I happened to be stumbling around the folder on my external hard drive called “WEDDING.” So what if it’s the middle of November and the wedding was three, going on four months ago!? This folder is scary, impending and well, gigantic. It’s contents currently weigh 97.77 gigs and growing.
Well, take it from me, dive on into your externals every now and again because you never know what you’re gonna find. I happened to find some video of the ceremony taken by my pal Iping! I listened to Keimig give his “lecture” on love + marriage as if it were the first time (I may have blacked out in the moment, there was a lot going on). I may have cried even though it was the second time.
This video is of Keimig’s lecture (he calls it that, I have no idea what other name to give it). There are a couple more video’s she took of our vows and exchanging of the rings. But I figured this was enough for now.
While flipping through my custom made Mastering the Art of Family Cooking, Recipes from your Family and Friends book, I have come across some recipes I might consider “advanced.” One such recipe was submitted by my friend Susan (feel free to check out her gorgeous family here) titled “A Take on Barefoot Contessa’s Perfect Roast Chicken.” My skills and I am sure to fall short on any recipe with the word “perfect” in it. I had planned on giving myself more experience with other recipes in the book before attempting this one. But as luck would have it, LG came home with an ideal 4.1 lb whole chicken from the supermarket, went to work for the day and I was left to either eat cereal or attempt this meal.
Let’s start with all of the things that I had no idea what they were. I subsequently had to Google these ingredients while at the supermarket:
Fennel. Sounds an awful lot like funnel and I don’t want to eat one of those. I Google Imaged “fennel” while panicking in the produce aisle.
Parsnips. Conjures the word “parsley” so surely it is green, leafy and will be easy to find. WRONG!
Behold: what I was faced with at the supermarket looking for “parsnips.” A sign that said parsnips, but pointed to a pile of what looked suspiciously like onions. For those of you in suspense and not quite willing to admit you have no clue what parsnips are, they are to the left of the onions, all the way in the back in bags. They look like carrots but are actually pretty much the same color as these onions. And as it turns out, they don’t have a ton of taste, but I did enjoy them.
I’m a baby photographer who doesn’t do a lot of cooking. After taking the plastic off of the chicken and placing it on a plate, I remembered I had to remove the giblets. I must have seen this done on TV at some point, I have no other explanation for knowing this. The whole action felt like some sort of weird violation. Giblets now removed, I had to somehow get under the chicken’s skin. It was slipping all around so I picked the chicken up with both hands around it’s “waist.” I immediately gagged. The chicken was the exact same size and shape as a newborn baby! I almost threw up. This decapitated chicken was instantly adorable! It’s little legs were all tucked under itself for the perfect newborn shot. All I had to do was throw a cute little hat with a bow on it and voila. I somehow managed to pull myself together and move on, only to run into a garlic issue.
Here is a list of other things I had to Google will in the middle of cooking this newborn chicken:
“How to cut a head of garlic in half, crosswise” and about 20 iterations of this phrase
“How to cut a fennel bulb”
“What does a roasting pan look like, exactly?”
“How to get under the skin of a chicken”
:: OK so maybe it doesn’t look that much like a newborn, but I’m just sayin’, I had a moment ::
I would like to go back to the garlic for a moment. The recipe says “1 head garlic, cut in half crosswise.” What does that mean!? I knew for sure this was some cruel joke put on by those people who know how to cook, to keep the rest of us feeling like fools. Cut in half. OK, got it. Across. Got it. Crosswise. Huh?! Lengthwise, now this is a word. When Googling “define: crosswise” this amazing answer pops up:
not in the intended manner; “things are going crosswise”
Perhaps if I knew what my intention or manner was in the first place! I went back to Google to no avail, which is rare. I facebook pleaded to no avail. Finally, I found an answer:
Question: What is a head of garlic halved crosswise?
Answer: The head of a garlic halved crosswise is just what it says. A garlic head is cut into two. ChaCha on!
CHA CHA AHAHAHAHAH! Lunacy. When someone asks you how to change the oil in their car do you respond, “Oh, that’s easy, you simply change the oil in your car. ChaCha on mofo!” JERKS! So, I gave up, cut the thing in half how I saw fit and proceeded to spend 20 minutes peeling each clove because the recipe did not specify. I figured, from my last experience involving butternut squash + seeds, I should get rid of the skin. As it turns out, I cut it correctly, “like a hamburger bun” as my friend Heidi later described. Also as it turns out, I did not need to spend 20 minutes peeling each clove. I could’ve simply shoved the entire thing in the chicken and called it a day.
Mr. LG has been toiling away all summer in our vegetable garden. The fruits of his labor have been amazing. We’ve had hundreds of cherry and large tomatoes. We’ve had peppers, eggplant, basil, onions, rosemary, carrots, lettuce and many more things LG would not be pleased I don’t remember. Needless to say the carrots were an experiment and they did grow … albeit somewhat conjoined:
I managed to slice up the carrots and use them for this recipe, which felt nice. Organic even. After cutting up all of the veggies as the recipe stated, putting thyme and lemon under the skin of the chicken, stuffing the cavity chalk full of goodies and roasting for 2 hours, LG came home to this:
I may have been beaming with pride, but as it turns out, I had cooked the chicken upside down. Whoopsie! Never even occurred to me there is a top and bottom. But you. You probably noticed right away didn’t you?
Well I am happy to report the roast chicken was D-EEEEEE-LICIOUS! I was in D-IIIIIIIIIII-SBELIEF that I could’ve cooked such a meal. I may have had a smile on my face for 3 hours straight. And I may have kept asking LG, “Wow, that chicken was fantastic!? Did you like it? Was it amazing? So moist and tasty!! Seriously. Is it good?!” No, I’d never cooked a roast chicken before. And no, this will not be my last time. Next time I’ll cook the chicken right side up though I think.
:: More photos ::
:: The fabulous veggies. Parsnips, fennel et al ::
Ok, so the title may be a little deceiving, but not totally inaccurate. There was Butternut Squash Soup and there were Butter Cookies. I’m not trying to say the soup wasn’t full of seeds, or that the cookies weren’t a little floury, but I digress.
I started out behind. That’s never a good sign. Reading up on chicken brining recipes, bumming around the grocery store and general hemming and hawing were the cause of my delay. This would be fine except it put me in hyper anxiety drive when I got home and well, that’s when mistakes happen. Or rather, when I loose all common sense. The recipe, submitted by the lovely Amy Mihailidis called for me to cut the squashes in halves and put some butter and brown sugar in their cavities. Common sense told me I should remove the seeds. Common sense also told me that I have little common sense when it comes to these matters, so better to keep the seeds in a bowl in case I did, in fact need them later. And AH HA! So it was. I had made a mistake and indeed should have left the seeds! Or so I panicked while reading the recipe and misinterpreted, anyway.
:: The freshly cut squash, seeds in tact ::
I diligently cut all of the vegetables, made chicken broth and inhaled the amazing smell of the butternut squash. Here are the squashes (yes I had to look up if the plural of squash was squashes. Doesn’t sound quite right, does it?), going in to the oven, seeds wisely put back into the cavities with butter and brown sugar.
I believe when the squashes were done baking for the allotted 2 hours and I was faced with “scooping the squash pulp out of the skins,” that I realized my faux pas. The first time I read it, it went something like this: pulp -> orange juice -> chunky -> seeds -> seeds = pulp. The second time I read it I realized I was an idiot.
By why stop being an idiot now? Rather than remove the seeds at this point and throw them away, I decided all of the flavor of the butter and brown sugar was somehow trapped in the seeds so why not let it all simmer together for a bit and strain the seeds out later? BECAUSE THE SQUASH WILL BE TOO THICK TO STRAIN THE SEEDS OUT LATER, THAT’S WHY.
:: Baked squash, chicken broth + baked veggies … and seeds, all hang out simmering for awhile on the stove top::
My Dad and Polly were at the house at this point so with the help of Geoff, we pureed the squash as the recipe called for, seeds and all… straining along the way. The end result was delicious. If you didn’t mind the chunk.
:: Monsieur L’Orange did not mind the chunk ::
I thought making a roasted carrots recipe I had found online would be a perfect side to chicken with the Butternut Squash Soup. I ran out of time and LG ended up doing most of that work, but here they are- they were delicious:
Then there were the cookies. All in all they were a hit. Although they’ll never be as good as when Mom makes them, that’s a fact. Accompanying most of the recipes in the cookbook are little sentiments, or notes. This Butter Cookie recipe was no different:
Butter cookies were a favorite in my house when I was growing up. In fact, the original recipe came from a Lebanon, Oregon cookbook published around 1915. My mom brought it east with her. During Geoffrey and Betsy’s childhood, we often had butter cookies for snacking. I believe these are Geoffrey’s favorite cookie. The cookies are rich tasting with the lusciousness of butter, but are not very sweet. – Submitted by Maggie Eads
I did take for granted that the simple recipe would be easy as, well, pie. However, Geoff and I now suspect that his Mom probably does a lot of tasting as she goes and has zero need for a recipe. Thus, why they will never be as good as Moms! And somehow or another, I made it so they tasted extra floury. But you live and you learn. That is the point of all of this, after all.
:: Butter Cookie Batter. Say that five times fast ::
The recipe does call for a cup of nuts but as this was on a whim, I had none and there were no nuts. Next time.
In the recipe Maggie states, “Butter cookies often are better two or three days after they have been baked.” Indeed, we enjoyed them for about a week. I am looking forward to trying them again, and for that matter, the Butternut Squash soup. This was my first dive into the cookbook and I’d already learned some valuable lessons.
For my wedding shower I wanted to party, I wanted an excuse to get dressed up, and most of all, I wanted my guests (and I!) to have fun. Seeing as though I was about to enter wedded-domestic-bliss, a 50′s housewife theme was particularly fashionably relevant.
Amassing recipes from the guests and giving them to the bride-to-be has always been a popular idea for a bridal shower. I must admit that as a guest, I’d always loathed this task. It’s no secret I’m a bit … challenged in the kitchen. I dare say I’m not the worst cook you’ve ever met, and do enjoy myself when I am cooking, but I get intimidated easily by ingredients and definitely need to follow a recipe. Needless to say, I have no favorite recipe to share with anyone, besides perhaps the Nestle Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe you find on the back of the package.
Enter “Mastering the Art of Family Cooking,” a collection of recipes in the cutest book from my family and friends put together by Geoff’s sister Betsy. The book is truly amazing, it has personal notes to accompany most recipes! I literally laughed, and I literally cried. I also literally tried a recipe yesterday and literally screwed up — but I suppose that’s the point. Live, learn + get better.
Geoff and I (ok mostly I) decided to try each and every recipe in the book and blog about it. I like to take pictures, I like to try new things, I like to post blog posts, and I like to pretend someone is actually interested.
I’ll post more about my butternut squash adventure soon. For now, check out the book:
If it weren’t for this amazing highlight video made by the tremendously talented DL Video Productions, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t believe wedding ever happened. The entire weekend felt like a dream and now that it’s over, that feels even more the case!
twoeadsinapod.com is getting a face lift! As of July 31, 2010 Geoff and I are married. Thus, our wedding website is morphing into our personal stuff blog. We’re not entirely sure what that means, but I’m sure you’re on the edge of your seat! The most obvious thing I can think to blog about is our wedding, so we’ll be posting photos and a video shortly.
Photos by Mary Kate McKenna Photography. Mary Kate has some more wedding photos here. You can read about how weird it is that we share a similar name, are not related, and met the Friday before the wedding here on crabapplephotography.com’s blog.
The wedding site pages still exist, so in case you feel nostalgic, or want to hear the nitty gritty details about our big day:
Ducks may die,
violets may get bur[r]ied in snow
and ice cream may melt,
books may get torn,
papers will be writ(t)en on
and dolls my be broken,
staples may be used
but nothing will brack (break) or die.
the way I love you.
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