The RedMolly Picayune-Democrat

Greeting the New Year... drunkenly... and with chicken

Is there any other way to greet it, really?

We saw the boys off for their semi-annual Colorado trip yesterday after a flavorful lunch of Drunken Chicken. The name is deceptive; most of the alcohol cooks off, I think. And if it doesn't... who cares? You'll sleep more soundly for it.

It occurred to me while eating this that it's quite a medieval recipe, really, despite the tomatoes. The combination of meat, fruit and spice is oh-so-thirteenth-century. See, for example, the Sauce Madame and Mawmeny recipes from Medieval Cookery.

Drunken Chicken
adapted from a Savannah, Georgia Junior League-type cookbook

8 chicken thighs, boneless and skinless
Salt and pepper
1 cup flour
1 Tbsp butter
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped fine
[2 Tbsp bacon fat or other cooking fat of your choice]
1 28-oz can whole tomatoes, undrained, roughly chopped by sticking a pair of kitchen scissors in and giving a few sharp snips
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1 cup dry sherry
Scant 1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup raisins
Salt and black pepper to taste
1/2 cup slivered almonds

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Salt and pepper the chicken; dredge in flour. Heat butter and olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add chicken and cook, turning once, until well-browned on both sides. (Depending on the size of your skillet--if it's relatively puny like mine, for example--you may need to do this in batches.) Remove to a shallow ovenproof casserole.

If you have ample time, you can wait and saute the onions in the remaining fat from the chicken, or you can do as I did and just heat up some cooking fat (I used bacon fat) in another pan, toss the onions in and saute over medium heat until they're translucent. Stir in the tomatoes, sherry, cinnamon, cloves, raisins and brown sugar. Heat to a simmer; simmer 15-20 minutes, or until suitably thickish. Taste and correct for salt and pepper.

Pour tomato mixture over chicken in casserole. Sprinkle almonds overtop* and pop the whole thing into the oven. Bake about half an hour, or until bubbly around the edges; this will give you just about exactly enough time to make some rice pilaf to serve alongside.

This is a lucky dish to eat early in the year, according to me, anyway. Serve it forth with great resolution.

*this is going to be my official word of 2010.

How Molly got her groove back

I'm speaking of it in the past tense, but I'm actually waiting for it to happen.

How can a nominally self-employed, gig-hungry critter like myself spend so much time sitting at her computer and so little of it actually accomplishing anything?

Today I'm having a fun adventure called "Fighting with the Content Management System." I'm a writer, dammit, not a CMSer... and my creaky old HTML skills are showing their age & infirmity.

In happier news, I got an $800 check from CK Media this week. Yay! Three and three-quarters* more of those and we will be GOL.DEN.

And in other happy news, Jim and I have a "date" this evening; we're going to a creative professionals networking event downtown. Free hors d'oeuvres and cheap wine for all, huzzah! I was really hoping to have some sort of functional web site URL and/or business card-like substance to pass out at this meeting, but no such luck. I have frittered away far too much of my time and it's just not happening.

Also: BrickFest was awesome. Hundreds of adult Lego fans get together for a weekend, build build build, then open up the Convention Center to display their creations to an adoring public. We liked. (All photos by James Newman.)

 

Look, it's Lego Portland!

Back up and take a look to figure out this mosaic...

A street scene

These modernist apartment buildings were like the coolest Lego constructions ever...

...except for maybe this suspension bridge (complete with river & boats underneath)...

...or this pool hall. (Jim has been inspired to create a Lego version of Billy Ray's Neighborhood Dive. AWESOME.)

An epic battle!

More Lego carnage around the Lego Tree of Life; also, Lego crops in Lego fields.

"Have fun storming the castle!"

This Lego roller coaster apparently really worked, though I didn't see it in action.

Lego massage chair

Lego heavy weaponry, incongruously touted by a small headbanded child.

Now we're looking forward to BrickCon in Seattle this October. With a vengeance!

*disclaimer: this may or may not actually be correct. math is hard.

Procrastination and delayed gratification

So we all put off things we don't want to do or are a little intimidated by doing, right? Like mopping the floor or filing taxes or writing a novel. Understandable and somewhat universal.

So why on earth would someone put off things that one is really looking forward to doing and that offer a huge return on investment... like, for example, taking a shower?

I think I need to go acquaint myself with some nice hot hot water and tangerine sugar scrub, and then maybe the hot water will melt away the procrastinationism temporarily. Hopes, though, are none too high.

Not dead yet

...not quite, anyway.

I got a line of dialogue stuck in my head during my shower the other evening. Got out, toweled off, tucked myself into bed and the line was still there.* All I could do was grab a notebook and write it down.

Then that led to another line. And another. And a couple sparse notes of description. And the next thing I knew, I had the first scene of a comic book script, and it occurred to me:

I haven't done any writing for which I'm not getting paid** in a long, long time. That means nothing creative, nothing unusual, nothing non-mercenary. Including this blog. And perhaps my life might be slightly the poorer for it.

So... yeah, spammers be damned! I have deleted your ridiculous weight loss/sex aid comments and am returning to the fray, standard held high, eyes a-blazing! Huzzah, or something!

* In case you want to know, it's "Not much left here. A bone; a bone; a paring. Let's be gone."

** Except for my work for CK Media, for which I'm supposed to be getting paid but from which I haven't seen a check since December. Ha ha! Giant stumbling corporation failing to pay its reliable freelance drone; it is to laugh!

L'amour

So the boys and I were watching "Blackadder Goes Forth," which is of course set during WWI, and which you should absolutely see if you've not yet had the opportunity.

Partial transcript from the episode "Goodbyeeee!":

George: All right, so, what do we do now?

Baldrick: Can I do my war poem?

Edmund: How hurt would you be if I gave the honest answer, which is "No, I'd rather French-kiss a skunk"?

Baldrick: So would I, sir!

At which Rhys pipes up: "What's a French kiss?'

I am preparing an answer, when Fisher busts in for me, with an air of authority which is impossible to reproduce here:

"It's when you kiss someone on both cheeks."

Thank goodness for children who enjoy answering other children's questions.

(Wow. You can actually watch the whole episode in question here.)

Pilau

...is another word for rice pilaf, which is one of the first things I can remember learning how to cook.

Mom always made it in her big old flame orange Le Creuset French oven, which I always assumed was called a "rice pilaf pot." I really don't remember her making much else in it. She still has it, I think; the enamel is nearly worn off the bottom of the pot, the insides are permanently darkened, but it still produces damn fine rice pilaf.

We had sirloin steak in the refrigerator (thanks, Mom!), and Jim wanted to make steak au poivre, so I decided to make pilaf to go with it in my own Le Creuset French oven (again, thanks, Mom!).

I love making pilaf, because (a) it's so ingrained in my mind that I don't need a recipe, and (b) it's a uniquely sensual thing to cook. Getting it right depends entirely on listening for the sound of the butter hissing in the pan, looking for the edges of the rice grains to turn translucent as they saute, smelling the onions as they slowly soften into unctuous goodness. It's not a bit hard, and it's entirely rewarding.

Here's how I make it (and yes, I know there are probably as many variations on rice pilaf as there are cooks who cook it):

Rice Pilaf
2 Tbsp butter
1 onion, cut into eighths and thinly sliced--you can also just chop it, but I kind of like the larger onion pieces
1.5 cups long-grain white rice
A handful (probably about 3 oz.) of thin pasta--vermicelli is nice; what I had on hand today was spaghetti--broken into roughly 2" lengths
About 1/2 tsp crushed red pepper
2.5 cups chicken or vegetable broth--if you don't have homemade on hand, as I didn't today, it's nice to make it with Better than Bouillon with water from an electric kettle so it's piping hot when it goes into the pot and doesn't take forever to boil
A couple pinches of salt
A few generous grinds of black pepper
2-3 sprigs of fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped (optional--I didn't have any this time)

Melt the butter in a heavy-bottomed pot over medium heat. When it's hot enough that a bit of onion dropped into it sizzles, add the onion, rice, and pasta; cook, stirring frequently, until pasta begins to toast, onion becomes limp and edges of rice grains turn translucent. This will probably take about 5 minutes. Somewhere in there, sprinkle the crushed red pepper into the pot and keep stirring. If you're making the broth from Better than Bouillon or another chicken base, take advantage of this time to heat up the water.

Add broth and bring to a boil, stirring frequently. Cover, reduce heat to low and simmer 15 minutes. Turn off heat and allow to sit, lid undisturbed, for 5 more minutes.

Salt and pepper to taste; stir in chopped fresh parsley, if you like; serve forth. Good with pan-seared steak, baked chicken, roasted vegetables or just about anything else, really.

Variation: Replace 1/2 cup of the chicken broth with 1/2 cup of dry white wine. Mmmm.

True love waits, for at least another 13 years or so

Two young lovers, accompanied by the young lady's sister to serve as marriage witness, slipped aboard a train and tried to escape to Africa where they planned to wed. But their plans were foiled when they arrived at the train station and it was discovered they had neither passports nor money... and that the bride- and groom-to-be were five and six, respectively.

An early contender for Cutest News Story of 2009, as reported by BBC News...

Two German children - aged five and six - have been stopped by police from eloping to Africa to tie the knot in the sun, reports say.

The budding lovebirds, identified as Mika and Anna-Lena, packed bathing costumes, sunglasses and a lilo and headed for the airport.

They even had the presence of mind to invite along an official witness - Anna-Lena's seven-year-old sister.

The three got as far as Hanover railway station before police intervened.

The young couple were "very much in love" and had decided to get married in Africa "where it is warm", police spokesman Holger Jureczko told the AFP news agency.

...

Officers persuaded the children they would not get far without tickets and money, but consoled them with a free tour of the police station, where they were shortly picked up by relieved parents.

Although any marriage plans have been put on hold for now, police did not altogether rule out the possibility of an African wedding.

"They can still put their plan into action at a later date," AFP quoted the spokesman as saying.

Where do YOU get the Wunder Boner?

"My wife would love the Wunder Boner!" (Bet she would.)

Ukulele madness

For Jac, who has owned a ukulele for some time, and for Augie, who received one for Christmas:

Is it just me, or is "ukulele" one of those words that looks misspelled no matter what you do to it?

New year, new things, 701

Happy 2009, people!

New things are afoot, including, quite possibly, a cooking/huswifery blog. If you would like to be involved as a co-/guest author or have a site you'd like me to add to that blogroll, please LMK soonest. OK, not soonest. I won't be doing anything with it 'til week after next, probz.

Another new thing: hostessing (w/the mostessing, it is to be hoped) the Portland Youth Spelling Bee. Coming a week from this Saturday (that's January 10, for the calendar-impaired among us) to Mississippi Pizza Pub. Grab yer sprogs and head on down! 1-3 p.m., words, prizes, sound effects, etc., etc.

Yet another new thing: writing trivia questions for Pub Quiz Oregon (shortly to be Pub Quiz USA). At last, an opportunity arises to turn my massive store of useless knowledge to some profit (probably the only such chance I'll ever get, barring a call from Jeopardy!).

And another new thing: goodbye Firefox, hello Chrome. The new Firefox ran so slowly and unreliably for me that I have decided to take on the learning curve of a brand-new Web browser. At this point I think I qualify as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Google.

And about the 701... the last post was #700 and I didn't even notice. Marvel at those peerless observational skills!