Busy Day

This is my favorite distraction. She's totally insane. Pippa J. Mouse the dog is a "shortie" Jack Russell, and the most fun dog evar. I threw the gigantic empty pretzel tub 3.4 billion times while she chased it, growled at it, brought it back, and rolled over it like a barrel. She's slightly hyper, completely crazy, and fits in perfectly.

Meme got me a present!

Well, okay, he got it for himself, but he later saw the joy it gave the dog, cats, and me, and he relinquished it, saying the sound of insane cackling brought joy to his soul. It's a super lazor thermometer tool of doom! So far I have measured the temperature of every wall, ceiling, cooking surface, animal, human, electronic device, appliance, and plumbing fixture in the house. My hands are generally 10 degrees hotter than my arm. The cats are somewhere around 80 degrees on their fur. 102ish on their non-furred, non-ocular parts. Don't ask.

One of the best parts is that the animals go berserk chasing the little lasery dot around, and I can get entire roomsfuls of them moving in unison. I can also (if family members are not paying attention or moving fast enough) get the roomsful of animals to run over just about anything in it's path. Hence the cackling. Seriously, it's hilarious.


















I found this really cool paper the last time I was out and about, and Meme had mentioned a physical counterpart to this blog menu. It's one of those black marble notebooks with the pages sewn in that I modified pretty heavily.

Yes, I know the paper is really 70's. Now shut up and get me my nehru jacket.

Finally, dinner tonight. It's not especially pretty because I ran out of Helen before I ran out of cooking. I wish I could say I did the lens flares on purpose, but I didn't. :)

We had fork-mashed potatoes and parsley, roasted chicken that I brined for a couple of hours, and fried apples with a caramel-ish sauce. I was disappointed in how the chicken browned... or didn't brown as the case might be. I use Alton Brown's terra cotta heat capacitor in my oven, and was using his upside-down giant flower pot over the chicken as makeshift earthenware oven technique. He said that if the oven was set at 550 degrees Fahrenheit for the first 20 minutes of cooking, the skin would get brown and crispy, but it didn't. I suspect I did something wrong, but it still tasted darn good!

Brine:
8 oz kosher salt
8 oz sugar
1 quart just-off-the-boil water
1 quart ice and cold water
1 clean kitchen garbage bag(right out of the box, then rinse it thoroughly with water)
1 3-5 lb chicken

Mix salt and sugar together in a pot big enough for 2+ quarts of liquid. Pour in hot water and stir until the salt and sugar dissolve. Add ice water, stir, and wait to cool. When you can put your hand in it without shrieking, put the chicken in the clean garbage bag, then pour the brine in on top of it. Squish all the air out of the garbage bag, and the liquid should totally cover the chicken. (If not, make more brine!) Tie the bag in a knot, and refrigerate for about 1/2 hour per pound of chicken, but no longer than 8 hours.

Roast the chicken by your favorite method. It should be absolutely moist and delicious.

Fork-Mashed Potatoes:
6 red potatoes, cut into 1 inch cubes. The closer you get them to the same size, the more even your cooking will be.
Minced parsley
about 2 Tablespoons of butter
salt
water

Put enough salt in the water so that it tastes like sea water, and set it to boil.
Boil the potatoes until when you fish one out of the water, it just splits on the fork. Or, until it tastes done. :)
Drain potatoes, and put them, the parsley, and the butter into a low, flat serving dish.
Gently break apart the potatoes with a fork, stirring occasionally to incorporate the butter and the parsley.
By salting the water and putting the butter in at the very last minute, the potatoes should taste perfectly seasoned, and no one should have to butter or salt them! That way you use less than the diners would left to themselves. Yay, better for your heart!

Fried Apples:
Apples. I think I used 6 or 7. I used eating apples (rather than cooking apples) like red delicious, golden something, and some pale green one that wasn't granny smith.
Sugar, 7 Tablespoons or to taste
Butter, probably around 6 Tablespoons
Nutmeg
Cinnamon
Milk, approximately 1/2 cup

Core the apples, and cut them into slices no thicker than about 1/4 an inch. Try for evenness, but it's not too huge a deal. Drop them in acidulated water to stop the browning and to add a little brightness.
Put 2 T butter in the bottom of a high sided frying pan, swirling it around until the bottom is coated. Medium heat is fine.
Load your apples in, draining some of the water off of them, but not all.
Add about 1/2 teaspoon fresh nutmeg, and add cinnamon to taste. I think I used a teaspoon and a half.
Add 4 Tablespoons of sugar, and turn the apples to get the spices and the sugar evenly distributed.
Put a lid on the pan and let it cook until the apples start to look a little floppy and translucent. There should be a lot more liquid in the pan.
Take the lid off, and let the liquid reduce, turning the apples occasionally so that they brown evenly. When the browning starts to really take off quickly and almost all your liquid is gone, remove the apples to your serving tray.
In the pan, add the last 2 T of butter, the last 2 T of sugar, and when the butter is melted, add the 1/2 cup of milk. Stir to dissolve the sugar, and let it bubble down just a little bit. I didn't make a real sauce with it, just a loose kind of au jus. Scrape up all the brown and lovely appley bits off the bottom. Take the pan off the heat.
Sprinkle the apples with 1 T sugar, and 2 T of butter. Stir a couple of times.
Add your pan jus to the apples, tossing to coat.
Accept your accolades. :)