Variations on a Bird: The Erin & Francesca Story

Erin and I have been having some lovely cooking dates recently. The flavors and techniques, while all very different, have revolved around the same canvas: a whole chicken.

It began with the simple roasted chicken, with carrots, fennel, and onions.


The saga continued with Coq au Vin...delicious, falling off the bone, and totally worth the wait.


Tonight, we mixed it up. While roast chickens are amazing, they are definitely not a weeknight-friendly meal (unless you feel like eating at 10:45). So, we decided to make steak fajitas with sweet potato and chipotle. They were delicious, and very quick, thanks to our friends at Real Simple magazine, whose articles on organization and home makeovers make me want to be a better, less messy person.
In our cooking frenzy (and rush to get to the couch to watch The Wire - my new obsession that Erin is enabling), I forgot to take a photo. Below is what Real Simple thinks it should look like. Our version, of course, was not perfected by a food stylist, but I trust it was equally awesome.


So, as you can imagine, writing (or attempting to write) 7 pages a night has taken up a lot of my time, and the blog has been a little neglected this week. Also, I'm running a 5k on Saturday, so I've been on the treadmill fairly religiously lately. Things should calm down this weekend, and I'll have some more updates and novel snippets to share!

Notes from the Past 24 Hours

This quote, from the beginning of the book I'm about to start:

"Beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror."
-Rainer Maria Rilke

At first, I liked this because it sounded badass, but the more you think about it, the more you begin to see. I started thinking of examples of how this may or may not be true, which brought my mind to a slightly paranoid place. The moments of beauty that I've had in my life - have they all led to terror, horrifying or thrilling as it may be? No, probably not, but I love that idea that, in order to see something or someone for how beautiful it/he/she is, there has to be something at stake - that you have something to lose or be afraid of in the process. Yes, that's super dramatic, but oh well. Sometimes you need an inordinate amount of drama and introspection, just to make things interesting - especially now that it get dark before 5pm.
On a lighter note, last night a friend and I made Ina Garten's Roasted Chicken (yes, the one she supposedly makes for her husband every Friday night. And yes, the concept of that is very weird). While the chicken itself is delicious and very easy to make, I was really into the vegetables (carrots, onions, and fennel). I'm not typically a fan of carrots at all, but we used these excellent organic ones that haven't been cut down beyond recognition into baby carrots or whatever it is they're called. The taste is so visceral for me - these are the carrots I used to feed to horses when I was younger, the ones that look like they were just pulled up from the ground.

Before and After shots of our (formerly) feathered friend:

The Preparation...



And digging in..


Perfect Fall meal - with some delicious and light Spanish Tinto, of course.

Another new thing discovered in the past day or so - the blog, Little Brown Pen. It's written by a woman who is a copywriter by trade but travels back and forth to Paris and photographs her time there. She sells the most beautiful prints - often organized by color. "Paris in Green" is on my Christmas list. Well, let's be honest - I want to buy all of them and wallpaper my room. Cannot wait to go back.
Okay, back to work, so I can make money to keep buying organic chickens and finance a Paris trip!