1. Start by finely dicing one small onion, 2 celery stalks and about the same amount of carrot.
2. Cook in 1tbs olive oil with a pinch of salt to soften
3. Add another tbs oil and brown cut up chicken (2-3 chicken breasts) with salt and garlic powder
4. Add (dry measure) 1 cup uncooked rice 2 1/4 (liquid) cups chicken broth, more salt, minced garlic (more powder if you don’t have it), 2 sprigs of fresh thyme, 1 tsp basil, 1/4 tsp oregano, 1tbs parsley, and 1tbs lemon juice.
5. Taste to check the seasoning and adjust as needed but remember that it’s going to get more intense as it cooks down.
6. Bring to a boil, cover and simmer until the rice is cooked.
7. Add another shot of lemon juice and salt as needed.

The amounts are still approximate so it may be under done but we’ll see.

• 1/2 tsp tomato paste
• 1/4 tsp cumin
• 1/8 tsp cayenne
• 1 Bell pepper
• 1 Onion
• 1 cup rice
• 1 can tomato sauce
• 1 1/2 cups water

1. Cook spices and tomato paste 1-2 minutes low
2. Add vegetables and let them cook medium-low for a few minutes
3. Add rice, water, and tomato sauce
4. Bring to boil, then cook low 20 minutes or until rice is cooked and sauce is creamy

So on to the walkthrough.

• Coat non-stick skillet with cooking spray, add frozen chicken breasts with salt and garlic powder, cover and cook until chicken is finished.
• Dice 1 green bell pepper and about the same amount of olives.
• Take the chicken out. I added 3 tablespoons of butter because there was about 1tbs of fat from the chicken already there.
• Once the butter has started melting, add the vegetables.
• Let the veggies cook a bit then add 4tbs of flour, whisk together and let cook to get rid of the flour taste.
• While the flour and veggies are cooking, cut up the chicken into chunks.
• After it’s cooked for a few minutes, add milk and whisk in, add chicken and juices back then cook until sauce thickens.

Serve over rice.

In my family it’s all one word “RoastandRiceandGravy”

So that’s what popped into my head when I was thinking about what to make tonight. I’ve got a gravy recipe from my grandmother who got it from her mother-in-law that I’ve been afraid to try because it’s a staple of my childhood and I didn’t want to mess it up. But there was roast already made that needed to be eaten …

I knew starting out it wouldn’t be my grandmother, for one thing it wouldn’t be cooked over night but I wanted to see what I could do. So I put on some rice and chopped a small onion and two stalks of celery really small. Cooked them in a cast iron skillet with 3tbsp of oil and some salt until they got translucent. Added 3tbsp flour and let it cook for a few minutes then poured in about 2 cups of chicken stock, a tsp minced onion, parsley and some Worcestershire sauce.  Cook until it thickens.

Results: It was good but was missing some of the flavors of the family gravy. I think it’s mostly that the roux didn’t cook long enough. Making a mental note to chop the vegetables before I start the rice next time. It was also a little too thick, needs more liquid and/or less oil and flour. I overdid the seasonings a bit to make up for the undercooked roux, need to go easier on those. When I reheated the roast there was a little bit of liquid that I added, more of that would have been better, but it’s a trade-off for having the roast already cooked.

I should be able to get closer next time.

The recipe says refrigerate at least 2 hours before serving, what it should say is refrigerate 3 days. Unfortunately, I’ll have to do it again before messing with it because there wasn’t enough left on the third day to judge if it needed more onion, etc (it did the first day).

1. Cooked 1 medium-large onion and half a yellow bell pepper in 1tbsp vegetable oil and a pinch of salt. Any more of the bell pepper would be too intrusive on the beans. Both the onion and bell pepper need to be chopped small to integrate with the rest of the sauce.
2. Browned the sausage with the vegetables.
3. Put in 4 cans of red beans (undrained) + 1 can of water. How many cans you need depends on how much sausage and vegetables you have. I used the whole package of sausage and a good-sized onion so I added a fourth can to keep the beans the primary ingredient.
4. Added another pinch of salt, 1 tsp minced garlic, ¾ tsp cayenne pepper. It’s good but maybe a little too hot, I’ll probably use a ½ tsp of cayenne next time.
5. Let simmer until the sauce cooks down and comes together ~2-3 hours.

Serve with rice. Probably serves 6-8 normal people.

I can never get across to to my dad how the problems with traveling can negatively affect the US economy.

Saturday I lost my phone, agonized over it and found it in my car. This has worried me slightly because I never lose my phone. It’s my security blanket with me 24/7. The last time I started losing stuff I completely lost my memory (found out later it was due to a prescription) and life went to hell (it was going there anyway).

Today, I got a haircut (ridiculously happy about losing 1½”, but it’s short and cute again!). I took out my earrings and put them in my pocket, then promptly forgot about them. Went on some other errands afterwards. Did something screwy to the door on my gas tank. My poor car would last forever if it had a better owner. Got home and was putting stuff away when I found an earring in my pocket.

Yes, I used the singular. Hot and sweaty and not happy, I got back in the car and went to look for where the other might have fallen out. Luckily it was still on the floor the first place I looked, where I paid for dinner.

So now I’m telling myself that I’m not losing my mind again.

Due to parental guidance toward more structured activities, kids are getting less free play time than they used to, which may make them less creative, less socially adept, inflexible, and less intelligent.

The child initiates and creates free play. It might involve fantasies — such as pretending to be doctors or princesses or playing house — or it might include mock fighting, as when kids (primarily boys) wrestle and tumble with one another for fun, switching roles periodically so that neither of them always wins. And free play is most similar to play seen in the animal kingdom, suggesting that it has important evolutionary roots. Gordon M. Burghardt, author of The Genesis of Animal Play, spent 18 years observing animals to learn how to define play: it must be repetitive — an animal that nudges a new object just once is not playing with it — and it must be voluntary and initiated in a relaxed setting. Animals and children do not play when they are undernourished or in stressful situations. Most essential, the activity should not have an obvious function in the context in which it is observed — meaning that it has, essentially, no clear goal.

Rich sez, “This is not for the faint of heart, but a friend and I recently wrote a 120 page murder mystery game for 8 daring role-players. It’s called ‘The Little Engine That Could Kill.’ The game consists of 8 short stories, each of which details the perspective of a character who may have been involved in a somewhat gory murder that has occurred on a transcontinental train in 1932. Everybody reads a story and then plays their character as they wish, using what they know to try to figure out who did it. The true murderer, of course, must lie to avoid being caught. The characters are over-the-top and super-suspicious, and, the plot is ridiculously complicated – nobody we’ve seen has been able to figure out the whole thing so far. We’ve posted it free on Scribd under a CC license. Hope you enjoy!”

I really want to try this.