What's Cookin'

It hasn't taken long for me to get my cooking mojo back now that our kitchen is together enough to make cooking enjoyable. We also have taken possession of a nearly new Kitchen Aid convection cooking range. Our dear neighbors across the street just got a fancy new Wolf range and want us to have their 3 year old Kitchen Aid. WHAT A GIFT! With all of the money we are spending on the remodel, it was going to be a while before a new range was in our cards so we are very lucky indeed.

Here is what has been cooking.........

It is wild mushroom season here in the upper midwest, so that means our friend Sally can be found roaming around in an undisclosed location finding her secret stash of morel mushrooms. This is serious business in these parts an no one, NO ONE ever tells you where their secret place to find these treasures is. Folks will go to the grave with this secret. Just like every year in May, there is that knock at our door and an outstretched had greets us as we open the door. There we see a huge container of morels begging for an immediate trip to a frying pan. YUM!!! This year we chose to make chicken scallopini with the bundle of deliciousness.

After cleaning the bugs out of the morels (remember, they are the fungusamongus and always need some funky poopy moldy soil in order to prosper), we chopped them up with some fresh shiitake mushrooms from the local farmers market, then put them in a saute' pan with shallots, butter, olive oil, salt & pepper and sauted until tender. Remove the shrooms from the pan and set aside (the morels are the dark ones in the front row of the photo).

We then prepared some chicken thighs (you can use breasts too, but we like the dark meat :o)

Make sure to cut away as much fat from the boneless/skinless thighs as possible. Add a pad of butter to the pan and more olive oil, add the chicken and saute' until brown on both sides.

Remove the chicken from the pan and set aside. Add the shallots and brown. Add 1/3 cup chicken stock and 1/4 cup white wine to the pan and bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer. Scrape up any brown bits. Simmer until liquid is reduced by 1/2. Stir in 1/2 cup half-and-half.

Add mushrooms and chicken back to pan to reheat. Sprinkle with freshly chopped parsley.

We made a wonderful fresh greens salad from greens we purchased at our local farmers market. Lettuce, spinach and baby kale are the greens being used. Tomatoes and sliced almonds finish it off. Simple and delicious.

You will see that chicken is a theme in our house in spring. It's light and easy to cook and great with fresh spring greens and root veggies. For our Easter celebration we decided on Herb, Garlic & Lemon Roast Chicken. This will be our first real test of the new convection oven so that is why there are no guests here for this one. Serving a charred football for dinner is a horror I just cannot bare (that would be me naked :o). So here goes...........

Get a whole fresh chicken, and not one of those huge steroid & water filled monsters that look like a small turkey. Nothing bigger than a 4 pounder. I always use the free range organic chickens and they REALLY DO taste better. The first thing you have to do is prepare the herb butter. Take 1/2 stick butter (softened) and put in a small bowl. Add minced zest of a lemon, 2 T minced fresh thyme, 2 T minced fresh rosemary, 2 T minced fresh sage, 5 pressed garlic cloves. Mix herbs & garlic into softened butter with a fork.

Herb butter

Once herb butter is ready, wash and dry the chicken. Use your fingers to get between the skin and flesh around the breast meat and do the same around the legs, etc. then start smearing the herb butter under the skin and onto the meat. Do the same inside the cavity. Use the lemon you grated the zest from and cut it in half and squeeze over the outside of the chicken. Then, put the two lemon halves inside the chicken cavity. Now sprinkle a little dry white wine over the bird and rub the entire outside of the chicken with soy sauce and then sprinkle with salt & pepper. I also sprinkle a few mixed herbs over the top of the chicken too.

Throw this beauty into a 375 degree F oven, uncovered for about 15 minutes. Reduce heat to 350 and cook, basting about every 15 minutes. Cook about 1 hour or until juices run clear. Your family will beg you for more!

I serve this with simple roasted vegetables. Use whatever variety is in season. Here I used butternut squash, red potatoes, parsnips and carrots. Simply chop them up into a big bowl, add salt, pepper, herbs, onions if desired and toss to coat the vegies with a combination of olive oil and canola oil.

Pour veggies onto a large baking tray and roast for about 45 minutes in the oven along with the chicken at 350 F. Stir vegies about every 15 minutes. The magic of the convection oven is you are able to stack items in the oven and they all cook evenly. If you don't have a convection oven, you will have to do these dishes in shifts or make room for them side-by-side to cook.

The YUMMY roasted herb chicken as it comes out of the oven.

Our only green veg for this meal is baby kale. It grows like a weed here in early spring and has an amazing green hearty taste. I saute it very briefly in olive oil with kosher salt and pepper. You still want it to be a little crunchy. That's it!

Here is our finished Easter meal. Absolutely delicious served with a nice semi-dry french rose'.

Oh, and I must tell you we love, love, LOVE the new cooking range.

So, those of you who know us know that we can get pretty silly. Well, for the rest of you, here is proof. Oh dear........

You can tell that Lulu is really enjoying this moment. It's OK. I gave her some chicken scraps for being such a good sport.

And there is more..............can you say 'laaaaaaamb shaaaaanks'?

Rowan went away to a conference in Florida the first week of May, so........I always get to eat what I want when she is away :o) The first thing that came to my mind was the bits of lamb we have left from the one we had slaughtered last winter (I know, its cruel..... but delicious!). I dug through the freezer and found a couple of lamb shanks. I couldn't resist, so here they are in all of their garlicky, rosemary, lemon zest, olive oil encrusted wonderfulness just after they were browned and as they went into the oven.

Is it wrong for me to eat this way when I am home alone? I don't think so. It really isn't baaaaaaad! It's good! :o)

More home improvement developments in the next post. Stay tuned......

Cabinets and Carol Burnett

End of April.

I can't let more than a couple of posts go by without some new construction news. Our latest project is getting the ginormous new maple bookcases for the living room stained and finished. There are two bookcases, 8ft tall x 3ft wide that will pretty much cover the entire back wall of our living room. We will build them in and build a few more shelves on to one side to create a library environment. We ordered the shelves from a local unfinished furniture place and they were built by an Amish furniture maker in Pennsylvania.

Now back to more play...........we had the great opportunity to go see Carol Burnett live at our local auditorium about a week ago. What a treat to see one of my favorite entertainers of my life. She was one of my idols when I was growing up. I remember watching her show with my family every Friday night as a child. Hysterically funny! They just don't make them like her any more. This stage show was done in the question and answer style just like she used to do at the beginning of her TV show. The audience got to ask her questions and she showed some of her favorite clips from the funniest skits on her show. Tim Conway, Harvey Korman, Lyle Waggoner, Vicky Lawrence......all so hysterical. When she did the Tarzan yell live in the auditorium, it brought the house down. Such a joy to see that at 79 years old, she is still as sharp as a tack and extremely funny. I wish I could have taken photos during the show (we were only 18 rows back from the stage), but photography was not allowed. Here is a photo of the program:

Here are a couple of YouTube links to my favorite skits:

Gone with the wind- (just the stair scene)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6bOpJ5elW8&feature=related

The Dentist-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9T8i4FkNVo&feature=related

You can go to YouTube and find bunches of her old sketches. Good for a belly laugh :o)

If you remember watching her when you were younger, we highly recommend that you go see her if she comes to your town. What a real treat!

We are back to cooking in the next post!

Sister Act

Late news from mid April

We had lots of action happening here in early spring as my sister Patty arrived from Seattle for a weeks visit. It has been about 7 years since her last visit so we had lots of new developments to go over. Both of us have had house remodels since then as our lives keep moving forward. We had a GREAT time going to the opera, doing a little local sightseeing, walking the neighborhoods and breaking ground on the spring garden. Sis was a HUGE help getting the iris, herbs, and lettuce planted. Not to mention getting the nails, concrete, rocks, wood chips, etc. cleaned out of the very construction damaged soil in the garden beds. We removed quite a few inches of debris and sticky clay soil before the new top soil was added. We went out and purchased a new tiller to make our job easier. Amazingly, we were both able to get out of bed then next morning :o) The hot tub at the YMCA late that afternoon must have helped too!

We slipped my sis right into Rowans 'couch potato' fleece lounging suit soon after her arrival. Thanks to our dear friend Nina, who turned us on to this piece of lounging heaven, we can now pamper our guests with the slip on sleeping bag. And, it makes one look so perfectly ridiculous that it is always good for a laugh.

No, this is not me, it is my sister. It's WACKY how much we look alike when she is wearing my clothes. Here she is as we were trying to move some of the clay out so we could add some good top soil to plant the iris.

Here are a bunch of the iris we had dug up out of the yard before the construction. We packed them in straw over the winter and here they are now planted in front of the new porch. We are not expecting many to bloom this year, but hope we can give you a beautiful picture of them next spring.

My sis at it again in the side garden bed mixing in some of the new top soil.

Here I am setting the blocks that will be the foundation for our rain barrels.

My sis again, this time preparing and planting the herb pots. These and the lettuce, onions, kale, tomatoes, etc. will be the only things growing in our yard until we get the house painted. The rest of the yard comes LAST!

The beautiful bed of lettuce and kale.

We really had a great time visiting, eating (never a shortage of that!), exercising, sightseeing going to the FABULOUS new opera 'Vincent' at out opera house and just relaxing and catching up on life.

March Madness-The Women's Final Four

April 5, 2011

For any of you who are college basketball fans like us, you can imagine how crazy, mad, excited we were when one of Rowan's Phd students offered us tickets to go see the NCAA woman's final championship game in Indianapolis. We dropped everything and headed up to witness our first ever NCAA final anything. The final game was between Texas A&M and Notre Dame. Everyone on the planet had expected Connecticut and Stanford to be in the final game, so it made it extra exciting that we would see underdogs battle it out. Our seats, mid court of the floor section, row 21, were outstanding and unbelievable. We had the Texas A&M rooting section to our left and the Notre Dame rooting section to our right. Insanity is the only word to describe it! Too much fun!

The tickets were crazy. They came in an envelope that opened up like a stadium, revealing the crowd and our passes to extreme entertainment.

We arrived early so we could park :o) and experience the fans as they entered the Conseco Fieldhouse (home of the NBA Indiana Pacers basketball team). Here is the view from our seats.

Yes, we are very happy to be here :o)

The national anthem sung by a children's choir from Indy.

The cheering sections from both sides had giant photo heads of their favorite players and coaches. Most of you have probably seen these on TV during athletic events. It is hysterical to see a sea of them in the crowd. Here is one of the Texas A&M coach, Gary Blair, that a woman right behind us kept raising in the air.

And here are the giant heads of the TA&M team stars.

Photo of the jump ball at the start of the game.

A video of the Notre Dame student cheering section. With all of the bumping and grinding going on, it was really amazing that none of them fell out of the balcony!

The No. 1 Connecticut women's bball teams coach, Geno Auriemma, was sitting just a few rows ahead of us. He was so gracious to sign autographs and take pictures with all of the young fans in the crowd during half time.

The final score of 76-70 was light years beyond the final score of the men's final game and way more exciting. There were only 2 points between the two teams with 1 minute to go. Texas A&M took home the trophy. In our minds, both teams won. WHAT A GAME!

Raising a Fist & Be Our Guest

It didn't take long for the snow to follow us home from Canada. After only one day back, our local weather returned to winter. Well, don't think for one minute a little snow and freezing rain would keep our local folks from coming out into the streets of Btown to continue the labor law protests (and other local issues) during a visit from our governor, Mitch Daniels (R), who came here to speak to our local chamber of commerce. For those of you in the USA that are reading this, get ready............Mitch will surely be running for president against Obama in the next election. This is why he is trying to table anything controversial going on in our state at the moment. He is against our state house and senate members (taken over by republicans/tea party in the last election) trying to push through anything controversial. However, they continue to stir things up, prompting protests all over the state. It is such an interesting dynamic. He really agrees with his party, but won't publicly admit it. When is honesty and integrity going to return to politics.............UGH! I won't go on, and believe me I DO have an opinion! :o)

Here are some us as we begin to gather in front of the convention center waiting for the governor to arrive.

Of course the governor came in the back door to avoid 'the people' out front. My friends Bob, Lynn and I were working on getting arrested as we went into the lobby of the center to see where all the 'important people' were. We could see them arriving in the back and being protected by the police as they entered. We were told we could not be in the lobby and were asked to leave. As the police started to approach us, we very quickly exited the lobby and went back out into the cold, snowy street. THEY ARE ALL COWARDS! :o)

Me, Bob & Lynn.

Now, back to something that doesn't raise my blood pressure as much as politics - The House!

We had 10 days after our return from Canada to get the guest room ready for my sisters visit. She is coming from Seattle to go to the opera with us for her birthday. We will get to spend five days together and we are really looking forward to it. We had to move many boxes of books and assorted other items out of the guest room before we could get to the painting, etc. I had retextured all of the walls to match the original plaster walls and then added new paint.

The new pine bed frame needed staining too, so I was doing that in the garage in between the painting.

We got that whole project done with two days to spare before my sister arrived. Believe it or not, this is the last room that needed painting in the house. It feels good to know at least that part of the inside work is done. Only some window trim painting to go!

On to the next post...........

A Road Trip

We took a break from house projects and went on a road trip to Waterloo, Ontario, Canada in mid March. Nothing like driving north in late winter to a place where it is pretty much guaranteed to still be winter! Rowan was giving a lecture at the University of Waterloo Optometry School there and I was scheduled to pick up a piece of research equipment from a colleague there to bring back to the US for a new project we are collaborating on and about to begin in our lab. Our trip took us up through Michigan (we took the Flint/Port Huron route and crossed over into Sarnia, Ontario). We hit the road in the dark at 6am for the 10 hour drive. The sun came out and the air was very crisp. It was about London, Ontario that things started to get wintry. We could tell that it had snowed there the night before, the trees still heavy with snow.

As we continued east towards Waterloo and Toronto the temperature kept dropping. The car began to get covered with ice. You can see here the windshield as it began to freeze no matter how much we had the defroster on.

We eventually hit a major snow storm with about 2 hours to go to our destination. Thank goodness Rowan had downloaded the satellite directions to her iPad because we eventually were unable to see the road signs and really had no idea where we were. Thank god for the little blue moving dot that was us on the map. It eventually became a complete white-out. Such a relaxing drive! Rowan had to peel my white knuckles off of the steering wheel to get me out of the car. :o)

We had great luck when we finally got to our hotel. We got upgraded to a suite with a hot tub and fireplace in our room. Exactly what we needed after our very long and challenging drive to get to Waterloo. After a good nights sleep, we were up and at it the next morning to get over to the Optometry school for a visit with friends and colleagues. We woke up to a -14C temperature, that is about 7F. Brrrrrrrrr is all we had to say. And we thought winter was about over! Here is a photo of the school as we arrived. Looks like most sane folks stayed home today after that storm last night.

The front entry of the new clinic.

During our 5 day visit, Rowan gave her talk, we visited with friends, I loaded the Pneumatic

Esthesiometer into the car for the trip back to the US and we even had time for a trip to the local Amish farmers market on the weekend (a highlight of the trip for me).

The stacks and stacks of beautiful home canned vegetables were outstanding. What a sight! I could have bought it all.

The stacks of homemade pies set my head spinning.

And..........we can't forget to feature Gramma's Handmade Microwaveable Slippers. Yes, microwaveable slippers! Just wash em and throw them in the microwave to dry and disinfect. Who knew??!!!!

We really loved the horse buggy parking lot for the Amish farmers. They have covered parking, but the autos don't. Another reason to stop driving a car :o)

I've got a bunch of catching up to do, so I will be making a few more posts in the next few days.