Hello!! Another exciting update on Munchkin and Gnome!! Well, the gate is up and Gnome is none too pleased about it. The gate is now becoming a continuing saga (nightmare?); last time I mentioned that the 16 foot gate was too heavy for both of us to lift so Gnome had to resort to sawing it in half.
He did that and subsequently hung each side up. And guess what? I heard the lament of a Gnome; it was kinda whiny and desperate and I immediately ran to his aid.
Oh dear…with the two sides of the gate hung up, one side was too long so the gate wouldn’t close. We have had to overlap one side over the order in order to close the gate. You’ve got to laugh (or cry, in the case of Gnome). By sawing it in half he forgot to account for the extra space required to hinge two sides instead of one. So here you are; it still works…as a gate…it just doesn’t close snugly! I did try to make Gnome feel better but he would have none of it!
Okay, that’s just life and life is really okay. Oh, I have to tell you about the chicken! So, we are experimenting with cooking over coals since we would like to have Christmas turkey (camp-style)this year. As a test run, we have been cooking chicken. I rubbed a 8lb chicken with salt, white pepper and Italian herbs and placed it in our cast iron pot which was pre-greased on the inside. Gnome dug a shallow hole (about 6 inches) into the ground and proceeded to start a fire. Once he had coals he filled the pit with coals and placed the pot on top and then shoveled coal around it and on top so that it was completely encased in coals.
We also placed whole potatoes in brown paper bags (soaked in water) and put them under coals; we have done this before…Gnome (TM) idea which gives lovely, fluffy roasted potatoes in one hour. After about 45 minutes, the waft of roasted chicken made us feel soooo hungry, we had to start with some potatoes first. We finally decided to open up the pot at 90 minutes and the chicken was cooked…absolutely beautifully. The skin was roasted and crisped to perfection and the meat was succulent and tender! We tucked into it right away because we were starving by then and oh dear…I neglected to take a photograph. Sorry!! No picture but it was truly delicious and we both agreed that it was the best way to cook chicken and we swore that we would never eat chicken any other way from then on!
Anyway…since it was so good, we have decided (it didn’t take much to make this decision) to do another chicken test but this time we need to do a stuffing test. We have decided on the following for the stuffing: mashed potato with diced carrots, shiitake mushrooms and diced water chestnuts. Okay so this time round, I will try to to take a picture before stuffing my face. 🙂 Otherwise I run the risk of over-doing it with cartoony pictures to make up for my lack of real pictures (as I am doing right now). 🙂
After all these test runs, the Christmas turkey should be perfect!! 🙂
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