Dinner Tonight

Dinner has been a dodgy affair at our house over the past week.  My on-again-off-again pregnancy nausea and spotty, unpredictable, ever-changing cravings and aversions combined with a dwindling supply of staples in the freezer (as we prepare for the imminent, if as yet undetermined move) have made the prospect of planning and preparing dinner on a daily basis a Herculean task.  And the latter half of the week, Jeremy was out with a cold.

So I decided to make up for my dinner delinquency this evening.  I started by picking up a lemon pepper rotisserie chicken while buying groceries this afternoon.  These are delicious, healthy, only cost $1-2 over what a whole raw chicken would cost, and - most importantly, perhaps - already done.

Thanks to some recent tips from fellow bloggers/neighbors/friends, I was able to add a couple of special touches to the meal, especially since the meat portion was already taken care of.

As I unpacked the groceries, I put some peeled, diced potatoes on to boil with three whole cloves of garlic in the water, as my neighbor Margie recently shared with me.  But the tip she shared that made the biggest difference was to put the butter in first.

Once the potatoes are falling apart tender and you've drained them, put in your butter (the more, the merrier in my kitchen) and begin mashing and coating all the potatoes with it.  This coating keeps the potatoes from becoming gummy once you add the milk.  Even using just a hand masher, the potatoes were lighter than I've ever been able to make them in the past.

Then thanks to Valerie at Bohemian Season, I felt inspired to make a beautiful, colorful salad.  I love salads, but am usually just so ready to be done with dinner preparations and on to eating once I've finished the main dish, salads usually just fall by the wayside.  

Tonight, though, I piled in some torn romaine lettuce leaves, sliced cucumbers, grated carrots, halved grape tomatoes, sliced avocado and a sprinkling of sliced kalamata olives.  Valerie's basic vinaigrette sat mixed to the side, since 3-year-olds aren't always down with tangy dressings on their raw veggies.

The meal was rounded out with steamed frozen green beans (4 minutes in the microwave) with a dollop of bacon drippings - if you're not saving your bacon drippings (in the refrigerator), you're missing a critical, flavor-adding ingredient in your staples  - and slices of toasted French bread.

It was satisfying and comforting and had the three-year-old cleaning his plate in silence.  It's nice to have a full, settled stomach again.  I imagine we'll all be turning in early tonight as well.  Sweet dreams!