Three Beautiful Things 02-20-2025: *Hush* Continues, Baked Curried Chicken Thighs, Jazz to Cook By

1. I returned to Leah Sottile's podcast, Rush, which tells the story of Jesse Johnson, a Salem, OR man who was wrongly convicted of murder, sentenced to death, and lived on death row for over twenty years. In 2021, the Oregon Court of Appeals overturned his conviction and two (long) years later prosecutors filed a motion to dismiss the case and the State released Jesse Johnson from incarceration. 

I listened to Episode 4 today, "Patti". The episode title refers to Patricia Hubbard. She lived across the street from the murder victim, Harriet Thompson, and was smoking a cigarette on her porch when she heard a commotion across the street, heard screams, and saw a white man she'd seen come and go from the victim's residence in the past leap off the porch and speed away. 

Police investigators ignored her story. Jesse Johnson's defense attorneys never looked into it. Attorneys for the Innocence Project deposed Patti Hubbard in 2013, she told her story, and the fact that the court never heard this testimony helped lead to Jesse Johnson's eventual acquittal and release from prison. 

Leah Sottile is not done with this story after four episodes.

I have five more episodes of Hush let to listen to as Leah Sottile further investigates the investigation of Harriet Thompson's murder and why the police didn't explore possibilities other than their conclusion that Jesse Johnson was the perpetrator.

Here's a link to this podcast:  https://www.opb.org/show/hush/

2. As Debbie slipped out the door to go to work this morning, she asked me to do something with chicken thighs for dinner. 

Gladly.

I thawed a pack of three thighs.

I wanted spicy chicken for dinner.

After some thought, I decided I'd make red curry sauce with diced carrots, onions, and potatoes.

I did that. 

I also cooked a double batch of brown rice.

I decided to roast some potatoes and carrots, seasoned with Montreal Steak Seasoning. 

Once the rice was cooked and after I sprayed Pam on the bottom of a baking pan, I created a bed of rice, placed the chicken thighs on the rice, and poured curry sauce over the chicken and the rice. 

I thought the chicken would take about 50 minutes or so to bake, so I set the timer for 25 minutes and when the timer chimed, I put the pan of carrots and potatoes to roast in the oven beside the chicken.

At the fifty minute mark, I determined the carrots and potatoes needed another five minutes and that that would work for the chicken as well.

Then it was all ready to eat. 

I didn't use all the sauce I cooked when I poured it over the chicken, so we had curry sauce to use as we wanted -- we could pour more on the chicken and rice, cover the roasted vegetables with it, or eat boiled rice that was available covered with curry sauce. 

Over the course of our dinner, I think we exercised all those options. 

It was a most satisfying meal and I had a lot of fun cooking it. 

3. Listening to the Spotify playlist, "Post Bop Essentials", featuring jazz artists like McCoy Tyner, Freddie Hubbard, Thelonius Monk, Bill Evans, Sonny Rollins, Miles Davis, and others made my time in the kitchen even more enjoyable and relaxing.