Friday Morning in the Kitchen

Until about 3 p.m., I thought today was Saturday so even though I spent all morning . . until about 3 p.m. actually, in the kitchen, I still have more time than I thought I had since today is Friday. It is Friday, right?  :)  Vince and I kinda figured out what day it is by the day the trash man comes by. He comes on Thursday so when I said to Vince "Is today not Saturday?", he thought for a minute and said "No. The trash man came yesterday!" Who needs a phone with a calendar when we have the trash man? Well, I guess that's not true. Last week, because he didn't do his route on Monday (Labor Day), he picked up our trash on Friday.

Oh well . . that's not what this post is about!

This morning when I got started working in the kitchen, one thing lead to another and I couldn't find a stopping spot.

I started by seasoning a chicken to make Pioneer Woman's Roasted Chicken. It's so good. I didn't change anything on her recipe. It calls for two lemons (juice and zest) and that makes it so good. I love leftovers from this chicken for chicken salad, chicken quesadillas or burritos. I think I have enough leftover chicken for two meals. The plan, which could change, is to use part if to to make chicken, broccoli and rice (except we use barley instead of rice) casserole with part of it and something similar to chicken piccata with the rest of the leftovers.

By the way, at Sam's Club (where I think they have the best whole chickens), you can buy a whole box of whole chickens (organic or not) and the price per chicken is about .10/pound less than buying the chickens individually. That's how I buy chickens. When I get there, I just go to the meat area, ring the doorbell, someone comes to see what I want and I ask for a whole box of chickens. It's the same chickens they're selling in the coolers - not frozen. We use a lot of chicken so . . .10/pound I not a huge savings but every little bit helps.

After we ate, I pulled the meat off the bone, put it in a jar with the lemony juices from the pan and we'll have that this week. Briefly I thought about saving the bones for broth but I was pretty tired at that point and didn't.

Next on the agenda was getting some Cranberry Liqueur strained and into jars. I went back to the old blog and the first time I posted about this was 2014 but I had been making it years before that.

That photo was from Texas. These days I just make it in a half gallon Mason jar (or two half gallon Mason jars). The recipe says to let it sit for 3 - 6 weeks. I try to make sure I have it started by November 1 because it's nice to have around during the holidays but somehow, I never got around to straining it and using it so this morning I strained it and got 4 pints of liquid. I had one half gallon jar and one or two quarts (can't remember) brewing.

I saved the chopped cranberries to make breads or relish. 

This recipe is not a sweet bread. It calls for dried cranberries but when I make it with the cranberries from the liqueur, I just add less water to the bread recipe and it works fine. I like this recipe for a sweet bread. For the record, I do not use vegetable, canola or corn oil for anything any more. I will use either palm fruit shortening or avocado oil when I need a lighter oil. Otherwise, I use extra virgin olive oil.

For cranberry relish, this is the recipe I love. It has jalapenos and mint.

Next, I had a gallon of honey that needed to be divided up into smaller containers. I thought I was going to pour it into pints but realized that was going to be very messy so I put it into two half gallon jars. I use a lot of honey for baking so it probably won't last as long as you might think it should. This is orange blossom honey, which is Vince's favorite. I buy it from Azure. In February, 2024, it was $52.61. It's $51.90 now . . not much of an increase. Probably four years ago, I bught a case of four gallons of honey from Azure, and now, every time I get one out and divide it up, I order a replacement so I always have four on hand. I also buy honey from local vendors when I can find one I trust. There's a guy who used to come to our local farmers' market but he hasn't been there in a while.

Moving right along, Vince likes Ezekiel Bread. I do not like it and I like making it even less but . . I do it. I had been making two small loaves in the cast iron loaf pans. It's very crumbly and it seems to get even more crumbly after freezing. Vince likes to toast it, add sunflower seeds butter, top that with guacamole, then add chia seeds and flax seed meal. By the time he was done adding all that, the bread was a mess. I thought maybe if I would use mini loaf pans, he would have shorter, more narrow slices and maybe it would hold together better.

Maybe you can see how small the loaf pans are in this picture. We'll see in the morning how well these smaller loaves hold together. I use sunflower lecithin, extra wheat bran and an egg and I'm not sure any of that helps at all. There's ground beans, lentils, millet . . all kinds of things in the "flour" so that just seems to throw it all off a bit.

Last but not least, I made the Cheese Puff Bread that I love. I had some leftover grated parmesan and some cheddar in the fridge so I mixed those and used that. I like them better with just parmesan so I won't use the cheddar next time. They were still good. I like these so much that I don't mind reheating them in the steamer and having the leftovers.

That's it - how I spent most of my Friday. I'm hoping to get in a little stitching before bedtime. There's a chance I might finish Let Freedom Ring tonight!