"You're Such A Mom"

Today I took Pon to Bojangles for lunch. We then went to the park to enjoy the nice weather where there was some sort of family reunion or church function or large gathering of some sort at every picnic shelter. The shelter we ended up by even had a DJ. They played a bunch of old and even older songs like "Macarena" and "I Will Survive" which was fine. Then they played a song with a lot of swearing and I was incredibly unimpressed. No one at the large function complained, neither did any of the other families that just happened to be at the park on such a lovely Saturday. Pug later told me I should just have called or stopped by the park services office to complain, but of course I did nothing at the time. After leaving the park, we went to the farmer's market and I spent a healthy portion of my remaining allowance on corn on the cob, blackberries, blueberries, jalapenos, mini orange slice candies and a hawaiian ice. I'm hoping to use the candies in a cookie recipe I found a while back, and the berries to make tarts or an adaptation of this hand pie recipe. The market was followed by a quick Target run to grab some essentials (milk, eggs, dishwasher detergent...) before a more complete grocery trip tomorrow. At Target Pug pointed out that my shirt was inside out and made the title comment "You're such a mom!" I know he meant it affectionately, but I still felt ridiculous. Did you see how many places I went? There were tons of people at each location. No wonder people kept smiling at me... Ah well.

The corn and jalapenos obtained at the market went into dinner.

mm mm

Pug helped me a lot with food prep, which I believe made everything taste even better. We made oven roasted corn on the cob, oven roasted potatoes and italian-jalapeno chicken. Pug specifically asked that we make enough for leftovers, which is why the quantities will seem so large. The corn was time consuming, but delicious. First, carefully peel back the husk trying to keep it attached to the cob and de-silk each ear. Smear each ear with a mixture of margarine, parmesan cheese, garlic powder and hot sauce all to taste (or however you want to season it- the first recipe I saw for this type of corn called for mayo as the base, so you do what you want). After the corn is seasoned, pull each leaf of the husk back up over the corn. I usually also wrap it in foil to help it cook faster and prevent leaking butter/cheese mix. Fit all the ears into a casserole dish- I managed to fit all 5 into mine by placing four side by side alternating ends and fitting the last one across the top. While I was doing that, Pug was washing and chopping up 10 red potatoes into some fairly evenly sized pieces. He also peeled and sliced a whole head of garlic. Both were tossed with 1/4 bottle of italian dressing, spread evenly in a casserole dish and sprinkled with parmesan cheese. Make sure you grease or line the dish though, we forgot and the potatoes stuck pretty badly. We roasted the corn and potatoes together for 30 mins at 400, rotating the pans half way though. Once the sides were in the oven, we put 10 chicken tenders (which was the rest of the bag) in to my chef's pan. They were doused in about 1/3 the remaining italian dressing and brought up to a simmer. When the sided were rotated, we turned the chicken and tossed in 5 sliced jalapenos (we like things spicy, and this batch wasn't too hot). Everything was done at the same time and tasted pretty darn good. Next time I may marinade the chicken ahead of time, but the dripping were really good over the chicken and the potatoes.

I'll eventually get better with the step by step photos, meaning I'll try to start taking them. And maybe I'll get better at plating so the whole meal looks as good in my low quality pictures as it does in person. Things to work on...