After my sad week last week, I’m back on the cooking horse and feeling pumped! Sunday night, I made soft chicken tacos with Crock-Pot salsa chicken, corn tortillas, romaine lettuce, cheese and other fixins, plus rice and beans.

Monday, I made gravy, using regular old canned sauce and tomatoes, and everybody was so happy. They do not like the texture of gravy made with garden tomatoes. 😦

Tuesday night: leftovers/mac n cheese/a homemade cheesesteak for me. Oh man, once in a while there’s nothing like a Steak Umm on a good Italian roll, and I shaved extra sharp provolone onto it.

Wednesday night: chicken nuggets, broccoli, homemade cheesy garlic bread.

Thursday night, I roasted my Hillacres Pride chicken using this recipe. I will always use this recipe from now on! The chicken was so good and juicy, and the skin was salty and crispy and mmmm… I rinsed the chicken and dried it well, because the recipe says that dryness/avoiding moisture is the secret here. I put the chicken on a bed of sliced onion, garlic cloves and sliced potatoes, in a glass 9×13 pan (following some of the comments on the recipe). I trussed it and seasoned it with a lot of salt and some pepper. Then I cooked it at 450 degrees for about 50 minutes.

This method did result in a lot of smoke in the kitchen, but it was worth it.

And those potatoes under the bird? Delicious.

Sebastian was a big fan of this chicken. That boy is a definite carnivore.

Side note: I would like to see a cooking show where the challenge is that the cook has to cook around and between mountains of dirty dishes. Dishes piled in the sink, no clean bowls or utensils, etc. And you have to eat at 5:30 and there’s no time to wash anything and GO!

Tonight was pizza and it felt richly deserved.

All these good meals = good leftovers for lunch.

Tuesday afternoon, I baked banana bread. I’m taking my can of cooking spray and throwing it in the trash. Nothing ever seems to come out of the pan properly if I spray it. Seems like using butter and flour is the only way to go. (It’s also possible I tried to take it out of the pan too soon):

Of course, this did not stop us from eating it.

Today, I made a quick little microwave “mug” cake (though I used a Pyrex bowl). Just for kicks. It was tasty but all things considered I’d rather just make a real cake.

Thinking about food reminds me that I wanted to do a garden scorecard for last season. Winners in terms of utility: lettuce; onions; tomatoes (though I need to probably can them rather than freeze?); basil; carrots. Losers: cucumbers (unless I can get my pickling method to exactly replicate Claussen’s; no one is eating them). In terms of using stuff that I bought at the farmer’s market and froze: Winners: broccoli; sweet potatoes (as puree); spinach. Losers: peaches; corn. My strawberry jam wasn’t really a hit, so I would stick to just eating as many yummy in-season strawberries as possible.

Remember folks, if we do get in a trade war with Mexico, you might be wishing you had your own garden! Leaving aside the avocado issue, I see allll kinds of produce at the supermarket that is from Mexico.

In other news, I soaked a lot of old baby clothes in an OxiClean mixture and got a lot of stains out! So now I can add them to the collections I am making for different ages to sell on eBay (or maybe Facebook).

Coffee crisis: I ran out of my favorite K cup, Gevalia Mocha Latte. Moreover, it’s impossible to find that K cup in stores anymore. And I don’t want to go to Wawa. So I’m down to some old boxes of Dunkin Donuts French Vanilla K cups. I’ve been putting a little hot cocoa powder, caramel syrup, milk and sugar in it, and it’s delicious. I know, too much sugar, but trust me it’s still better than what I get at Wawa, and I’ll work my way toward less sugar.

On Monday I got chewy.com, a pet food/supplies website, to help me with a promo code that wasn’t working. They were so helpful and their email back was full of pet puns. LOL. So I will give them a try and order cat food.

For the second time, I switched to a cheaper TV channel package with Verizon AND got rid of HBO and Starz. Hubs is not happy but I feel it’s necessary at this time. And I am also keeping the thermostat very low during the day, which he probably doesn’t like either, but I noticed that when we need to, we can be quite comfortable at a low setting, so why not do it all the time?

I cut open my foundation and moisturizer tubes to get the most out of them.

I cashed in a forgotten piggy bank of mine, to the tune of $23.

My mom gave me some shoes to sell.

Speaking of nonconsuming, it looks like February 17 is going to be a National Strike Day. This means a day where people call out of work (if they can do so without losing their jobs or harming public safety) and do not otherwise take part in the recorded economic activity of the nation (no purchases, eating out, etc.). Bartering, trading, carpooling, Facebook yard sale purchases? Have at it. Obviously, this hurts everybody, including the strikers themselves. But for just one day, to send a message about the collective economic power of the people? I think it could be quite striking (hee). The point (as I see it) is that if the government continues to fail regular people, regular people will start to find ways to go off the grid to live (more so than they already have). Alt-Society.

“But…! But…!” I know. I am crazy. But entertain the thought for a second. Don’t dismiss it out of hand.