the chicken

So here it is. The world’s most expensive chicken. At least at my house.

This was a pretty tasty bird, but I may have overcooked it a bit. OK, I did overcook it a little. It’s not my fault the online cooking instructions said an hour and a half cooking time and after an hour this bird was already past 165 F. I don’t know how much more exactly. After it 173 F I figured it was past being an issue.

Behold, the bird. I have no idea why it seems to be green under that front leg. Every picture I took looked like that…

Along with the chicken I roasted some veggies and made some rice. Have you seen the Romanesco broccoli? It’s the green mixed in with the cauliflower and onions below and it is delicious. I hate that I’ve walked by it so many times and thought about how pretty it was, yet never stopped to try it out. FAIL. Well, no more. I will now be more adventurous and try new and wonderful things. I may be disappointed at times, but there’s also a good chance I’ll find something wonderful!

beware the tomato

My daily To Do list has been pretty out of control the past few days. I need to get through at least 3 or 4 of them before I start working on my $23 chicken tonight. Yes, you read that right. I bought a $23 3 1/2 pound free range, happy butt chicken when I went to the farmer’s market on Saturday.

All I have to say is this better be the best damn chicken I have ever tasted. Of course, that’s also assuming that I don’t somehow destroy it in the oven this evening. My luck in that area has not been stellar as of late. Last night is a prime example when I managed to dump a tray full of salsa ingredients into the bottom of the oven. Once I cleaned up that mess and got them all properly broiled and ready to be cuisinarted I then managed to burn my fingers on a molten tomato.

I’m so awesome.

I’ll let you know how that chicken turns out… maybe.

and the lists go on…

I am really enjoying the list thing and I LOVE looking at all the lists everyone else is posting on the Flicker group. I may be having some journal envy. They are  beautiful! Mine seems so plain jane… I want to fancy it up a bit, but just don’t know how to get started… you know what that means, right? The blog search will be starting shortly for journally type things. I know they’re out there. I know it.

On that note, here is my list for today: Favorite Websites and Blogs.

And as promised… days from the past.

Day 3: I am looking forward to
Realized I forgot to add my trip to WV to visit the fam. Definitely looking forward to that!

Day 4: Today’s Playlist
yeah, I listen to a lot of podcasts.

On the home front. I cooked. I know. Shocking!

It doesn’t look like much, I’m not much of a photographer after all. Oh and I realized that all the food is white. I swear that’s cauliflower on the left. It’s a vegetable. Really!
I did however, make almond crusted oven baked chicken from a recipe in Cook’s Illustrated and it is fantastic if I do say so myself. Delish!  I’m seeing a subscription to that magazine in my future. And possibly more cooking. Maybe.

So, to celebrate I ordered wine. OK. I may have ordered the wine last week. It still counts.

veggies and fruit, oh my

Today was the first day of my once a month fruit/veggie delivery from Farm Fresh to You. I know, you’re thinking once a month? Why so often? Yeah. Yeah. Look, I want to eat all this good stuff, but I find that it becomes a little daunting and if this showed up once a week there would be lots of wasted food in the trash. The idea is to start off slow and simple and see where it leads. Any ideas?

The rest of the day has been less exciting. Leeloo went to puppy day care today. I found her sprawled out sleeping this evening. She is so exhausted from all the fun!

what are you doing? I’m sleeping over here…

week of goodness

It’s been a good week! Besides the fact I can’t stop thinking about our trip to London in a few weeks (have I mentioned the fact that we are seeing Lady GaGa in concert there?), good things have been happening over here. Monday I ran farther than I have since junior high. About 3/4 mile. That is an accomplishment for my no cardio doing self.

Tuesday I met a friend and a couple of new ones for a fun evening of knitting. Go knitters!

Wednesday… Wednesday was the day we finally got our new door. You know, the door that was required after some young hooligans decided to kick in our door and steal our stuff. That door.

Here is the last of our old broken in door. Yes mom, the old door parts are safe in a box in the dining room. Even the kick plate if you want it.

The gaping hole that is just dying for a shiny new entry door! It’s worth noting that it was very cold that day.

Look at that perty thing! We are totally in love with it. Oh, and the storm door? So nice to open the door and not actually be outside. What a concept!

Then there’s Friday. Did I mention it was getting cold this week? Well, today we actually started to get snow. Not yucky wet gross rainy stuff. Actual real live snow.

As we made our way home the snow started to come down more and more.

 

So pretty!

So we came home and marveled at the snow a bit and then decided to get down to business of dinner. I recommend Pizzadillas from Rachel Ray’s book. Yummy!

Oh and maybe a glass or two of wine while we watch the Olympics Opening Ceremonies. So inspiring! Go watch!

catching up, again

I feel like I’m always playing catch up. That may have something to do with the fact that I am always procrastinating by doing things that are completely non-productive. Enough of the introspective stuff! Here is what I’ve been up to for the past week.

1) Knitting on the biggest most giant needles ever. They are size 35’s and felt like knitting with large tree branches, which, except for the fact that they’re actually plastic, is what I was doing. When I went back to the baby blanket (size 8’s) it felt really bizarre. Like I had switched to toothpicks.

2) On Sunday I made Maple Pecan Muffins from Joy the Baker. I highly recommend this recipe. They were super delicious! The prep wasn’t too hard except maybe for browning the butter. OK, that wasn’t hard. I think you can handle it.

The finished product. Please ignore the random items on the island… it gets crazy on their sometimes.

3) Sunday night a couple of friends came over and Joe said he was going to get the fire pit going. We still had a bunch of scraps from the new wood floors so he used ALL OF THEM. Not just a few at a time. He threw in the entire box. Giant flames ensued. It may have melted paint off of the cover…

Cletus was not impressed in the least.

4) Tuesday was an exciting mail day! My order from One Planet Yarn & Fiber arrived with this lovely bounty. I ordered it as a kit with this pattern The Cedar Leaf Shawlette. Their customer service was great and I just cannot wait to start this.

Alas, I have a list of other things that must be done first. In my attempt to organize and to have things actually leave the closet of yarn,I have compiled said list and an order in which some things need to done. The goal is to stick to that list until I can get through at least 3-4 items. We shall see…

a few of my favorite things

I finished my first clue for the shawl Friday night. Can’t wait to get the next clue on Friday to see where this will be going.

Last night we went see a friend of ours act in some local fringe theatre. It took place outside in a parking lot behind a warehouse on Central. This is where we sat to watch Fight Club.

It was put on by Citizens of the Universe. Here is the director, James Cartee, in front of the set. It was gritty, but that was the idea. We really enjoyed ourselves.

Totally random for they day, but does anyone know what these are? I think they may be female wild turkeys… they have been hanging around a road near our house and I am pretty curious.

Tonight I made brownies, but not just any brownies.

These are S’more Brownies I picked up off of Joy the Bakers blog.They look so yummy!

Here is the finished product and they are pretty darn good. A little more of a cake like brownie, but still delicious! I’ll have to make these next time we have friends over to grill. The perfect summer time dessert. Thanks Joy!!

on spot

Today has been a good day. I got up this morning, fed the rabbits, fed me and headed out to my first of three crochet classes I am taking at Charlotte Yarn. Fun! I really enjoyed learning how to use that hook and it was challenging to move your hands in a way that is so different from knitting. I will definitely be practicing for next weeks class.

After class I ran over to Macy's to return a not so great set of pots and pans I had purchased after Christmas. Really disappointing. Seriously, a pot should not have  black spots in the bottom just cause you boiled some water. In their place I picked up some shiny new Calphalon.

Did I mention shiny? Shiny AND pretty. What can I say, I love the pots and pans. Of course, this means that I need to stay on track with the whole cooking thing.

If you are not a follower of football, which I am not, you may not know that 'Our Carolina Panthers' are in a playoff game tonight. Oh, the insanity! We are therefore planning a night in with Joe's brother and girlfriend (who is kind of enough to cook for us this evening) as to avoid said insanity that will be ruling the downtown area and any establishment with more than one TV.

OK, off to wash those shiny new pots and pans so we can break them in tonight!

i'm back!

Look at that... two days in a row. Can you believe it? So, the theme for the monthly blogging thing I signed up for is 'change'. I would think that's a pretty good topic for January not only because it is resolution time, but since I really seem to have a lot of things going on at the moment. Things like, I wonder if I will go into work in the near future to find that I have been laid off and the fact that I am going back to school (something I swore I would never do) in an attempt to get into a nursing program. Life really throws some curve balls at you sometimes, you know? Those are but a few changes that I am trying to get through at the moment. There are others, but I'll get to them later.

Today was a strange day at work. The fact that it's a Friday and the day after New Years makes for a very quiet and empty office place, reallyreallyreally quiet. It also felt like the end of the holidays, which felt really good to me. I am ready to move on into this new year and accomplish some new things.

Tonight I cooked us a nice dinner (yummy giant scallops) and in a few I will be cleaning up the mess I left behind. Cooking is another thing I have vowed to do more of. Well that and adding a few things to my tiny repertoire of cooking. So small! It wouldn't be so bad if the dishes would magically wash themselves. I'd ask Joe to do it, but since he has been busy painting the guest room and our closet during his time off I figure it is just plain wrong of me to ask him to clean up the kitchen. I mean really, the least I can do is cook him a decent dinner and then clean up the mess.

Stay tuned for more blogging fun! I plan on posting even more riveting items about my life tomorrow.