1.10.2010

Playing catchup....

I was invited to join a ladies bible study hosted by our music minister's wife which meets on Tuesday nights. Most of the women are from the choir, so I already know them and it should be a small group with less than 10 of us. I immediately accepted, even though I'm not really fond of being in a group of women. 1) This might be the women's group to change my attitude. I'll never know if I don't participate. 2) It will make me drive solo in the car, which hopefully will give me more confidence and less fear.

I also received an invite to lunch with an FOL friend who I haven't seen in some time. I'm glad we're back in touch and I'm looking forward to it.

D and I skipped breakfast this morning so after D finished playing the second service at church we were quite ready for lunch. We stopped in at our favorite Japanese place and as we were the only customers in there, we had a private chef. That hasn't happened in a while. I got a veggie plate and D got the salmon and then we shared. Then we stopped by the gym. Instead of our usual location at FF, we went to the one in S'ville. We used to frequent that location before they built FF and it occurred to us that it was on the way home from church. We did the resistance machines first. It was nice having D help me move the benches and bars around, because none of them were set for short people with short arms. That is always so discouraging. I also found their rowing machine, which I haven't seen at the FF location yet. I haven't been on a rower since C-N and I've forgotten how much I liked it. The rhythm of it is almost hypnotic. Luckily this rowing machine was right next to one of the cycling machines that D likes, so we kept each other company. Me rowing and him pedaling - something we could never do outside.

I've used our new Dutch Oven twice in two days! Yesterday I cooked a black bean soup for dinner. The recipe said it was "like Progresso" and it wasn't. It was a bit more like chili, whereas the Progresso is not tomato heavy at all. I will have to keep working on cracking it.

Today I made Chicken Cacciatore. D and I used to buy a Cacciatore ready-made from the grocery store and it was always so good. I've been wanting to make the Cook's Illustrated version because it sounded interesting. It uses the rind from a block of Parmesan cheese to flavor the broth. I knew that I probably wouldn't care for the dish very much because it uses dark meat, which I don't enjoy. Dark meat is too visceral for me. There are all the little bones and sometimes a tendon or vein or something, which really turns my stomach. D likes it though, so this dish was for him. It turned out to be nothing like what we bought from the store, which seemed sweeter and more marinara-like. This was more savory - the flavor in the mushrooms and tomatoes was very good. I think the recipe will be fine if I substitute a whole chicken, instead of just thighs next time, that way there will be some white meat for me.