Brief Update for my Foodie Peeps

Since the food garners the comments, I want to addend:

Yes, MommyChicky, the beets are awesome. Love them roasted.

And we had a slight deviation from the proposed menu when I found this recipe for bacon-wrapped chicken and thought, aha, I have rosemary on its last legs I can use. So I took the past-their-prime sprigs, and wrapped them in under the bacon. Um...yum. Bacon-flavored chicken was a hit with all the boys. Well, one didn't like "the black things" (that would be pepper) but if it was scraped off (or flipped over, ahem) it was fine. It will probably be a slightly healthier replacement of my mother's favorite, which was chicken breast, pounded (I belive her exact term was "whomped") thin, spread with cream cheese (with or without chives), rolled up and wrapped with bacon. Dotting with butter was optional. I kid you not. Excellent if you have very clear arteries and cholesterol, like mine, that is "incompatible with human life" low. (Seriously. My cholesterol is in the 20s. No, I'm not missing a digit. HDL is 29, LDL is 22. Or reversed. I forget. Every doctor freaks when they see it and assume the test was wrong, but it's been remarkably consistent over time.)

I also have all the ingredients for these turkey meatballs from the crockpot so those will join the rotation sometime this week. I always forget, as ground meat skeeves me a little, that it doesn't skeeve my boys at all. By the way, the site this is from (A Year of Crockpotting at http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/) is someone's new year's resolution. She's using her crockpot every day this year with a new recipe each day. Wow. I totally admire her dedication.

Since I have figs, I'm hoping to try http://twofatals.com/?p=370from my adored Two Fat Als site. (Of course, since we're out of red wine, this means a Mother of the Year trip either across state lines or the the scary wine store with my three and four year olds.) And since we have peaches, there's this one too, for Moroccan Peach Roasted Chicken, thanks to one of the bloggers at MPM. (If I remembered who, I'd give the credit. My apologies to the blogger!) My mother never ate cooked fruit; happily, neither my husband nor I have this problem. Though interestingly, the crockpot recipe of the day involved chicken and peaches and she decided hot peaches are meant for ice cream, not chicken. She has an excellent point but I think I'll try it myself.

Finally, in the spirit of Smitten Kitchen's What are you afraid to cook? question, I must note that handling raw chicken gives me the heebie-jeebies. It's a leftover from pregnancy, when the texture of raw meat was beyond what I could handle. However, since it's officially three years since my last pregnancy, I've decided it's time to move on, grow up, and start figuring out how to slice a chicken breast without feeling vaguely nauseous. Tonight's progress: I cut the breasts in half horizontally, to help them cook faster, and it was actually easier than the other way, which is what I'd been doing before and more effective. A nice combo. And was way, way cheaper than buying the "Italian style" cutlets at my favorite butcher.

Anyone else have any strange hangovers from pregnancy? I find that I am still struggling to brush my teeth without nausea in the mornings. This was not a happy remnant of pregnancy but I'd say the little guys are worth it.