Chicken With Garlic

Once again I found a recipe in the Sunday Roanoke Times that I wanted to try.  I changed a few things.  It turned out pretty good.  We eat a lot of vegetarian meals, but other meals usually include chicken.  You can't have the same chicken breast day after day, so this made a nice change.  The recipe called for legs and thighs.  That means a lot of skin and bones that I have to deal with.  So I switched to chicken breasts.  You can choose your favorite.

 

Chicken With Garlic

1 medium onion, chopped
2 ribs celery, thinly sliced

3 Tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro  The recipe called for parsley, but I needed cilantro for something else, so used that.  Use what you like.

3 chicken breasts  Or use legs and thighs.

1 Tablespoon Olive Oil
1/4 teaspoon salt
black pepper.  Just a few twists of a grinder or a pinch or two.
1/3 cup vermouth or sherry or white wine.  I used the sherry, cause I had some on a shelf in the pantry.

Two bulbs of garlic, separated and peeled  The garlic became soft and delicious and I wouldn't have minded more, but I got tired of peeling them.



 

Heat oven to 325°. Spray an 8X8 baking dish with Pam.

 

Place the onions, celery and cilantro in the baking dish.  Drizzle the chicken breasts with OO and sprinkle them with the S&P. 

 

Rub it in and place the breasts on top of the vegetables.

Do you know the trick for peeling garlic? 

 

I like to cut the stem end off first.  Then place the side of a large knife on the clove and give it a pound with the palm of your hand. 

 

MAKE SURE THE SHARP EDGE IS FACING THE CUTTING BOARD.   We don't want to interrupt dinner with a quick trip to the emergency room.

 

Little papers everywhere and sticking to my fingers!  Place the peeled cloves around the chicken breasts.

 

Pour the sherry, or whatever you are using, over the chicken.  If you don't want to use an alcoholic beverage, you don't need to substitute anything else.  There is plenty of moisture from the vegetables.  If you insist, pour a few Tablespoons of water on top.

 

Cover and bake for 1 1/2 hours.  Use foil if your baking dish does not have a lid.  Mine started to smell wonderful about 1 hour and 10 minutes in and I tested the temperature.  It was over 165 and so it was done.

 

Serve with a salad.  I used cole slaw.  A delicious and healthy dinner.

Moon Shot

I was sitting in the recliner watching the news last night about 6:00.  You pretty much have to do whatever you can to relax when watching the news, so I was also drinking an adult beverage.  I turned to set it down and saw the moon centered in our window.

 

It wasn't a particularly big or bright or stupendous moon.  But I liked that it was hanging there in my window, trying to distract me from the woes of the world. 

 

Or maybe that was the adult beverage talking.

Hanging A Quilt

I made a queen size quilt.  Then I realized that I spent too much time and money making it to use it on a bed.  Someone would sit on it with dirty clothes (Lee),  or someone would eat chocolate on it (me) or the cats would shed, scratch, barf, or otherwise deface it and then I would be mad.  No point in being mad.

 

So I decided to hang it.  There are many ways to hang a quilt.  If I had planned ahead, I could have sewn a pocket along the top at the back.  Then you can just slide a pole through the pocket and hang it that way. 

We found these pins online.  They are wood, with a sliding pin.  You pull the pin and then place the quilt in the pocket and slide the pin closed.  It holds the quilt in place without damaging it.  They come in different finishes.  We chose white.

 

First we measured the quilt and then marked the places where we needed the hangers.  You don't want a lot of weight on an individual hanger.  And you don't want big gaps between them where the quilt will sag.  Because you need room at the top of the hanger to slide the pin out, the quilt had to come closer to the floor than I wanted.

 

I placed it in a long hallway where we don't have any art or furniture to break up the long expanse.  It doesn't take up any room and I can change it out when I get better at quilting and am too embarrassed to leave this beginning effort out for the public to critique.

 

I would point out all the flaws, but if you can't find them by yourself, then they aren't there.  Sort of like a tree falling in the woods...

 

Free Motion Quilting

One of the dirty secrets of quilting is that after you spend hours and hours cutting and piecing to make the quilt, you then have to do a lot more work!  Many quilters, even the finest of quilters, hire people to finish the quilt.  This involves placing the backing, batting and the pieced top into a sandwich and stitching the whole thing together.  Most quilts involve lots of fabric and rotating the quilt under the sewing arm.  This is a pain and probably ruins a lot perfectly beautiful quilts.  Which is why a lot of people hire the quilting done.

The quilt shop I use for quilting classes and fabric, the Old Trinity Schoolhouse Quilt Shop, recently held a class to learn free motion quilting.  Free motion is exactly that.  The feed dogs are little metal teeth in the base of the  sewing machine under the needle.  They push the fabric forward or backward.  If you drop them down and put on a special free motion foot you can move the fabric around all you want.  If you do that while the needle is engaged you can, presumably, make lots of designs while quilting your fabric sandwich.  And all with out having to turn the fabric around to do a circle, etc.

If you could suspend a pencil over a piece of paper, you could place your hands on top of the paper and slide it around to draw a picture.  If you can draw with a pencil, the theory is you can "draw" pictures on the quilt with the needle.  So I guess my biggest problem is I can't draw.  Once I can do that, I can "draw" with needle and thread, no problem.  But I can't, which is why people hire this sort of thing done.  Plus, the professionals all have giant machines for this purpose that practically fill a room and costs thousands!   Which is why they do this for others.  They have to justify the expense, somehow.

Well, I can't draw, with a pencil or otherwise.  And I don't have a fancy quilting machine.  But I do have tenacity!  And I do want to learn the whole part of quilting.  Not just the first part.  If I make a quilt, I want to make the whole thing. 

There is also the part where I don't want to pay someone with mad skills to see my pitiful attempt at quilting.  Oh.  And I'm cheap.

 

For the class we made a sandwich of muslin and batting.  Then we pinned it and sewed it into mostly equal squares.  This way we could practice many techniques.  Some techniques are better for different backgrounds and spaces.  Also, you would probably get bored or tied in knots if you tried to do the same technique for hours and hours.

 

The instructor was great and gave lots of positive feedback.  First she drew a design.  Them we drew it to get it down on paper.  Then we attempted to sew it.  With mixed results.

The hardest parts for me were trying to sew over lines I had just sewn.  I was lucky to get the first circle down.  How am I supposed to follow the line for another go?  Or circles.  I can't draw those well with a pencil.  And the pointy tops of the zig zags.  Oh, and flowers...or stars.  Or pretty much anything!

 

I need to practice a lot before I attempt to do this on a quilt, but it gives me options other than the few other techniques I have used on other projects.  And it has reaffirmed my plan to never try a full size quilt or larger.  You lose enthusiasm long before you are finished.



My friend Marcy was visiting from California.  She wanted to see what I had done in my class.     "THIS is what you learned?", she asked with incredulity. 

 
It looked like a drawing a third grader might do.  In the dark. "It's harder than it looks", I replied.  "If you say so."  I guess I won't be showing her any more of my quilts!

Now I know why quilters use thread to blend in with the fabric.  Any mistakes are mostly invisible and that is what I am going to need for many quilting projects to come.

When the Cat's Away...

You know the old saying.  The mouse is supposed to have big fun.  And so is your spouse.  When one leaves, all the lists go on hold, right?  Lee had a bunch of things to do with the two cars, well, one car and one truck, that are in various stages of restoration.  Every time I called him, that is what he said he was doing.  Resting (his eyes) and working on the vehicles.

When I got back after less than a week of travel, I found that he had spent the whole time doing things we had been discussing, but hadn't gotten around to!  And all by himself.  As I was showing my friend, Marcy, around the house I kept being surprised by projects he finished while I was off visiting my mother.

Several years ago Lee had mentioned how he wanted to get a big flagpole to put up a flag that can be seen from a distance. We live up on a hill and thought that would be a great thing to do.   I went online and ordered a pretty big one for his birthday, but we could never decide where to put it and it needed to be set in concrete. It has been sitting around for a couple of years.  Recently Lee's father passed away and because he was a veteran, the family received a very large flag.

As we approached the house I noticed that the flagpole was now up. Complete with Jim's flag.   Is there a prettier sight?

 

I was amazed that he had dug the hole, poured the concrete and assembled the flagpole all by himself.  In just a few days.

 

Then just like a TV huckster, but wait!  That's not all!  I have been admiring a Maddox Chippendale Secretary at a local consignment shop.  It was beautiful, with curved glass and lots of drawers.  What is it about drawers and even hidden drawers that is so appealing?  I love that.  I wanted a desk of some sort for the B&+B and I just loved the idea of a secretary.

 

When I was showing Marcy the new B&B, I sucked in air and almost started screaming.  She looked around, waiting for a vampire bat that must be attacking, but it was just me.  I was thrilled with the new piece of furniture.

 

Lee had also installed the new quilt hangers he had ordered and hung the quilt.  It is partly just decoration and mostly to hide the electric panel. 

 

Now we can get to the panels, but the room no longer looks so industrial.  So busy.  What a great guy.

But wait!  That's not all!

I have been looking for a headboard for our bed in the guest room.  I had some criteria that was proving difficult to find.  I only wanted a headboard.  Footboards make it harder to tuck in the sheets, and with any luck, there will be lots of bed making in our B&B. I didn't want a big headboard because some are so huge it makes the bed and even the room look small.

 

Lee managed to find a great headboard and no footboard on craigslist.  And brought it home and installed it.  All by himself.

 

But wait!  That's not all!  He took all the leftover tile and carpet we had saved in case of emergency breakage or some other catastrophe to the shop.   Then he bought and put together the storage unit I need for cleaning supplies and other necessities for the B&B.

AND he put a new teak shower bench in the B&B shower for supplies, or in case you need to sit when in the shower.  Can you imagine?

 

He's my favorite husband.

White Oak Tea Tavern

 

One of the places we love to take visitors is the White Oak Tea Tavern.

(http://www.whiteoakteas.com/

 

My friend Marcy from California is visiting and we met Diane from http://www.dianecaytonhakey.com/ for an afternoon tea party.

 

It is an old log cabin converted to a Tea House and gift shop.  The cabin was built around 1780.  Then it was dismantled and moved to the current location near Fincastle.  The front of the cabin has many interesting gifts, but the back is where the magic happens.

 

My favorites are the chicken salads.  One cold and a hot one in a freshly baked bread bowl with spinach and cheese.  The cold chicken salad, my favorite, is finely chopped with more ingredients than you can figure out, topped with sugared pecans and served with fresh baked bread.  The teas are all delicious and around Christmas you can get Wassail.  No, sadly, not the alcohol version.

 

The ambience of the old house, with the adz marks still in the timbers, is a large part of the charm.  You can also get bagel with flavored cream cheese and meats for a sandwich, but I go for the chicken salad and the tea.  And the friendly service.  Did I mention I love the tea?

   

Two Mommy

My mother tells a story about a little boy at a family barbecue.  He is a picky eater and a bit of a scamp so he is placed next to his grandmother, so that she can keep an eye on him while his mother is busy.

"What's this, Two Mommy?" he asks his grandmother.

"It is polite to just eat what you are served," she replies.

The little boy examines his food carefully and then tugs on his grandmother's sleeve.  "What are those specks, Two Mommy?"

His grandmother is busy visiting with other family members and is distracted.  "It is probably cinnamon," she replies.

" Two Mommy?" , he asks with a worried look.  "Does cinnamon gots legs?"