Wednesday, April 4, 2018

Three Beautiful Things 04/03/18: Taxes Filed, Chicken Roasted, More Joseph Mitchell

1. It took a while for the Deke's W-2 to arrive from Prince George's County. I took time to do some preliminary scouring of our bank statements. I'd already done a good job of keeping tax documents organized. Then, this morning, the spirit moved me to sit down and pull it all together and fill out Federal, Maryland, and Idaho tax forms and I finished. I filed them. I heard back that all three entities accepted our returns.  What with Mom's taxes filed, the Deke's and my joint return filed, and estate papers signed and turned back into the attorney's office, I spent some part of this afternoon feeling a little bit lost. These home business matters have been on my mind quite a bit and having them taken care of left me wondering what to do with myself. So, I took a nap!

2. On Sunday, I roasted a whole chicken using the high heat method. I seasoned it with salt, pepper, and oregano and cut a lemon in half and put the chunks in the chicken's cavity. I cranked up the oven to 450 degrees and roasted for a little over an hour until the meat temperature read 160 degrees. The chicken rested for about fifteen minutes or so and then I carved it. To my delight and astonishment, the meat was not only cooked through, it was moist and tasted great. I had roasted the chicken in the Dutch over and the bottom of the Dutch oven was covered with delicious looking chicken grease and bits and I decided to put the carcass on top of this fatty source of flavor, nearly cover the carcass with water, add some celery tops and leaves I always have on hand, a coarsely chopped onion, a couple of bay leaves, and some seasonings and make some chicken broth.

I've been making tons of stock in the crock pot, letting it bubble away for 5-7 days. These stocks are dark, intense, and very rich. The broth I made on Sunday came out very flavorful and is lighter, both in color and texture.

I bring this up now because with this broth I've made chicken soup on Monday and Tuesday nights that I loved. I probably should say it's chicken vegetable soup featuring broccoli, cauliflower, celery, and carrots. I still have another soup dinner waiting in the refrigerator to be warmed up.

In short, I got a lot of mileage out of this chicken. I've eaten the drumsticks and wings at lunch time, made a delicious green chicken salad, occasionally snacked on chicken pieces during the day, and I made three dinners worth of soup.

3.  I relaxed this evening with another profile from the collection of Joseph Mitchell anthology, Up in the Old Hotel. The stories I'm reading now were originally published in the late 1930s and on into the 1940s. It's fun to have the world of the Bowery and the Village and the Lower East Side opened up to me and to meet characters with names like Dutch, Chinatown Nellie, Big Tim, The Rummager, Sarsaparilla Reilly, Boo Boo, Big Yaffie, Little Yaffie, Eddie the Plague, Swiss Cheese, Gin Buck and others and learn more about the saloons, gin mills, ballrooms, diners, and other haunts they populate and where they hustle, grift, run their yaps, form syndicates, gamble, sponsor balls, and otherwise lead lives completely unknown to me.

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