Cooking by the Clueless
So, I made dinner tonight. I make dinner most nights, and I use the savingdinner.com menus because the only thing worse than cooking is deciding what to cook. So we are completely at the mercy of someone who actually does know how to cook.
Dinner tonight involved a chicken. Now, this is pathetic to admit but I have never actually cooked a whole chicken. I've seen it done, sometimes from fairly close, and I've helped other people cook turkeys, but this is the first time I bought a whole chicken and tried to cook it. It was very intimidating. I mean, this thing had clearly been a bird not so long ago, down to the favored organs stuffed back into the gullet in some bizarre Egyptian rite for the really devout chicken-cookers. The recipe called for me to insert my fingers underneath the skin and spread the herbed butter. I herbed the butter myself, because that's the kind of with-it, take-no-prisoners cook I am.
It came out really good. I managed to be frantically cooking up the gravy (well, failing to cook up the gravy) during the carving process, but luckily Susan is a master chef and quickly took over and then rescued me at the stove as well. And we had zillions of side dishes -- potatoes, butternut squash, broccoli. And they were mostly ready at the same time.
And then, during the meal, the bread Bikerkid and I had stuck in the bread machine announced its readiness. So we also had HOMEMADE BREAD. I'm such a homemaker. Too bad my kids weren't there to complain about it all.
Dinner tonight involved a chicken. Now, this is pathetic to admit but I have never actually cooked a whole chicken. I've seen it done, sometimes from fairly close, and I've helped other people cook turkeys, but this is the first time I bought a whole chicken and tried to cook it. It was very intimidating. I mean, this thing had clearly been a bird not so long ago, down to the favored organs stuffed back into the gullet in some bizarre Egyptian rite for the really devout chicken-cookers. The recipe called for me to insert my fingers underneath the skin and spread the herbed butter. I herbed the butter myself, because that's the kind of with-it, take-no-prisoners cook I am.
It came out really good. I managed to be frantically cooking up the gravy (well, failing to cook up the gravy) during the carving process, but luckily Susan is a master chef and quickly took over and then rescued me at the stove as well. And we had zillions of side dishes -- potatoes, butternut squash, broccoli. And they were mostly ready at the same time.
And then, during the meal, the bread Bikerkid and I had stuck in the bread machine announced its readiness. So we also had HOMEMADE BREAD. I'm such a homemaker. Too bad my kids weren't there to complain about it all.