Cooking a Chicken

Well...I haven't made any soup lately, but I HAVE prepped a chicken and stuck it in the oven in less than 10 minutes (and it turned out really good and tasty!) (Don't tell my family that I only spent a few minutes on it!)

So...here's the story. Yesterday, in typical Sandi-like fashion, I got caught in a good conversation at my old job, with a friend of mine. I had a seamless plan that I had concocted in the morning involving me coming home after I volunteered at my old workplace, getting a chicken prepped, picking up my son, taking him to piano etc etc etc. Well, I left myself a total of (like I said) 10 minutes (maybe a little bit less).

I wish I had a video of me flying all over the place grabbing herbs from the garden and the chicken out of the refridgerator. This is basically what you would have seen (the blow by blow of the chicken prep). Grab rosemary and sage from the garden on the way up the driveway, come in, take chicken out of fridge, rinse chicken, pat it dry, crush rosemary and garlic and sage together with olive oil, slap it on the chicken, throw some salt and pepper on it, and whip it into the oven. Wash hands, grab keys, and drive to pick up son...

Two hours later...come home to lovely smell. Open oven, take out bird, lay sections onto plate with a slice of local yummy crusty bread and a side salad and...voila...dinner!

How did I not know cooking for your family could be such a creative, crazy adventure? So far, this is pretty fun!

Counter to what you might think by reading this post, we have a pretty low key life. Usually things are slightly slower in pace. (Which I like, and would like to make a conscious effort to continue to improve in the slowness aspect). However, it is good to know that when those crazy days occur, there's never an excuse for a comment like "we don't have time to eat a nice dinner together as a family." Trust me!

Cooking with my kids

Well...life got going fast last week, and I had to keep on reminding myself of this important and noble focus. It's so unfortunate that the things we feel most passionate about often times get pushed to the back burner. Why is that?

All I had to do was spend a bit of time with my kids in the kitchen on the weekend to remind me that this is what I want to do. (Yes, this surprised me...as I thought my first real experiments in the kitchen might be stress ridden).

The entire house felt different when we all came together at the island in the kitchen. The usual busy nature of everyone going their separate ways kind of stopped. We hummed to music together, we learned what we were doing together (by following a soup recipe) and we worked with our hands, sharing a common goal.

Watch this video, and look at these pictures, that my daughter, Jordan, took. They represent some moments captured in time.

Now to figure out how to create this during the work week...between gymnastics, piano, and various dance classes...

Hmmm....