So...whats for dinner?

Wow, Red....Glad you are feeling better, but I also hope that you can follow up with your doc early this week.

Our chicken thighs were pretty good tonight....I like my chicken cooked "well" and thighs are so forgiving with that preference. I just baked them in an orange barbecue sauce, and poured it off at the end so they'd be a bit crispy on outside. Had spaghetti squash with some Parmesan over it, and a baby spinach and arugula salad with add-ins....red onion, artichoke hearts, carrot, cherry tomatoes, Parmesan shavings and a Dijon vinaigrette. Felt like a good light dinner.

Oh, I forgot we also had a delicious sour dough artisan bread that DH picked up at a local new package store. We were in there once and saw that they have day old bread for a dollar. I bought some to use for bruschetta. Well, they are excellent breads, and DH has made a habit of getting one whenever he is in our town center....no booze, just the dollar bread. We figure the store owners and staff must be getting a kick out of the old guy who just buys dollar bread. He actually should give them his beer business!

Wow. Red. No fun at all...and scary to boot...hoping it's something that's no big deal.

Red that's scary. Just a guess, but you may have been very dehydrated. And whatever it was may have been worsened by that.

Bedo, that's your version of "Butt Soup" LOL

Lacey BBQ sounds yummy.

Melinda you are more ambitious than I am. I use a bottle sauce.

Susan I've never seen that brand. I use Classico.

I know I missed people but Hugs and Much love to all..

Busy food day. We smoked the turkey breast that I have been dry-brining for two days, and then I made two loaves of a French-Country style bread. Still don't have the dough quantities figured out for these new pans, but I do like how they bake. More experimentation is clearly required. I pulled out a package labeled "Portuguese Lamb" from the freezer. Two cups of lamb stew made during my online cookbook club's investigation of two Portuguese cookbooks. When I went to warm it up, I was shocked to see that half the container was beans. Ah ha! That was the dish that Mr. 02143 really didn't care for so I put all the beans in with the leftovers so it could be a lunch for me. As my Garmin says "recalculating." So, I pulled some Duck Ragu from the same magic freezer to go with the polenta squares I had already pulled out. I lightly sautéed the polenta while it was still frozen and threw them in the oven. Not bad at all! There is enough Duck Ragu left for Mr. 02143 to have another serving, while I am eating those lovely beans.

I managed quite a few hours of billable work today, and then spent quite a bit of time investigating our BIG trip. Still working on destinations and dates, but making some distinct progress.

*susan*

I wish I had such interesting things in my freezer . . .

Today I made the best French baguettes of my life. I've never had a Parisian baguette, but this was the best I've ever tasted. I bought some French style flour from kaf and truthfully, I didn't think it would make that much difference. I was wrong. The crust was shatteringly crispy and the texture was perfect. A cooling period of 48 hours for this dough seems to be best. I've tried 24 and 72. The crust crackled and "sang" while it was cooling. Textbook. We devoured most of a baguette for lunch. I'll be making another tomorrow for dinner with the Turkish red lentil soup.

One of my favorite recipes of all time is Rao's lemon chicken. The sauce never goes on sale around here or I would try it. Would love to eat at the NYC restaurant.

nance, yea for a good baguette! The link doesn't work though.

Susan lucky you had something else to pull out! Sounds great. Hoping you get the trip set up!

Redheaded, try setting an alarm on your phone for ever hour or two. Drink a little something everytime. Good luck.

Much love to all

I think I fixed the link.

Look what popped up in my Facebook page today.... How delicious does that soup look? Another way to eat kale my dear Lacey!

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/jan/1...

Linda, how wonderful your house must have smelled. A good bolognese is a thing of beauty. How did the bread turn out?

*susan*

That soup looks very appetizing.  Would it be good with meatballs made of ground lamb instead of turkey?  I'm looking for a recipe to use pkg. of ground lamb in freezer.

Linda and Nancy, the breads sound wonderful.  Inhaling those aromas!  lol.

For you west coast folks, the last few minutes of the Green Bay vs. Seahawks game was amazing football.  I had already given the win to GB.  Patriots game boring in comparison.  We switched to PBS soap Downton Abbey. 

Susan, what are your destinations on your big trip?  Last year this time we were in AUSTRALIA.

I agree about the lamb meatball substitution. What a wonderful soup! It will require me to make a few store stops first for some of those spices and the Persian dried limes. There is a grocery store in Newton Highlands that probably carries them. I checked out that man's website....such interesting food. Thanks Susan!

Carole, the Pat's game was certainly a yawner after that first contest, but of course we had to see it through to the happy end.....then watched the DVRd Downton.

Am just imagining how beautiful your French loaves are, Nancy. I am going to make some for the couples I'm bringing dinner to later this week. Am feeling very intimidated....might just resort to my faux French bread recipe....and of course call it that.

Last night we had onion soup, garden salad and an omelet filled with many and varied vegetables, mozzarella and robusta cheeses. Very filling

Okay, Nancy, I'm in the middle of a French bread experiment. I am off to a bad start by using all purpose rather than bread flour which the recipe called for. In my research about French bread, I did see that if you snip the top of the crust instead of trying to slash it it can be easier....just need to push down any peaks that result from the snips.

Am afraid my effort today may be a colossal failure. ...soon to find out!

And DH was supposed to be going out to dinner with his niece who is returning to college here from California. She didn't have time to go, since her plane was late arriving so he is lurking about the kitchen looking like a sad puppy who is starved. Oy! I am giving the bread my priority! Dinner kitchen is closed

Lacey, I don't think it will be a failure at all. My recipe calls for kaf all purpose flour with a little bit (2 tablespoons I think) of whole wheat with the bran sifted out. Besides, I've never had anybody spit out a piece of just baked bread even if I wasn't happy with the results lol.

moon - I wanted the Pack too - I am an Aaron Rogers fan!  He went to my dad's alma mater, Cal.  I do like Russell Wilson though - I have watched several snippets about him, and he seems like a quality young man - gives quite a bit of his time to Children's Hospital in Seattle.  Consistently.  Some of the players in the NFL should take a lesson.  Same with Andrew Luck, lives in a regular condo and still uses a flip phone - doesn't have an ostentatious lifestyle, smart enough to know that a career in the NFL can be pretty short, best to save your money. 

Lacey I want French bread. I want to eat it in bed with as many slices of real butter as I want. It's cold here. I think that it would be heavenly to eat it in the morning with hot cocoa

Moon I don't know who won! I was in Ketchikan Alaska last year when the Sea Hawks won and all 50 of them-fans- ( small town) were dancing in the street.

Susan, I know what you mean about soup- made kale, sweet potato and great northern bean soup tonight. So good. And I threw out the last cup of "butt soup" and took 1/2 of the new soup to my lovely landlords

Was offered a job today that is 4 days a week that almost pays too good to turn down. But it would clip my wings for a year. However, I would still be able to volunteer in Appalachia for 2 weeks in March. Haven't heard about the research job. I would be the only provider there. Time to tell you I am a Nurse Practitioner. Not the best, not the worst, somewhere in the middle, but a patient, here always.

Well, can't say the baguettes were a total flop...baked up well in my black double loaf baguette pan, tho the recipe called for a baking stone. Just tried some with butter....yes, Bedo this would go great with hot chocolate in the morning! Reminds me of my early days in parochial elementary school where the nuns gave us monthly breakfasts of crusty bread hot chocolate and butter after "First Friday" communion (you had to be totally fasting for communion in those days, and I always recall this large girl in my class who became sick every First Friday on the way to the church...poor thing.) I don't think she ever got much sympathy from those angelic nuns! Now, my mother would never have thought to feed us that menu so I thought it was great....loved those carbs even then!

Anyway, I digress, as usual....here are the loaves.

I forgot to slash or scissor cut the top of the loaves and frantically took my kitchen scissors and did it while they were in the 450 degree oven. A paltry effort, looking like they had been stabbed. I will try the scissor cut method again, but on the counter next time to see if I can get it more like a slash, which I have never been able to do well either.

I served a nice big piece slathered in butter to DH as a peace offering after not only not cooking dinner, but also chasing him away from the counter while he tried to put together his tuna fish, so I could do the time and heat sensitive tasks with the bread. I'm sure he is happy now......;)

DS2 was clearly optimistic about the Patriots and lined up a hotel room in Phoenix over a month ago. I jokingly texted him that DH and I might go join him, and he wrote back, "Come on down". He is funny...and kind to us. Probably knows that there is a rare chance that I would head to Phoenix with a lot of crazed sports fans on Super Bowl weekend to spend a fortune. Super bowl is not really my thing....but then the last time the Pats were in it was with the Giants. We happened to be in Paris and stayed up all night long to watch the game (French play by play!), only to see the Giants win in the last two minutes. We were too tired for our tour the next day to even be dejected. Ha!