Why, hello! Has the first day of this new year treated you well?
Our celebrations were quite low key last night because we’ve both been a little under the weather. We started out with the movie Haywire, but despite my serious strong-girl crush on Gina Carano, the film committed the cardinal sin of bad action films: it was boring. So boring, in fact, that I turned it off after twenty minutes. We salvaged the evening with pizza, ice cream and several episodes of MI-5, and made it (reluctantly) until midnight.
Once we realized that the world wasn’t ending, we passed out and slept in until 10. Glorious!
Today we gathered ourselves and ventured out into the world. Devon needed snow boots, and I hadn’t left the house for a while. We drove to the L.L. Bean outlet, ate lunch at the salad bar at Whole Foods, and came back to work on a few new projects, draft some more resolutions, and think about my word of the year. For dinner, I thought I’d set us straight with some salads and roast chicken.
This is one of my favorite meals because it’s simple, light, and relatively foolproof. Which of course means that I had my first kitchen failure of the year – I started my chicken skin side down in my greased pan, but the skin decided to stick nearly entirely to the pan when I flipped it over. Alas! Good thing that rosemary and oregano infused chicken minus the skin still tastes good!
I topped my salad with some tomatoes, a few baby mozzarella balls, good black olives, and some rolled up slices of pastırma, a Turkish cured meat. I made a dressing with some of the pan drippings, some of the olive oil that I keep my black olives in, and a little bit of sherry vinegar. It was a solid start to the year!
After dinner, I grabbed all of our bones and put them in my little workhorse Crockpot to make a light stock overnight. I’ll probably use it for some soup lunches through the week. Nothing fancy, but you can never have enough chicken-water in the house. Meat tea!
To top it off, we had kazandibi, a sweet Turkish dessert which means “bottom of the pot” and features a lovely layer of caramelization over a rich thickened milk pudding. In Turkey, pudding is by far one of the most popular forms of dessert, and pudding shops are more ubiquitous than pastry shops.
I picked up a few of these at Sevan in Watertown, and since they aren’t the easiest to make well at home, they were a real treat. Traditionally you’d top them with a dusting of cinnamon and maybe some ground pistachios, but since I’m impatient, I ate it cold from the fridge with nothing on it.
After dinner, I set to work making one of my favorite kitchen resolutions happen: wash all dishes and wipe down counters before going to bed each night. Nothing like waking up in the morning to a clean kitchen and feeling ready to start the day on the right note!
Here’s to a wonderful new year ahead of us!
How do you like that crockpot? I’m in the market for a new one–I think the temperature gauge on mine is broken. It regularly burns bone broth (something I didn’t even know was possible!) even on low.
Also, I love your kitchen resolution. I am the worst at cleaning the kitchen. I read a book that recommended treating your desk as “flex-space”: a workplace that you use and then clean up and leave for someone else. Even if that someone else is you tomorrow, it’s really nice to have a wide open, clean desk.
I decided to think of my kitchen as flex-space. When I’m done with it, it should be clean and reset for someone else (usually me, but also my husband) to use. Dishes done and put away, Pur filter in the fridge refilled, electric teakettle full of water, floor swept and so on.
This morning I came downstairs to a gleaming kitchen with empty countertops. It was lovely 🙂
That resolution is second only to my home resolution of “make your bed” – the two easiest low hanging fruit resolutions that make you feel so darn happy in the morning. I like that idea of flex-space!
As for the Crockpot, it’s the tiny 2qt. from Target ($11.99, and I think I got it on sale for something like $5.) I like it quite a lot, but I really only use it for a few things – making small batches of stock, 1/2 pound batches of beans, or porridge – things that I don’t feel compelled to open the lid a hundred times while I’m cooking and that don’t require any attention. We gave up our big Crockpot when we moved across the country, because I found that I didn’t use it all that much for making meals. I’m too much of a stir and taste kind of gal!
I like the go to bed with a clean kitchen resolution 🙂
It makes breakfasts happy, I promise!
Three cheers to clean kitchen mornings!
Coffee tastes so much better when you don’t see dirty dishes that need to be washed 😉
Thanks for the introduction to kazandibi, something I’d like to try. I’m all for celebrating the new year in low key fashion. Our celebration involved soup making and playing Mille Bornes. I love saying coup fourré.