And, luckily, one of *those* days...

There isn't one ray of natural sunlight in my house at the best of times, so my pictures always look like it's the middle of the night. It was, in fact, late afternoon, and BF and I had just returned from Lina's with armloads of good, Italian ingredients. What better thing to do than have a picnic on the ottoman? What you see there is a platter of lean mortadella, tuscan ham, asiago/artichoke dip, bruschetta (which was not, in fact, grey), musco olives, provolone, boconccini, grilled red peppers, thin slices of red onion, and a loaf of bread. We washed it down with bitters, of all things. Later we curled up on the couch and watched a few cooking shows; though I admit that I slept through at least half of Jamie Oliver.

That's a nice Sunday, if you ask me.

Right now I have a Tuscan Garlic/Rosemary roasted chicken in the oven; and because I adore you, I'm going to share the recipe.

1 large roasting chicken (available at Lina's, organic and wonderful)
1 head of garlic
1 bunch of fresh rosemary (also available at Lina's, year round)
1 large or 2 small lemons
olive oil
butter
salt/pepper
roasting pan with rack.

instructions:

heat oven to 475

wash and dry chicken, season interior with salt and pepper

roughly chop the bulb of garlic (don't worry about peeling the individual cloves) and the lemons. reserve 2 - 4 stalks of rosemary and roughly chop the rest. combine the chopped ingredients and stuff into the cavity of the chicken.

breast side up, separate the skin from the flesh (making a pocket) over each breast, above each leg. insert 2 stalks of rosemary and a lump of butter in each pocket. if that doesn't make sense, i'm pretty sure that martha stewart explains it better in her perfect roast turkey recipe.

place the chicken on rack in the roasting pan. drizzle with olive oil, and salt/pepper liberally.

place roaster in preheated oven for 15 minutes, then lower the heat to 350 degrees. continue to roast until a meat thermometer reads 180 degrees (or what you consider to be done).

if you decide to make soup with the carcass, please remember to remove most of the rosemary and ALL of the lemon pieces. i made the mistake of leaving it in and the stock was spoiled because of the lemon oil.


So, there you have it. Sunday was much better than Saturday. I've been spinning, and there's nothing horrible to report. I frogged the cable portion of Mr.G., and that's back on the rails. Thank you Marilynn, for offering to help me out with the Mystic Waters. I'm going to take you up on it, because, honestly, I'm totally in love with it.