Perhaps Not Gourmet...

Last night's dinner might not have been gourmet, but it was still delicious. Unfortunately in the picture, the only thing that looks good is the salad. However, the yellowish pile was actually the best part - a Dutch treat called Stompot. It's a mixture of potato, carrots, and onion. So good. And impossible to mess up. The chicken was simply marinated in lemon juice and then barbecued. Add a salad of spinach leaves, mushrooms, strawberries, and raspberry vinaigrette, then throw in a dinner roll (or half of one) and voilia! A dinner the whole family will eat.

How to make this delicious (though not delicious-looking) Stompot:

Boil potatoes with carrots and onions. There are no precise quantities. If you like onion flavour, add more. I try to make the potato and carrots even out. Then mash it all together will a little bit of butter and milk. My kids love it served with a ketchup smiley face on top (and it does taste really good with ketchup).

So for everyone who struggles like I do in the kitchen, here's a dish to try!

Crafts I Can Actually Do!

I love the idea of being crafty. I have multiple craft bins filled with the types of things I imagine one needs to create "things". Unfortunately, the things I create usually don't resemble the things I intended to make. I have the vision in my mind and then there's the "what-the-heck-is-that-supposed-to-be" in my hands. It's discouraging, to say the least. However, I have at last discovered a source for crafts that not only requires many of the items in my craft bin, but that I can actually make!

It's a t.v. show called Mr. Maker (http://www.mistermaker.com/). Forget that it targets pre-schoolers. Some of his crafts are downright cool. And I have to admit, I get just as excited as Hannah about trying them out. The other day we made watercolours in reflection that rival some of my best artwork. Even though these crafts are designed for 3 year-olds, don't be fooled - we worked with pastels just the other day. As if that isn't advanced!

Garden Envy

My last post detailed my lack of success with gardening. This one will lay out my plan, if I have the guts to follow through with it, of at least gaining some background on what I need to do in order to accomplish the kind of landscaping I would like around my house.

In my previous neighbourhood, right beside the park, there was a house with gardens I admired. While my children were happily climbing and sliding, I stared at this yard with envy. The front steps were flanked by brilliant bursts of colour, intertwined with tasteful greenery. The backyard housed a patio also spotted with colour, and more importantly, a small, ostensibly manageable vegetable garden. Along the fence, there were sunflowers stretching toward the sky. "That's the kind of yard I want," I said.

Had I hatched my current plan while I still lived on that side of the city, it would have been more convenient; however, it only occurred to me after I moved - I need to talk to the gardener of that house. I need to interview her and find out exactly what plants she has. Whether or not they are hardy enough to survive my not-so-green thumbs. How often she tends to them. Which ones are annuals and which ones are perennials. If she has gardening experience or somehow just made this miracle happen. Basically, I need to know how to replicate the gardens I covet.

This means I might end up driving to the other side of the city only to discover she's not home, or doesn't want to talk to some crazy woman who wants to know all about her flowers. Maybe I should just take pictures and hope no one notices. I know Scott has plans for our yard and they were conceived with the help of a landscape architect - I won't dismiss those. I simply want to add my own vision to them. I may not be able to cook a decent piccata, but surely I can grow a simple flower?

Is a Green Thumb Genetic?

I have often lamented my inability to garden. It seems like people around me are able, with a minimum of effort, to produce gardens in front of their homes that are pleasing to look at. My first attempt at a garden went something like this:

I dug out all the weeds and some were really hard to get out. I was quite proud of conquering those “difficult” ones until my neighbour told me I’d just dug out the roots to all the hostas. I put some of those back, unsure what they even were but convinced enough by her horror that they were worthy plants to have.  I then got ready to plant the package of seeds I had earlier purchased. I can’t remember what they were exactly, other than that they were a mix of supposedly hearty wild flowers. They could, I was ensured, thrive on neglect. Just the thing for me.

After planting, I began to boast to people about my soon-to-be-garden. “It’s going to be a symphony of colour!” I exclaimed. I could hardly wait for it to burst into bloom. And then… nothing happened. Not a single flower grew. Just dirt. And weeds. Oh, and the hostas that I’d so unceremoniously dug up and re-planted. So instead, I admired my neighbours’ gardens and tried to ignore my own patch of sorry-looking dirt.

A Brief Pause in the Action

My Martha Stewart project has stalled. I’ve been away at cottages and packing up a house, so trying new recipes or any of the other things I’m supposed to be experimenting with just haven’t happened lately. But now that I’m installed in my new house, with one month before returning to work, I’m ready to continue the project with renewed vigour.

I’ve decided I need more structure. In order to accomplish anything worthwhile, I have to construct a more concrete plan. My four main goals, as originally stated, were something along the lines of:

1. Learn to cook.
2. Learn to be a bit more crafty.
3. Learn to garden.
4. Become organized.

So far, I’ve only focused on the first and without any great success. My new plan calls for increased accountability and increased emphasis on all four areas.

To start, I hope to try at least two new recipes per week. That should take care of learning to cook. Or at least adding some variety to my rather skimpy existing skill set. As for the crafts, well, that’s really a minor goal and I’ve decided to relegate it to holiday occasions. Things like Thanksgiving and Christmas. Then, I’ll turn up the heat in that area. Gardening. I have a plan there. And it’s a little bit strange. But with a new house, and a blank slate, there’s no end to the potential. The actual plan will follow in a later post – if I have the guts to go through with it. That leaves the final goal: organization. My life-long nemesis. Once again, with a new (and bigger) house I have grandiose plans to finally conquer that one.

Therefore, I am ready renew my enthusiasm for Project: Martha Stewart Me and start to see some real progress!

Piccata Nightmare

Well, I finally made the Lemon Chicken Piccata last night. It was not exactly the stuff dreams are made of. But first, I should point out that I clearly wasn't ready to handle this dish and only made it under considerable pressure. I had company, to boot. In fact, it was my company's mother who encouraged/demanded I make this dish for her daughter. (Perhaps so she could enjoy a first-hand account of my failure?)

It started out innocently enough. I had to cut some slices from a lemon, and then squeeze the juice from 3 others. I put my company to work on that easy task. While she squeezed, I began to prepare the chicken pieces. First, I had to coat them with Miracle Whip. That sounds relatively simple, as well. But coating slippery chicken with equally slippery Miracle Whip is actually quite challenging. Because I was concentrating so hard, I realized too late that I was dipping my raw-chicken-coating spoon directly back into the jar of Miracle Whip, thereby contaminating the entire contents. Great. The next step was to coat the already coated chicken with crushed Ritz crackers. Since the chicken was such a slimy mess, I opted to sprinkle the crumbs over the pieces and then flip them over to repeat the process on the other side. Which didn't work. The Miracle Whip stuck to the plate instead of the chicken and no matter how many times I flipped those pieces of chicken, they never seemed to have any Ritz crumbs on them!

Moving on to the cooking part. The recipe suggested cooking the 4 small pieces of chicken in a frying for 5 min. per side. My pieces were apparently much larger or thicker than the recipe intended and took about 25 min. to cook. Which meant that the lovely Ritz cracker/Miracle Whip coating was burnt to a crisp and I had to keep scraping it out of the pan to avoid setting off the smoke alarms. It also meant my rice was done ages before my chicken. And finally, it meant I had destroyed yet another "easy" meal. At this point, I was meant to sprinkle the chicken on my platter with fresh parsley. Given that my decimated chicken was sitting on a plate surrounded by a pile of burnt scraps, and that my not-fresh parsley from a jar was actually 7 years old and an interesting yellow colour, I opted to skip that step altogether.

Interestingly, in the end everything tasted fine. It looked horrible, but I didn't have to order an emergency pizza. Still, I had such high hopes for that Piccata...

Just Add Water

Despite my recent experiments in the kitchen, I haven't really changed my basic cooking habits. Take, for example, Hannah's 4th birthday. As a Martha Stewart wannabe, this occasion was the perfect opportunity to do something special. Instead, I made an angel food cake. From a box. The only instruction: add water. Heck, even last year I did better than that by making little monkey cupcakes. If possible, I'm regressing!

For further proof, look no further than this morning. I have, in the past, made pancakes from scratch. And it's not hard. Yet, this morning I once again resorted to a pre-packaged mix of pancake batter where I could just add water. To be fair, I did throw in some blueberries...

Just add water? Is that really where I'm at? I absolutely must make that chicken piccata before I lose all forward momentum.