Cleaning & Cooking

 Cleaning is definitely not my strong point. After finishing up the strawberry jam close to midnight,  I put the pots in the sink, ran water  in them, got all the food type things in the fridge and that was about it. I knew that when I got up the next morning (yesterday), I had a big job in the kitchen. I got all the pots and pans, measuring gizmos, etc. washed and put away. Then I was going to wipe down the stove and realized . . the stove needed a deep cleaning and scrubbing so I did that.

It actually looks brand new! I took all the grates off, took them outside and scrubbed them; came in and dried them well, oiled them, scrub everything! Then I took those cast iron pots that are on the stove, gave them a good scrubbing, oiled them and heated them to "cook" the oil on. 

Next was Vince's Ezekiel Bread. I make three loaves at a time. I do not like making the bread. It isn't a fun bread for me to make. It's sticky, it's more like a banana nut bread consistency - gooey, sticky - I love making yeast breads but not this kind of bread. 

I always make the three loaves before Vince uses all of the last batch but this time, I didn't. I need to have almost a whole day at home to be able to make it and there hasn't been a single day in the past 7 days that I was home all day, or even long enough to get enough done to stick it in the fridge til the next day.

Today I finally got the bread made.

Our meal today was a sheet pan dinner. It was Sheet Pan Curry Chicken Dinner. Vince has always said he doesn't like curry but not long ago I made a recipe that was somewhat curry-ish and he liked it so I thought I would push my luck and see what he thought about this one.

These were the listed ingredients. I added a fennel bulb (also in the photo), asparagus because we're still getting it from the garden, and broccoli.

It was delicious! And . . Vince liked it . . a lot!

I think the recipe said to line the pan with foil and I did that but I also doubled parchment paper and put that on top of the foil. It was super easy clean-up - probably a bit of a waste of money to line with foil and double parchment paper but . . it may be worth it for the easy clean-up. I didn't even have to wipe out the pan!

There are a few other sheet pan meals I want to try. Have you tried them? Do you have any recipes you want to try?