“hand stuffed”…
Oh, myyy!
Sometimes everything just works, and tonight’s orange and fennel salad was perfect. Way more aniseedy than normal, to the point where my 82-yo father asked why I put ouzo in the salad, and more importantly, why I hadn’t done it before.
Today’s exceedingly simple lunch, because I had no energy for anything complicated:
Took a can of tuna in sunflower oil, and drained it well. Broke the tuna pieces apart with a fork, and mixed them with garlic mayo, and then some grated cheddar. Spread the resulting mush thickly over some oatmeal bread, and added more grated cheddar on top. Nuked it in the microwave for a couple of minutes, until the cheddar on top had fully melted and everything had warmed up uniformly. Ate with a glass of milk and some cherry tomatoes.
Spatchcocked my first chicken today (it is better), and stuffed the skin with sliced lemons and butter mixed with minced thyme and rosemary from the garden plus s+p. Outside I squeezed the half of the lemon, added salt and pepper and into a 180 C oven for an hour+. Roasted some parsnips and carrots, braised some savoy cabbage, baked some sausage stuffing, and made a gravy with some chicken broth. Had some Yorkshire puddings with them, but ashamedly, like the stuffing, I didn’t make it myself 
Was so busy making it, I forgot to take photos. 
Spatcocked birds are fantastic! I find it especially important with barbecuing or smoking whole fowl.
Chicken can be spatchcocked with kitchen shears, but for turkey I bought a set of poultry shears and they are awesome.
I actually did mine with a cleaver I’ve sharpened to the best of my abilities, was a pretty easy job.
Winter has been upon us and the light is rapidly going away up here in AK so I’ve been leaning heavily on cozy, hearty meals. Tonight’s dinner is the meatiest of meat sauces, spaghetti squash and garlicky smashed brussels. Smitten Kitchen’s Peanut Butter Blondies are in the oven baking and everything smells heavenly.
Awesome! I also made spaghetti squash with Bolognese!
Strangely, even though they cooked for 5 hours, the finely diced carrots didn’t dissolve like usual but the sauce tasted quite sweet. All the tomatoes were Italian paste tomatoes from our garden. I also added rosemary, chive, and oregano from the garden, the latter two holding on surprisingly late in the year.
Does roasting the spaghetti squash cut into rings make the strands less soggy when you shred them into “noodles”?
Yes, and they are circumferential strands, so you get “noodles” as long as regular spaghetti. It’s easier to extract the strands, too, since you just separate the rind with a fork (easy) and gently knead to release the “noodles.”
That is a strange drawing. The straight horizontal line is freaking me out.
Well, isn’t this terrifying:
I do get deli meat somewhat regularly, but not Boar’s Head thankfully. Still this has definitely weighed on me, i worry about the deli meat that i get being tainted… thought to be honest i eat quite a bit of veggies and the constant recalls with vegetables has worried be too.