snowstorm chicken.

this would normally be a "what's for dinner?" post, but this makes at least 2 dinners, so.

when a snowstorm is forecast by the meteorologists, people run to the store and stock up on eggs, bread, and milk.

this is a mistake.

not that eggs, bread, and milk are a bad thing, but unless you only plan to eat french toast during the storm, you might want to consider picking up a whole chicken instead.  there is nothing quite so comforting when it's snowing (or sleeting or freezing raining) outside as the smell of chicken roasting in an oven.  plus, it heats up the whole apartment.  and then you get to make soup from what's left over.

so.  snowstorm chicken for 2 nights.  this is my recipe, more or less.  i mean, roast chicken is roast chicken, but i always prepare it this way.

1 whole chicken 3-5 lbs
2-3 carrots
2-3 stalks of celery
1 large onion, or 2 smallish ones

salt, black pepper, "seasoned salt," paprika, garlic, parsley, sage, and/or rosemary to taste and depending what's in your pantry or your container garden that you're overwintering
butter or olive oil
white wine (this is my one real use for chardonnay)
potatoes
2 bay leaves or bouquet garni
1 T butter
1 T flour
other vegetables such as fresh or frozen corn, peas, green beans, etc

1.  preheat the oven to 400F.  remove giblets and neck from chicken, if included.  i've never had a chicken with a neck, but if you get one, keep it and put it in your stockpot.  i don't know what to do with giblets.  with an organic chicken, i would make chopped liver, but usually i just throw them all out.

2.  while the chicken warms up slowly from the fridge, peel 1 or 2 of the carrots. cut the carrots, 1 or 2 celery stalks, and 1/2 or 1 onion into long thin sticks and scatter them on the bottom of your roasting pan.

3.  place the chicken on top of the cut vegetables.  drizzle olive oil or melted butter over the chicken, then pour over some wine.  sprinkle the chicken with whatever herbs and spices you're using (for what it's worth, i use seasoned salt, black pepper, garlic, parsley, and either sage or rosemary depending on how the plants are doing) and rub them into the skin with the oil and the wine.

4.  you can make baked potatoes as an accompaniment here. peel them, cut them in half, rub them with olive oil, and wrap in foil and position on a baking sheet.

4.  put the chicken in the oven and roast for 1-1 1/2 hours or until the thigh leaks clear juices.  or google for the right reading on a meat thermometer, which i don't own.  also put in the potatoes on either the same rack or the lower one on their own pan.

5. let the chicken rest 15-20 minutes and then carve.  serve with the baked potatoes.  have a glass of wine.  this is dinner #1.  reserve whatever meat you don't eat in the fridge. 

6.  put the bones/carcase with some meat attached, skin, wing tips, and vegetables from the roasting pan in a stockpot with the bay leaves or a bouquet garni.  pour the roasting juices from the pan into the stockpot too.  basically, don't throw anything out, put it all in the stockpot.  cover with water and turn the burner on high.

7.  when the water boils, turn the heat down and simmer for several hours until the stock is richly flavoured and there is no flavour left in the meat.  have another glass of wine, watch a movie or the snow falling or have sex or something. or all of the above.

8. turn off the heat and allow to cool until you can handle the pot.  when it is cool enough, strain the stock into a bowl (or bowls) either through a sieve or cheesecloth.  now you can throw away all the bones, skin, vegetables, etc.  put the stock in the fridge overnight.  have another glass of wine.  go to bed because it's really late now.

9.  the next morning, wake up, make a pot of coffee, and enjoy looking at the snow out your window that you don't have to go and slog through or drive in.

10.  when it gets dinner timeish again, take the chicken stock out of the fridge and remove the solid layer of fat that has formed overnight.  the stock itself should have gelled.  this is real jello :)

11.  for dinner #2,  peel the remaining carrot and chop in small pieces.  chop the remaining onion and celery into small pieces as well. peel and cube some more potatoes.  saute all these in butter or olive oil a deep pot and remove them to a plate or bowl.

12.  in the same pot, over medium heat, melt 1 T butter.  add in the 1 T flour and whisk to make a roux.  pour in a little white wine and allow to thicken, then start adding the chicken stock, whisking the whole time to incorporate the roux and thicken the stock.  you may have extra stock. if so, freeze it and use it later.

13.  add back the sauteed vegetables with any juices.  add in the refrigerated chicken meat from last night.   simmer until the vegetables and potatoes are cooked through, adding any herbs or spices to taste.  if you are adding starchy vegetables, add them as well.  if you are using more delicate vegetables like green beans, add them right (less than 5 minutes) before you take the soup off the stove so they don't overcook.  now you have chicken soup for dinner #2.

overeducated.

i just finished watching the premier episode of fox's new tv show "sleepy hollow."  it is definitely as fun and campy as everyone says.  like the episodes of x-files where the sneaky sense of humour came out.

but the end, man... ok, first, it's the Revelation to John, not Revelations, argh!  second (being a seminary graduate and all), i've read Revelation (and Good Omens :)  and that's not what it says.

greek yoghurt adventures.

**updated**

so i have always been a fan of yoghurt, and the new greek styles pack that loverly protein punch along with the "live and active cultures."  i have been eating quite a lot of it recently, but my local supermarket tends to be inconsistent with its selection, so i am exploring the various brands.  i'm up to 3 so far.

my favourite flavour is honey, so that's the one i've been trying.  i like it for a couple reasons.  1) i have always found that the jams you stir into yoghurt change the texture to something weird and kind of grainy.  2) mixing in or pouring honey is a traditional way to eat yoghurt, strained/greek or not. 3) in a pinch, i can make it myself by buying plain yoghurt and just spooning in honey :)

so.  here are my experiences in my greek yoghurt adventure:

first:  all of these were 0% fat with the same 5 standard live and active cultures in yoghurt, so none of that is going to show up in my discussion.  they are also all true strained yoghurts with the high protein content.  always read the nutrition labels, kids; some "greek" yoghurts have only half the protein of others because they are not strained, just thickened with additives.

stonyfield
stonyfield is my favourite.  it is creamy and tangy and organic.  although "organic honey" is really impossible because you have no idea where the bees have actually gone. 

pros:  organic!  organic!!  no hormones, no antibiotics in the cows.  i'm really trying to get away from animal products with antibiotics.  fairly low calorie count.  creamy texture.  tangy yoghurt.  good honey flavour.
cons:  the honey is mixed with pectin and carob bean gum as thickeners.  my supermarket carries this flavour about every other week.  wtf?  expensive except when on sale.

chobani
i must be the only person in the world who doesn't like chobani.  i find their flavours with fruit mix-ins to be excessively grainy.  their pre-blended honey yoghurt was chalky instead of creamy and had little flavour.
pros:  actually a 6oz cup, so better value.  no thickeners with the honey.
cons:  chalky.  weird texture.  little honey flavour.  no tang.  bleh.

fage
this one is very interesting.  like stonyfield, you mix the honey in yourself, but unlike stonyfield, the honey is just plain honey and comes in its own compartment.  this is nice because then you don't have to eat all that sugar, although honey is very good for you.  i found about half the honey in the compartment got the yoghurt to a sweetness i like.
pros:  no thickeners with the honey.  separate compartment makes it easy to customize.
cons: no tang.  messy and hard to mix in the cup.  if you don't eat it, you end up throwing out the honey, which makes it impossible to recycle the container. also food waste is sad :(  if you do eat all the honey, fage has the highest calorie count.  this will probably be my backup.

voskos
this one is... weird.  it has the most liquid whey of all of them, but it also has one more gram of protein.  usually these two things are mutually exclusive; it is the straining of the whey that makes greek yoghurt more thick, creamy, and concentrated.  voskos honey also has a tangy flavour that crosses the line into "weird and funky" with an equally funky aftertaste.  like chobani, this is pre-blended, and while the sugar content is comparable to the others, it has the least sweet taste.  i liked this one the least.  (note: i do see an organic option on the website, but i only found the conventional in my supermarket)
pros: no thickeners with the honey.  an extra gram of protein.
cons: chalky.  really weird, funky taste and aftertaste.  no real honey flavour.  soupy whey on top.

take that, rene girard!

this made me laugh.

It's hard to imagine Mattrick was a scapegoat given that he implicated himself by defending so rabidly the DRM policies in interviews to the extent of insulting customers. I very much doubt his orders were "Don, go make a dick of yourself in public".

I think we can all agree we've coined the new term: "scapedick" :)

scapegoat - In modern usage a scapegoat is an individual, group, or country singled out for unmerited negative treatment or blame.
scapedick - An individual, group or country singled out for unmerited negative treatment or blame; then accepting the blame, and overly going along with the plan against them to the point of looking like a dick

(quoted for posterity)
also, it's not every day a tech website and rene girard can be worked into one post.

what's for... lunch?

this has become one of my favourite meals recently.  it's so simple and summery.

spicy chicken salad sandwich

potato hotdog roll
spicy grilled chicken (boneless skinless breast or thigh - try a cajun spice rub)
carrot
celery
mayonnaise to taste
romaine lettuce

1.  peel the carrot, and slice the carrot and celery into small pieces. chop chicken into small chunks.  you really want these small, about a quarter of an inch cubed or smaller, but still chunky.  do not shred any of them.  the proportions of the three ingredients should be almost equal, with only a little more chicken by volume.

2.  mix the small chunks into mayonnaise.  i like my mayonnaise salads creamy, so i use a couple tablespoons.  it may be tempting to use a low-fat dressing, but don't.  it will get watery and not be creamy enough with the high proportion of vegetables.

3.  line the potato roll with romaine leaves and then spoon the chicken salad on top.

i'd love to try packing this for a picnic, but i haven't yet.  maybe next week for the 4th.

experiments.

so, we are moving. and we are moving to a much, much smaller space. which means we have to figure out what to get rid of/leave behind.

in the process of going through my cabinets, i found yeast packets that were way, way, way past their expiration date. i don't bake with yeast much. in fact, i don't bake with yeast at all. i tried once, and the resulting breadsticks, while edible, were all dried out and not really much good. and since i don't bake with yeast, i don't bother to buy bread flour.

but i thought, the breadsticks weren't actually that bad, i mean, they were edible after all, and i do know that bread baking is much a trial-and-error situation. i don't bake a whole lot because baking tends to be fiddly and rely a lot on details, and i'm not big on details. but even though i screwed up my first effort, yeast bread seemed like it might be able to handle less exactness than something like a cake (don't ever ask me to make a cake for you. i don't bake cakes). so i paged through my copies of Fannie Farmer's Cookbook and The Joy of Cooking looking for a yeast bread recipe that didn't require bread flour. and in The Joy of Cooking i found a recipe for pizza dough that said it would also make focaccia. i don't have a pizza stone, but the focaccia seemed like less work anyway. so i made it. and it was actually a success.

but what do you eat with focaccia? here's what dinner was last night:

chicken-pesto panini on focaccia

ingredients:
1 packet instant yeast
2 T olive oil + more for the pans
2 3/4 c all-purpose flour
1 c whole wheat flour (optional - i used white whole wheat)
1 2/3 c warm water
1 T salt
1 t sugar
extra virgin olive oil, sea salt, and rosemary

1/2 lb boneless, skinless chicken breast
1 T extra virgin olive oil
as much pesto as you want (maybe i'll post my recipe for pesto some day too)
mozzerella and provolone cheese

1. combine the yeast packet with the warm water and let sit 5 minutes.

2. pour yeasty water into a large mixing bowl and mix in flour(s), salt, sugar, and oil.

3. stir and then knead until the dough is "smooth and elastic," adding more water and/or flour as necessary.

4. divide the dough in half and push until flattish into well-oiled cake or pie pans. The Joy of Cooking recommends 2 10" cake pans. since i don't have those (see above comment on cakes), i used 2 9" glass pie pans.

5. cover the dough with plastic wrap and set in a warm area to rise ~1 1/2 hours "or until doubled in volume." this didn't happen for me. they barely rose at all. it's possible my apartment isn't warm enough to make the yeast happy.

6. push down with fingertips until the surface is dimpled. drizzle with extra virgin olive oil, sea salt, and rosemary.

7. bake at 400F for 25 minutes or until crusty. this is the stage where mine rose and got fluffy.

8. while the focaccia is (focaccii are?) baking, cut the chicken breast crosswise into slices about 1/8" thick.

9. oil a baking sheet or shallow pan, add the chicken slices to the oil in the pan, and toss them to cover them with oil. spread them out so they will cook evenly.

10. in another oven (i used my toaster oven), cook the chicken breast at 350F until done but still moist.

11. scoop several spoonfuls of pesto into a shallow bowl. toss the chicken breast with their cooking oil in the pesto until well coated.

12. cut a focaccia into quarters and slice two of the quarters lengthwise to make sandwiches. pile the chicken and pesto onto one slice of each quarter focaccia. top with cheeses.

13. put the topped focaccia slices under the broiler and broil on high until cheese is melted and bubbly. wrap the untopped focaccia slices in aluminum foil and put them in the broiler as well to keep them hot.

14. complete the sandwiches with the hot focaccia slices. eat!

this was actually quite delicious. i'm not sure how you can go wrong with anything that involves pesto, but that might just be me.

you're doing it wrong.

i'm sort of, in a rather desultory manner, watching the coverage of the inauguration on television, and i can't help wondering why only the tea party is doing it right.

i voted back in november.  there were at least 5 candidates for president on the ballot in my state (that i remember), representing 5 different parties for president.  but there were only 2 parties represented in all the other races, 3 if you count the tea party separate from the moderate northeast republicans.  i was just watching discussion of the president's stated immigration goal, and it sounds like the republican party is headed for a split between the very far right nutcases and the rest of the conservatives.

what is going on?

for some reason, the tea party is working the system right.  i wish the left in this country would stop chasing their damned egos and start paying real attention to how a multi-party system is working in this country.  it is working because whoever is financing the tea party is smart.  instead of waiting for 2012 and blowing all their money on the ridiculously expensive presidential campaign, they started in 2010 with the congressional races and especially with the house of representatives.

we have this famous check-and-balances situation in this country which forces the president to have to work with the legislative branch.  what would be the point of getting a hard-right president in power, or a green party president in power, and having no support for them in congress?  better to spend your money on those small, unglamourous legislative campaigns that will get voters in your corner and get legislative support in congress so that there is ready-made support for your presidential campaign.  not only that, but it will force true multi-party functioning in this country. 

if the greens and the communists are smart and more than that, serious, about affecting politics in this country, they should start finding house of representative candidates now and fund their runs for the 2014 congressional elections.  stop blowing your money on your presidential run ego, stop being fixated on "the presidency" and "the president of the united states" and get going with really getting the worker bees into the government.