Sometimes I Make Dinner

Last night at the dinner table, Elannah sighed with pleasure and said, "I love these kinds of dinners."

The menu: Chicken Piccata, Roasted Cauliflower, and Green Salad, with Apple Pie and Ice Cream for dessert. All of it made from scratch by me, except for the salad dressing and the ice cream.

I was inspired by a book I checked out at the library called Ten Dollar Dinners, by Melissa d'Arabian, who apparently has her own show on the Food Network (I wouldn't know because I don't have cable and never watch the Food Network anymore). I have a shelf in my kitchen groaning under the weight of my favorite cookbooks (with my less-favorites residing in our basement library), but sometimes a new book will spark that creative desire to cook up something fantastic and make my daughter sigh with the pleasure of eating a home cooked meal with the family around the dinner table. The book reminded me how easy Chicken Piccata is to make. It used to be one of my staples, back in the day when I didn't find cooking to be so much of a chore. Plus, I happened to have capers I needed to use up.

As for the pie, it dawned on me that I have a food processor in which to make pie crust. Duh. I absolutely hate, HATE making pie crust, and I'll usually settle for store-bought crusts rather than make my own flaky pastry. I think it stems back to my time working in a fast food joint as the early morning biscuit maker. At the end of my shift, I had to prepare batches of biscuit mix with shortening and have them ready for the next morning's baking. There was no food processor, so I had to cut the shortening in by hand, one pound of shortening in each container of mix. It took forever, especially if I had already depleted the previous stash of mixes during an especially busy morning of breakfast sales. I was already dead tired by this point, having been at the restaurant since 3am and watching the clock rounding up to 2pm with all the restaurant's dishes still to wash by hand after I finished the biscuit mixes. You can see why I have an issue with pastry. And dishes. And, perhaps less obviously, mean and overly-emotional female managers.

But last night, I finally pulled out my little food processor and cut the shortening into the flour in about three seconds. Revelation and enlightenment! Plus, we had found a layer of Gala apples hiding at the bottom of the box of apples I had stored in my garage. I had thought they were nearly gone, but Sian went and investigated a little deeper into the box and found treasure. Galas aren't the best pie apples--I buy them because they're so good to eat out of hand--but no one complained when the pie came out, fragrant and steaming, from the oven.

I would post a picture of the meal and the splendid pie, but I didn't think to do that before it was all gone and everyone was contentedly sitting around digesting. Tonight, though, I plan on making fish tacos with a tangy cabbage/onion/cilantro slaw. Another one of my old staples. Sian has perfected my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe to professional standards, so she'll be providing dessert for us tonight. Elannah will be in heaven.