Shabbat prep

[magid]

Challah - done
Sweet potato-mushroom-beef soup - simmering
Chicken with cranberry chutney - in the oven
Chicken with mustard and marmalade - in the oven
Turkey meatloaf - in the oven
Roasted eggplant and tomatoes - done
Roasted cauliflower - done
Sauteed oyster mushrooms and dandelion greens - done
Artichokes - done
Green salad - still to do
Fruit salad - barely started
Caramel apple-walnut upside down cake - done

I haven't quite figured out which vegetables are for lunch instead of dinner, except the green salad and the artichokes are for tonight. Or I could just put all of it out and see what I have left afterward for lunch :-). Either way, I think I'm generating enough leftovers to take me solidly into next week, at least for proteins...

The house looks ok, thanks to the cleaning lady yesterday.

The eruv is up.

And while checking that other email account for the eruv status, I found that there's going to be a siyyum on mishnayot for a friend's shloshim, in the middle of Pesach. I volunteered for a masechet (not one of the long ones).
[Complicated feelings here: sad she's gone, mitigated a little by there being something I can do in her memory. Wishing I could remember which masechet she and I had learned, and request that one. Frustration that I could've forgotten this. Circling back to the unreality of her absence.]

Comments

[queue.livejournal.com]

I'm very curious to hear how the dandelion greens and the apple upside down cake turn out.

[magid.livejournal.com]

As mentioned, the greens are bitter; I'm thinking of turning them into a quiche, where the bitterness will be balanced by the fat in the cheese. I might do a walnut crust for that, too.

And the cake, well, you tasted the cake :-).

[estherchaya.livejournal.com]

I'm very interested in the chicken with cranberry chutney...

[magid.livejournal.com]

That's what we ended up having for dinner; we never got to the second chicken (they were small; I wasn't sure if one would be enough). Everyone liked it :-).

It's a simple recipe: spread cranberry chutney on chicken. Bake in hot oven. Of course, there's the having cranberry chutney around... I tend to make batches of chutney every so often so I'll have something easy to put on chicken and salmon. There are lots of Google recipes; I just play with fruit, brown sugar, vinegar, spices, and hot pepper or other spicy things.

[estherchaya.livejournal.com]

do you spread the chutney on a whole chicken or on chicken pieces?

[magid.livejournal.com]

Usually I do pieces, but this time I had a whole chicken, so I spread it on top of the whole thing. Some dripped down, so the chicken on the bottom had some flavor of it too, though not as much.

(I was in a rush to get to a meeting before.
About chutney: what I like is that it doesn't need to gel to be really good. I've used apples and pears with cranberries, or mango and ginger, and it's all good. If I have limes, I blanch them and chop them up; the peel turns into a nice slightly chewy bit. Also, sometimes I put crushed walnuts in at the end, which is great for texture.

For vinegar, I tend to stick with apple vinegar, since it's tart but fruity, and easy to find in quantity.

For the spicy component, it varies, with garlic, hot peppers, hot sauce, cayenne powder, etc.

Spices usually include cinnamon and cloves, along with whatever smells right at the time :-)