Chestnuts

What is it with me and the food writing lately? Been thinking about Thanksgiving to much, I guess. I've been on a quest to find cooked chestnuts for my carmelized onion and chestnut stuffing. I made this stuffinga few years ago, and it was really good, but that was before the kids, and then I use fresh chestnuts and roasted and peeled them myself, and frankly, not gonna happen this year. The people on the Food channel are always using canned chestnuts, but I've never seen them in the store, so I was wondering if they were some foreign thing like demerara sugar that Martha has access to but they don't carry in the Star. However, made an emergency pit stop at Trader Joe's on the way home from work yesterday to get cranberry juice for the Little Ballerina, and there was a package of cooked chestnuts right in the produce section.

These are shrink-wrapped, not canned (they look kind of like a package of figs) but I'm hoping they'll come out ok. Otherwise we're just having stuffing-flavored stuffing, because I don't have the energy.

More food blogging

Again, a takeoff from Nigella. Her recipe calls for roasting a chicken, then tearing it apart and eating with pasta. Too much work. If I roast a chicken, we're eating roast chicken for dinner.

But I had made sauteed breaded chicken cutlets the other night and had a some leftovers. The girls had pasta for dinner, so I made a little extra (bowties).

I diced two small sweet Italian onions and sauteed in a little oil.

Meanwhile, I put a handful of golden raisins in a bowl with a little water, and microwaved for about 1 minute.

Cut up the chicken into small strips. When the onions were soft, I added the pasta, chicken, raisins, and some kosher salt.

Stir around for a bit to heat up the chicken and pasta and pour into bowl.

Then I poured a little more water into the pan, added just a drop of liquid chicken stock mix and some dried minced onions. deglazed the pan ad reduced for a yummy salty, salty sauce.

Even enough leftovers for my lunch today. Now I feel virtuous, that I made our Sunday night dinner stretch for three meals.


(The breaded cutlets? A version of something in Martha this month: boneless skinless breasts butterflied and pounded out, soaked in milk, and dipped in breadcrumbs mixed with salt, pepper, onion powder and English mustard powder, then fried for a minute or two each side in oil and butter. I even got the Little Ballerina to eat these -- "I actually like it, Mommy!")

Is it that time already?

Wow, seems like just yesterday it was summer, and now it's already time for the annual I'm not allowed to use public money to stuff my religion down people's throats anymore! I'm oppressed, I tell you! Oppressed! festival. Boy, time flies, huh?

huh?

Crate and Barrel's dreidel ornament. For your Christmas tree?

Maybe it's for the people celebrating Chrismahanukwanzakah.

I said to a friend this morning that I think Virgin's way off with that one. This is a country where people boycott Wal-Mart for saying Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas. They'll have Richard Branson burned in effigy for this one.

Culture Weekend

Took the Little Ballerina and the Heffalump to see Dan Zanes this weekend, with some friends from playgroup. It was cute and fun, albeit expensive (stupid Ticketmaster -- $5 service charge on a $19 ticket? are you kidding me?).

Although, geez, he's such a freakin' hippie. At one point, he introduced some guy -- "he was the one who discovered Michael Row the boat ashore!" -- like, oh my god, hide me. It brought back painful memories of my parents forcing me to listen to the Kingston Trio. (I didn't have Boomer parents -- worse, I had beatnik parents.)

So the guy then sings some song about how Ticketmaster charges too much, and my friends all point at me and laugh, like "hah, who's the annoying hippie now!" And I turn to LawyerMan and say "if he's starts in about Charlie and the MTA, I'm outta here."

Sunday, LawyerMan had to go to an unveiling, so I took the girls to the MFA. They were so excited it was adorable. Dresses and hair up in braids and pigtails.

Afterwards I asked Little Ballerina what her favorite part was.

"When we went to the cafeteria!"