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Relaxing

It has been a lovely birthday weekend.

We had a party at work on Friday with pizza… and I brought in a lovely chocolate mousse cake with ganache. It was my first time buying something at The Restaurant School‘s pastry shop, but it was amazing. Then my parents took me out to dinner at a nice restaurant and then I met GeeksDoItBetterfor a midnight screening of Serenity!

Saturday, my actual birthday, I worked overtime and ate most of the rest of the cake. The weather has been good to me again. We were supposed to get lots of snow starting at 2pm, but the temperature stayed above freezing even until 10pm, when I was walking home… and then right after I got home, it started sticking

So I have spent all of Sunday in bed! I woke up at noon and 4pm. It’s now almost 8pm, and I am considering having breakfast. Also, I love my neighbor – for he has shoveled the walkway, even my steps and up to my door.

Mmmmm

I have cake!

Chicken Marsala-ish

So I had a hankering for Chicken Marsala… but no marsala wine. But that’s not the sort of thing I let stop me.

I looked up several recipes for chicken marsala and them left them all at work and tried to recreate the plan from memory.

Also, I did not see the need to buy marsala. After all, if you need fortified wine, what could be better than Manischewitz?

So I glugged a bunch of oil into a pan and fried thinly sliced chicken, which had been dredged in lightly seasoned flour.

Then, about halfway through, I realised that I should have sauteed in less oil so that it would make a nice gravy base.

So after the frying was done and the chicken was draining on paper towels, I pulled out another large pan and scooped up as much of the floury dregs from the bottom as I could and used that to fry onion and mushrooms.

(note: It was useful here to cook up three breast instead of the two I really needed because it was impossible not to sneak hot fried chicken breast bits while fiddling with the rest)

Once the mushrooms had cooked to the point where they released oil back out, I dabbed some up with a paper towel. Then the chicken went back in and I glugged a bunch of Manischewitz over all… And added the garlic (3 large cloves, chopped). Lots of pepper, salt, and a good bit of powdered thyme went in – with a dash of worcestershire sauce and a drop of browning sauce.

More cooking.

And then [redacted] lobbied for a splash of milk (ended up being light cream) to loosen things up a little more.

We ate it over mashed potatoes with cooked spinach and garlic on the side – very tasty. (very rich, too)

Stock report

So end result:
1 qt of chicken stock frozen for my mother
48 ice cubes of chicken stock put up properly in my freezer
1 1/2 quarts of chicken stock in my fridge waiting to turn into ice cubes
1 1/4 quarts of duck stock in the fridge

I think I need to get everything frozen before I leave the house for a week.

And both refrigerators at work will have maintenance done over break, so I can’t store the leftover lunches I have put together and frozen. It’ll be a fine trick to fit everything in.

I think I can do it, if I leave the ice cube trays out of the freezer after I empty them and just put the containers in whole. Things *should* fit.

Mmmmm food makes it warmer

What could be better to make for dinner when a bunch of women get together to watch Stargate: Atlantis than lemon chicken? Nothing. But having cookies and mashed potatoes on the side is a big plus.

I have had chicken stock AND duck stock boiling away all weekend. Actually, they are both turned off and cooling down now so I can put them up, but – YAY – so much humidity that it is condensing on my walls and fogging up my windows.

And for breakfast today I had an egg white omelet full of cream cheese and bacon (because I’ve been thinking about that ever since Traveller mentioned it. And, no, I am not dieting – I just keep giving all my good yolks to the feral cat.

Mmmm… I may be dressed, but I am all warm and cozy in my bed, cuddling my cat, with a belly fully of tasty hot food.

Later there shall be bridge playing.