You take a little, fat organic chicken, slather it with garlic, lemon, olive oil, salt, pepper and some crushed red peppers. Roast at 450 for 15 minutes, then about 1 hour and 15 or 20 minutes at 375. While chicken is roasting, finely chop onion, garlic , and a shallot or two, saute in olive oil, when they are soft , add a handful of cleaned and sliced mushrooms. When mushrooms start to soften, take off the burner. When chicken is ready, put the fettuccine in already boiling water and now comes the fun part. While the pasta is cooking, as quickly as you can, tear the chicken from the bones, shredding or cutting into pieces, include the skin. pour all cooking juices from pan into the sauteed vegetables, add a litle chicken stock or a splash of white wine. when pasta is cooked, place in big dish, add the chicken, then the sauce. toss all together, add fresh parsley, rosemary if it's not too cold to go outside and pick it, sprinkle with parmesan cheese, toss again. Eat. Then open up some of that $$$ paint and get back to work!

The Painting Chronicles Part II

Damn. The worst thing about the painting project is that we disconnected the internet, thus forcing me to work unceasingly all day yesterday. We've connected this morning because life goes on and the mortgage does need to be payed. So before we go back to caveman mode, here are a few pictures of our life, starting with a bowl of the delicious baked oatmeal we had this morning. Then the living/dining room in all its emptiness. Such a small space, so much plastering and sanding. Then, the piece de resistence: our roommate's bedroom, looking like a junk shop, full of furniture, bed entirely covered in books. God I hope he doesn'y come home from Cali early. Think German girl is gonna pull the plug. I'm falling.......

The Painting Chronicles

2010, new messes indeed. I'm a bit of a keep it neat freak," always ready for the photographer" a friend of mine says. But on this Sunday morning, I've lost control. The furniture is in the middle of the floor covered in drop cloths, I've barely manage to make room to sit and read the Sunday Times, there are random piles of books and hats and jewelry, and the book cases still need to be unloaded and piled....where? Luckily our roommate HeMan is off to L.A. for the week, so i imagine his room will become the holding tank for books and the rest of the dining room. I'm not sure where we'll be eating tho, cause all the living room plants are on the kitchen table. But as i'm writing i'm loading up on espresso and my engines are rolling and ready to hit the highway. First the gym, then the living room. Together we're better, wish me luck!

Pot Roast and Painting

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I was just taking a minute reading other blogs bemoaning the post party blues. The holidays are over and all we're left with is January. Here it's cold and blustery. The flower shop is slow, not as great a selection of spring flowers I had hoped to find when I returned on Tuesday. But at home we're carrying on ,still having dinner parties. Last night was a good bye to our favorite college students who are off to Ohio till April. I made pot roast, they made indescribably good oatmeal/chocolate/butterscotch cookies and brought french sea salt caramels from one's semester abroad in France. The cookies were so beautiful, we all split one for an appetizer. The pot roast was browned and braised, egg noodles (store bought not our own this time) cooked and a salad tossed. we ate and gossiped and laughed and ignored the plaster blotched walls surrounding us. When they return it will be spring, the walls will be painted and the the garden will rise again.

One Meatball

I should not be writing this. We're painting our living room and German Girl is plastering the wall under the front window. Looks like we're shooting a page for Anthropologie's March catalogue, the wall is all crumbly and distressed. The other wall looks sad and lonely without its photos and paintings, plus you can see how many holes I made to hang such few artworks.

Anyway, i'm supposed to be cooking a pot roast for dinner tomorrow. We're not going to let a little thing like a totally wrecked living/dining room get in the way of a dinner party. I'm going to brown it and braise it and fill the house with mouthwatering odors and hopefully keep German Girl on task. Last night we had German spaghetti and meatballs. Both meat and sauce are flavored with paprika and nutmeg, milk is added to the tomato sauce and there is even a dash of nutmeg on the pasta. What looks alike but tastes totally different? This dish. Delish. Off to the kitchen with me before I get asked what I'm doing. 'Cause this sure isn't painting or cooking, it is dillydallying at it's finest.


P.S. One correction, since this dish was prepared by Herself, she mentions that the tomato sauce is roux based, hence the addition of milk.

As I Live, I Learn

This is what I have learned from friends who actually know how to bake: springform pans come in different sizes, so if you use a 12" when a 9" is called for your cake will be flatter. Oh, and the room temperature of butter is not determined by when you are ready for it, but when it is ready for you. Check! And even if your cake is referred to as a pizza, if there is no "pizza" left, it was successful!

Sunday here was unbelievably cold and windy. A day to take down the tree, watch football and make pasta. I needed egg noodles for the goulash i had made on Saturday and was reluctant to leave the house . Out came the cookbooks and the Atlas pasta machine for the first time in about 10 years. Tho' not quite as easy a dough to work as the recipe claimed, the noodles were delicious and i felt quite the Little House On The Prairie cook.

I go back to work tomorrow. My work week runs thru Tuesday through Saturday. One more day of lounging about reading blogs. The wind has died down so we will venture out to the gym , maybe lunch and to pick out some paint for the living room. New year, new messes!

I Hate To Bake ( and I'm not kidding)

Wasn't i just talking about patience? And my lack of it? And I decided to bake a cake? The recipe was in last month's House Beautiful, from New American Table by Marcus Samuelsson. It's his mother's apple cake recipe, apparently they always had one cake in the refrigerator and another in the freezer, in case they had unexpected guests. Whatever. I'm no baker to begin with. A chef, yes, I can dice and slice and saute and braise with the best of them. I used to be a sous chef. I trained in French and Italian kitchens. But, I'm no baker. Still, It's Tini's birthday, she baked an apple cake last night, but her dog ate it. Sung to a country western tune. Anyhoo, I peeled and cored, creamed butter and sugar, tho' how butter creamed with white And brown sugar is supposed to turn a lemon color is a mystery to me. I couldn't pour the batter in the pan, i had to scrape it out 'cause it was mostly stuck to the beaters, on my floor, and all over the jeans I was going to wear tonight. Now the cake is cooling, the floor is washed, I have a slight headache. For better or worse picture to come. Until then, photo courtesy of House Beautiful.