Honey, the Chicken's on Fire!

I've been a very bad girl lately.  I've truly neglected all of my chores for the past few weeks in order to spend more time playing in the Sweat Shop.  This weekend, though, was earmarked as a time of atonement, and Saturday began the round of "chores."  First of all, I seriously needed to do some grocery shopping, and I started at the local farmers' market, followed by a stop at Trader Joe's.  I went home with my food finds and researched recipes, mapped out a menu plan for the week, and made another grocery list for a late night trip to the bag-it-yourself, cavernous grocery store to pick up the other things I needed.  (I should be good on the whole grocery shopping thing for around another two weeks now!)

Besides the grocery shopping, on Saturday I cleaned the kitchen, cleaned out the refrigerator, and took care of several other miscellaneous cleaning chores.  Oh, and I did some cooking too.  What did I cook?  Well, the up side about shopping and planning meals is the abundance of lovely, fresh food.

Before I hit the farmers' market, I scanned through a couple of my recipe books highlighting the fresh fruits and vegetables available in our local area, arranged week by week.  Yep, I thought I just might need to make this one:

I came home with these beauties:

So I made the dough . . .

and I baked some shortbread.

I whipped up some fresh whipped cream, and we ended a long day of chores with a truly yummy dessert!

AND there's plenty leftover for a couple more desserts.

Are you wondering about the chicken?  Yes, that was another recipe I came across in my local farmers' market cook books.  Who would think of lighting a chicken on fire?  But it turned out really good!

First, I went outside and cut a bunch of fresh rosemary off the bush and I washed and dried it.  Rosemary has to be about the easiest thing in the world to grow--it needs very little attention other than cutting back.  I wish all herbs were this low maintenance!

I cleaned a roasting chicken, piled the rosemary into a deep sided pan, and set the chicken on top, reserving a few sprigs of rosemary; those were tucked inside the bird along with a cut up lemon.  I massaged a little oil into the skin, sprinkled it with salt and pepper, and the whole thing went into a 350 degree oven for about an hour and a half until it was done.  The smell of baking rosemary permeated the house.

Once the bird came out of the oven, I carried the whole thing outside to our metal patio table and lit the dried rosemary on fire.  As it burned, the flames turned to smoke; had I realized that was what would happen, I would have been ready with a cover to place over it so the smoke could flavor the entire bird; as it was, though, the smoked flavor came through, especially in the thigh meat.  Next time I'll be better prepared!

Once done, the chicken was nicely browned.  I removed it from the bed of rosemary and carved it up.  Yum!  It was really tasty!

Now, as I'm writing this, it's Sunday, and there are more housecleaning chores being done and more cooking too!  It's Cinco de Mayo, so I have carnitas ready for burrito bowls.  Off and on, I've been sneaking in a little sewing on my scrap blocks.  And maybe, just maybe, if I get my chores done, I'll treat myself to a margarita.  No telling what I'll light on fire then!  Ole!