The Big DumpTruck

My baby turns 8 on Friday. Do you know how big 8 is? Do you? Do you? Pretty soon he’s not going to want my smooches anymore. It’s not going to be a pretty site the day that happens. Luckily, he’s a sweetheart who loves me so much that he DOES still smooch me and will hold my hand in a parking lot. Cause he’s the best boy there is.

8.

Who came up with that idea?

Okay, Leominster Christine, you can mock my Carol of the Bells all you want. But listen to this and tell me that C.O.T.B. is a bad song.

http://www.thesneeze.com/mt-archives/000471.php

(I link to the site that links to the song, because I love The Sneeze and he has some potential background information.)

Another day to sit around hoovering up anything edible in sight. You know, I wasn’t looking forward to going back to work after the long weekend, but I was looking forward to getting paid for being there. Two days off in one week equals a HUGE hit in my paycheck. I can only do so much work from home, maybe squeezing out 2 or 3 hours. The rest is a hit to my bottom line. And all the Christmas candy will be a hit to my bottom.

In good news, I get to have leftovers for lunch today. In Dumptruck Crockpot Adventures, yesterday I made a whole chicken. And it was gooooooood. The most amazing thing to me was the chicken stock I ended up with. I have NEVER made chicken stock this flavorful and dark and wonderful. I’m beside myself just thinking about how I should use it. Well, to be honest, I have to admit that I want to heat up half of it, add back some chicken and some pasta and have myself a bowl of soup. But I almost feel like I shouldn’t “waste” it that way, that I should keep it to use in recipes. It’s that amazing. I suppose I can always do this again, of course. It’s not like it was an expensive meal.

The recipe, for those wondering, is below. It’s sort of modified from my cookbook, because I am using a 5 quart crockpot and was trying to make the best use to that space.

1 whole 1.5 pound chicken, rinsed and dried
1/2 of one large onion, thickly sliced
3 pieces of celery (3 stalks?), chopped in 1-inch pieces
approx 3 sliced carrots (I used what was left of a bag of carrot sticks, so this is a guess).
1/2 cup of white wine (I used a pinot)

Put the veggies on the bottom of the crock pot
Put the chicken on top of the veggies
pour the wine on top of the chicken
cook on low for 7-8 hours.

(We cooked it for 8 hours, but I think that was meant for a larger chicken (2-3 pounds)). The 1.5 pounder fit very well in my crock pot, and I should have reduced the cooking time a little, but it wasn’t like it was tough and overcooked…it was just impossible to remove from the crockpot because every single piece of meat fell off the bones. I was laughing like a fool trying to get this thing out of the crock pot…it fell into 5 pieces before I even lifted it 2 inches up.)

I didn’t measure but there has to be about 2 cups of stock, which is like some made science experiment (How to turn half a cup of liquid into two cups of liquid, after skimming off most of the fat). I assume much of it is from the celery and onion.

So for those of you old hats with cooking stuff like this or using a crock pot, you are probably rolling your eyes, but I am a complete newbie when it comes to this stuff, and it thrills me that I’m actually cooking really delish stuff with hardly any work. That is my kind of cooking. I leave the heavy lifting to the restaurant chefs, my friends.

There’s an episode of Scooby Doo on. Or maybe it’s a movie. Either way, I have to tell you, Shaggy sounds very very old. If it’s Casey Kasem, I’d worry. Maybe it isn’t, maybe it’s just someone trying to simulated Casey’s voice. Either way, it sounds like the person doing the voice forgot to put his teeth in. I can’t really explain it…I’m going to have to record some of it for you. Let me figure out how.

Okay, it’s Scooby Doo, Where’s My Mummy. And according to IMDB, it is Casey. Whoa.

Oh, in other news, I have a new canine nephew, named Cooper. He’s a labradoodle. Wanna see him?

I just wanted to let everyone know that this year I will not be doing reviews of all the old champagne in my fridge because there isn’t any. I would also like to say that I just tried to find a link to the reviews of the five bottles of champagne, but it doesn’t seem to still be here anywhere. I don’t have time to go through every file I have, but damn, is it really gone? And if so, to where?

Food on hand: Chips and dip, buffalo wings, and root beer. I’ll bet you’re all jealous. You should be. We’ll be asleep long before 2006 arrives…

p.s. What the hell, Google! As of when do you give results for the name “Jodie” if I use “Jody” as a search term? Those are NOT THE SAME NAME!