omg becky, look at her. . . .

omg becky, look at her lemon chicken. that is like the best lemon chicken i have ever had in my entire life. and i've not had good luck with lemon chicken, they are usually so lemonny as to be gross.

but this? this was heaven on a plate.

Lemon Chicken with Garlic, out of the Mediteranean cookbook with all the pretty pictures

6-8 cloves garlic, peeled
2 1/2 cups chicken stock
2 tbsp butter
1 tbsp oil
8 chicken thighs
one lemon, sliced thin
2 tbsp flour
2/3 cup white wine
salt & pepper
few tbsp freshly chopped parsley

bring the chicken stock to a boil in a small saucepan. add the garlic, and simmer over low heat for 30 minutes. after 30 minutes, remove it from the heat and remove and reserve the garlic cloves.

preheat oven to 375.
melt butter with oil in a large frying pan over medium high heat. add chicken and brown on all sides. as soon as chicken is golden brown, remove it to an oven safe dish that can hold all chicken peices in a single layer. scatter the garlic peices and lemon slices over the chicken. turn heat under frying pan down to medium low, and add flour to hot oil. stir quickly and constatnly for one minute, it will thicken quickly, and you don't want it to burn. after one minute add wine and reserved chicken stock, and keep stirring. when smooth, remove from heat and pour over chicken pieces. cover and bake for 40-45 minutes. garnish with parsley.

this is a very saucy dish, and i roasted up some red skinned potatoes to go with it, and it was perfect. I've never had a gravy thicken up as smoothly and beautifully as when I made this dish. it was truly heaven on a plate. Don't like potatoes? no problem, sauce would go great with rice too.



Not too much to report in book-land. the good book I'm reading is intensly dry, and the supposedly exciting book i read sucked.

Remember John Case from the 90's? Genesis Code, First Horseman, etc? suspenseful, smart, like Dan Brown only better. So when i saw a copy of his The Eighth Day, i grabbed it! Wow, what a disappointment. If early John Case was like smarr Dan Brown, then this was like crappy Dan Brown. Danny Cray is a part time PI, who accepts a job from a wealthy lawyer who plies him with lots of cash. The job is to investigate a smear campaign against a secretive eastern european business mogul. When innocent people start turning up dead, Danny realizes he's on the wrong side. Danny has got to be the stupidest 20-something i've ever met. he's henchman stupid. Case's writing is lazy, sloppy, and just awful. even as far as religious conspiracy theories go, this book was overly pulpy.

Boring book news, i do adore the law library at WMU. I love everytime i read a book from that library, i want to read stuff that is mentioned in it's bibliography, e-mail the author thanking them for their book, or find everything else by that author. oh, and Constitutional Law? still totally cool and rocking my world. Archibald Cox's Court and Constitution gives and excellent overview of constitutional law, and unfortuantely, how arbitrary it can be. the book is dry, boring, and plain fascinating. Drawing from chronilogical historical examples, Cox explaines in terms the layman (i.e.: me) how we got to where we are with large government ruling over areas the seperate states used to have power over. Now i want to get the rest of what he's written. Cox was the special prosecutor during the Watergate scandal, and was forced to resign afterwards. such a fascinating person.

garden update!!

a few tomato seedlings have their first "true leaves", and should be ready for transplant in about a week. the basil had 100% germination rate, the tomatoes about 75%. i only need two seedlings for each tomato variety, what am I going to do with the rest of the seedlings?