LInzi home Heather Stays

Last night at 9pm Linzi hit the Amtrak for home. Heather is staying over. This morning Heather and I woke up and headed for Starbucks.

My coffee was just a little below standards.. too much coffee and too little foam. The foam on it was very airy and didn't look at all like marshmallow. The manager came by and asked me if my coffee was okay. I said no.. she took a look at it and said that she would replace it after she washed her hands. She picked up mine on the way back and returned a perfect one to me.

I thought to myself, someone is in for a little inservice.

Tom and Amy (Tom's daughter) showed up at Starbucks too this morning. I got him to tell Amy about the photo assignment he had with AP embeded in the Iraq conflict (long running joke) with Karen (a fellow teacher).

I made a huge batch of chicken morengo for this weekend. This morning, after 14 servings we reached the last of it. It was an all out hit. I made a homemade polenta (Italian cornmeal) along with it. The polenta was a huge hit too. It mixed up quite well. The first night with the morengo I mixed up and cooked one cup of polenta. The next night it came with two cups. I added a cube of butter and a handful of grated Romano cheese) Heather said that she might like some with syrup in the morning. This totally grossed out Sue. We had it with the last of chicken and the polenta this morning. Even Lucy, the calico cat enjoyed some.

The morengo recipe this weekend started with two chickens from costco. The had them going for 90 cents a pound. In the grocery store I was paying 9 dollars for a Foster Farm Chicken. At Costco I bought two for 11 dollars.

On Thursday I has cooking chicken on 3 of the 6 burners of the new stove. Two cans of Italian chopped tomatoes and one of tomato sauce were the basis for the morengo sauce. The chicken was skinned and browned with a tablespoon of olive oil in each pan. Four small garlic cloves added flavor to the browning chicken. Each pan was seasoned with freshly ground pepper. The pans were deglazed with the juice of the tomato products. Covered and simmered they were also sprinkled with oregano and basil (dried). At the end of the cooking process, when the meat is starting to separate from the bone, I added two cans of pitted olives and a 3 cans of canned olives, (yes I know I could have used fresh).

Our first meal is usually with the bones on. (The chicken breasts have been boned and split previously). The breast meat in a fresh Foster Farm chicken is absolutely huge.

After the dinner on Thursday, Sue and I removed the chicken from the bone and stored it with the saucein the Glad containers. When a meal was needed I removed the sauce and the chicken from the containers and added a little water. Within minutes we had chicken dinner.. that the kids were raving about. The polenta wasn't bad either.

Love
Pat