It's been an interesting week!

We've been busy!  Exciting things like Friday night dates to Home Depot, Saturday work-work, and Sunday yard work.  And we decided to cut down some trees!  Two were already dead, and one turned our backyard into a hard hat zone starting sometime in August.  We didn't know until after we decided to cut it down that it's a somewhat prized Black Walnut... but I don't want to hear your whining because it's already been chopped down.  It tried to kill us!  Throwing down heavy tennis balls at our heads, and then trying to trip us with them, not cool.  They allegedly taste good, but a little research showed a huge amount of work, permanent stains, and potentially moldy nuts.  AND, it turns out this tree is toxic to lots of other plants! (So no composting the leaves or using them as mulch for your garden).  We decided that it had to go.  But... it didn't go easily!  Here's what we came home to on Wednesday:

This picture is deceiving.  The pile was like 3 times bigger than it looks!  It was as tall as me, and twice as long as it was wide!  There was definitely more than our 3 trees in there... I know for a fact that we did not cut down a cedar, but we sure shoveled a lot of it... at least it smelled good :)

But you're still missing information:  The forecast for Thursday was torrential rain.  And maybe ice.  Sooo... this giant pile blocking our driveway was about to weight 10 times more!  We scrambled, and came up with a wheelbarrow with a flat tire, broken tarp, and an empty garbage can... but we got the job done!  Only took us 7 hours... we're well warmed up for winter!  Here's what it looks like now:

It rained a little while we were clearing, so you can see the footprint

We wanted the mulch for back here, since one of the previous owners decided it was a good idea to put lots of glass in the way-back yard.  We tried picking it out, but it was impossible.  Now there's a layer of protection!

And it's a good thing we didn't wait, a giant snow storm is coming tomorrow! While I'm waiting out the snow, I might eat all of the halloween candy before the trick or treaters come. If they slip on the icy walkway to my front door while trick or treating, can they sue me?  Do you think I can pay them off with candy?  Maybe I'd better buy some more...  Or maybe I'll just give them black walnuts.

Yo ho and really bad eggs

Yesterday was not my day.  All sorts of things went wrong!  But one very important thing went right:  while the rest of connecticut waded through the muck, our (empty) basement stayed dry!! HOORAY!  To celebrate, I decided to try using up some leftover egg yolks to make my husband a delicious caramel flan like his abuela makes.  FAIL

Lets start at the beginning.  I should have realized these eggs would not bring good tidings, based on their origin.  Why did I have extra egg yolks?  Because I used the whites to try and save my cloudy chicken broth.  Apparently, when you make chicken broth, you're not supossed to ever let it boil, ever.  I was tight for time and lacking this pertinent information, so I boiled the heck out of my chicken bits.  Gross foggy brown liquid later... I did some research and found out that you can fix this mess by boiling it with a mixture of egg whites, crushed shells, and vinegar.   THIS WAS NOT PLEASANT (this chicken just wont leave me alone!)  It smelled really weird and was very difficult to clean up... but it worked!


Flan Comparison Diagram

So now I had some decent chicken broth, a weird smelling kitchen, and several egg yolks.  There's not a whole lot you can do with egg yolks on a weeknight.  But it just so happened that my pantry was stocked with condensed milk*, evaporated milk, vanilla extract, and sugar.  So I tried my had at microwave caramel flan... otro desastre.  Still tasty, but definitely not the smooth creamy custard known as flan.  Maybe it wasn't really the egg yolks' fault, seeing as I chose a microwave as my heat source.  Eggs + microwave tends to end badly, but I'd heard it could work...  I'm pretty sure flan isn't supossed to bubble and puff into layers as it cooks.  Nor is caramel supossed to turn into rock candy on a spoon.  Oh well, at least it still tasted good!

*I never used ot have condensed milk in my pantry, but husband eats it with saltines - it's his favorite meal.  And I thought I had a sweet tooth!

B-gock!

I cooked a chicken!  A whole one!  It was my first time!  I forgot to take any pictures, but that's probably for the best, because to be honest... it's kind of a disgusting process.  It tasted great, but I definitely considered becoming a vegetarian more than once throughout the course of my afternoon.

Things got off to a rough start, when I realized my defrosted chicken was not actually defrosted.  I sent it to the lukewarm water spa for an hour or so, which seemed to help.  I opened up the chicken to remove the little package of gross things, only to find it was still frozen and wouldn't come out!  And not only that, but the package was PAPER, so it ripped open and oooooh it was not a comfortable 10 minutes of surgery.  (Who puts a paper package in a typically moist location??)  Eventually I got it all out and into the garbage, put the chicken on it's rack, and washed my hands 17 times.

I pureed a bunch of fresh thyme, sage, and parsley with some salt and pepper, butter, and a bit of olive oil, and rubbed it all over the chicken, inside and out.  Strangely, it turned the skin yellow... like fake tanner. (Spa, tanning session, maybe the I wasn't being so cruel to the chicken after all...)  I had half a tomato leftover from lunch, so I put that inside the chicken, along with a quartered onion.  Placed about a half cup of water in the bottom of the pan, and covered the roast with foil.  Into the oven, 350, for about 90 minutes (this chick was a little under 6 pounds).  Then I bleached everything in the kitchen.  Not really, but I wanted to.  I tried to be reasonable, and only bleached areas the chicken had been.  And washed my hands 16 more times.

I removed the foil for the last 10 minutes, and then put it back on for about 20 minutes after the chicken came out of the oven.  The smell was woooonderful, and I couldn't keep my hands off for long... I needed to know how it tasted!  Lucky for me, it was delicious!  I went right to work making little piles of white, dark, and soup meat, but a good portion of it went straight into my mouth.  I hadn't realized how slimey (the spell check wants me to say smiley, but it doesn't feel appropriate considering the carnage) I would get!!   I think the slime helped combat the compulsive hand washing, because the skin on my hands is feeling a little softer than usual today, haha.  (Gross!)

I tried to use as much of the leftovers as I could... I made gravy and broth too!  The gravy had the flavor of the roasted herbs too, really nice.   I couldn't think of anything to do with the skin though, it was way too disgusting (I've heard you should use tit to make the broth taste better, but ewwwww slime).  The whole process was pretty gross, it was tasty (served with steamed broccoli and experimental sour cream & parsley mashed potatoes), but once again thoughts of vegetarianism are swirling through my head... I don't see too many whole chickens in my future... for now I think I'll just stick to my former approach to cooking, mainly cooking things that are not recognizable as body parts!  And maybe I'll start growing some of these chickens, I know my mom would be very, very happy:

Peeps!

PS - Have any of you ever microwaved a peep?  I'm a goody two shoes and therefore haven't tried it, but I've thought about it...  maybe that should be my preferred method of "growing" peeps?