Yesterday was one of those days that starts out great and goes downhill from there.
Cara started gymnastics last week–refer to the video below.
Since she missed her first class because of the tornadoes, she had a make-up day yesterday. Cara was super excited and was all jumping around and stuff. Quite honestly, 1300 couldn’t come fast enough.
We left in plenty of time only for me to realize I had left her “performance card” at home and I was two exits from where I had to get off.
U-turn.
We made it to her class with four minutes to go BUT Cara had her card and she ended up getting a green sticker for being the best in the class that day. I’ve been way more nervous than Cara about this whole gymnastics thing; this is the first time she’s been challenged by someone other than Tucker and me. I didn’t want her to fail at her first outside activity.
So only one bump in the day road and I was determined to make a dinner fit for a gymnastics pro: roasted chicken, dill fingerling potatoes, salad with tiny tomatoes, fresh corn on the cob and pull apart garlic rolls.
Free cookies from Target for everyone and on to the checkout line…where I realized I had left my wallet in the SUV.
I rushed out to the truck with both kids and parked in the fire lane with my blinkers flashing. I paid for our groceries and we made our way home. Where I discovered I was missing a bag of groceries. BACK to Target with the pit bull added to the mix so I could feel safe about leaving the kids in the parking lot–it was running and you can’t put the truck in gear without fully depressing the break so shut your judgy mouth. Unless you’ve been there and then fist bump or something.
The manager told me to go get some more stuff.
I got home with not much time left to get the food in the oven and I had no dill. Sonofa…
Time to improvise.
I melted a couple of tablespoons of butter and zested a lemon into a bowl. I added kosher salt and fresh ground pepper. And then the potatoes and some pealed carrots and a bit of olive oil so everything was coated when it was tossed together.
The chicken got dried off, kosher salted and put in my big skillet and into a 450° oven for about an hour.
After that hour, I pulled out the pan, drained off the liquid from the skillet–it went into a small sauce pan–added the veggies and flipped the chicken over since the breast skin–heh–had split and the breast meat had started to get all desiccated and stuff.
Everything went back into the oven for another thirty minutes. This is how it came out:
That was one of the prettiest chickens I’ve ever roasted and one of the stringiest, toughest just icky tasting birds I’ve ever eaten. It was moist but…it was obviously an old bird.
Everything except the bird was good and said bird is now in a stock pot on my stove.
I’ll let you know how that comes out.
