Standard fare, large appetite
This past weekend has proven that I can no longer write and cook, at the same time, with the verve I had a few weeks ago. Now that J is getting bigger, and our little girl more active, she’s waking up several times during the night. This makes me wake up, too. And so the sleep deprivation begins, with a whimper, of course.
Yesterday was a surprisingly big cooking day. Breakfast was two fried eggs, toast with butter and preserves, and sautéed beet top greens. These are really a treat, and it’s amazing that one can eat the whole plant. The root AND the greens. Now that is a plant that keeps on giving.
I tried once again to fix some dandelion greens for J, but this is one of perhaps two things in the world she doesn’t like to eat. My preparation–par-boiled, sautéed in olive oil with garlic salt and lemon juice–did not make them any more palatable. I had hoped that the parboil would leech out most of the bitterness, but it did not. Then, I made the mistake of thinking, “Bitter=basic. Sour=acid. They should cancel each other out.” Perhaps the pH was neutral, but the taste was not. I still ate them, and enjoyed it, but only because of my dedication to this wonderful weed.
Dinner was roast chicken with assorted greens, and a mix of the fingerling potatoes now seen in stores. Since I ate them all, I don’t have any photos, but they are purple (like a Latin American batata), red, and white. For the chicken, I used a method that J taught me of adding lemon slices, with the peel and pith cleanly cut from the fruit (and seeds removed) directly under the skin. Using a butter nice to pull up the skin from the neck of the bird, I stuffed the lemon right all the way to the other slide of the breast and into the thigh. My only improvement over the process would be to pin the slices on the breast in place with a toothpick (perhaps a clove?!), so that they don’t migrate downwards. The result was exceptionally juicy. Easy, fast, and with a free-range bird, very tasty.
