Well. I'm officially on maternity leave. So I've got time to do all the things I have put off for lack of energy and motivation for the past months. My hands are swollen and I look pretty close to one of the hippos from Fantasia, but I'm slogging along.
I've been trying to sort out what to do with myself while I'm waiting to have this kid. So, I've decided to cook. I've picked up the lovely copy of "Barefoot in Paris" that my husband bought me a couple years ago and I've tried a couple recipes.
Thursday was Lemon Chicken with Croutons (you roast the chicken in an obscene amount of butter and stuff it to bursting with lemon wedges on a bed of fried onions and serve it over homemade croutons from a loaf of French bread) along with a Vegetable Tian, which is basically another bed of fried onions covered with zucchini, tomatoes, and potatoes, sprinkled with Gruyere. Yum. So I basically only screwed up by roasting the chicken upside down. Which isn't too major, I guess. It still tasted great, and R ate the skin anyhow, so oh well.
Last night we had Gruyere, Tomato (ok I had them, R didn't), and leftover chicken sandwiches on French bread along with Winter Squash soup, which is butternut squash and pumpkin puree as a pureed soup- it turned out really well. Although I would like to invest in a food mill, the food processor worked fairly well. (I made a righteous mess in the kitchen last night with this one- I haven't even dared look at the pile of dishes in the sink).
I think this weekend I'm going to try Filet of Beef au Poivre along with Ina's Garlic Mashed Potatoes. Maybe tomorrow night- I think we might need to eat something lighter- like Ina Garten's Broccolli and Bowties (which is a great light meal if you add chicken sauteed in olive oil with a tiny bit of lemon juice.
It's probably my last chance to cook anything fancy for a while- kids are not notorious for loving complicated food. Besides, I'll be sleep deprived and mentally unstable, so I probably won't make anything that requires more than the microwave- which is why I froze the remaining Winter Squash soup for after le petit enfant terrible comes along. Maybe I should make some chicken stock today..... It's always good to have something easy in the freezer!
Well, I just checked and a food mill at Crate and Barrel is only $19.99, and I have about $15 on a gift card there, so I'm off to Crate and Barrell for a food mill. (Which in theory could even be used to make our own baby food, so it is totally a practical purchase)....
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