Chicken Satay Skewers and Yogurt Sauce

For a New Year’s Eve party, we made a double-batch of these Chicken Satay Skewers from Martha Stewart. For once, I actually followed the recipe exactly, except that we grilled them on the George Foreman grill instead of making them on a grill pan. The chicken turned out well, but the dipping sauce was so deplorable I didn’t even try to serve it to anyone. It tasted exactly like peanut butter and vinegar which it turns out is not that tasty together, IMHO. I liked the chicken well enough to do again, and the only thing I would change is to maybe marinate it in the garlic sauce for longer in hopes that it would retain more of those flavors.

Chicken Satay Skewers

• 2 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves (6 to 8 ounces each), thinly sliced lengthwise into 12 strips
• 1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil
• 1 teaspoon soy sauce
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• 1/2 teaspoon red-pepper flakes
• Coarse salt and ground pepper
• 1/4 cup creamy peanut butter
• 2 tablespoons rice vinegar
• Vegetable oil, for pan

In a bowl, toss chicken with sesame oil, soy sauce, garlic, and 1/4 teaspoon of the red-pepper flakes. Season with salt and pepper. Thread each chicken strip lengthwise onto a skewer. Make dipping sauce: In a small bowl, whisk together peanut butter, vinegar, remaining 1/4 teaspoon red-pepper flakes, and 2 to 3 tablespoons water. Heat grill pan over high. Working in batches, brush pan with oil, and cook chicken until opaque throughout, 1 to 2 minutes per side. Serve chicken skewers with dipping sauce. (From the Martha Stewart website)

We had a number of skewers left over after the party that we ate warmed (but plain) for awhile, but then today I got the brilliant idea to take them in a different direction since I needed a lunch but wouldn’t have access to a microwave. “Wouldn’t they make a nice base for a tasty yogurt sauce?” I thought, and indeed they did! I found this recipe (the intro to which was tl:dr—sorry! I was in a hurry to catch the bus!) and followed it fairly closely other than that I didn’t measure anything, only made about a half cup, forgot the olive oil, and didn’t have any coriander handy. Also no fresh herbs, so I went with some dried dill.

Basic Yogurt Sauce

Makes about 2 cups
In a medium bowl combine:

• 1 cup plain Greek-style yogurt
• 1/2 an English hothouse cucumber, roughly chopped
• Juice of 1/2 lemon

• 2 tablespoons fresh herbs (any combination of dill, mint, cilantro, and basil)

• 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil

• 1 clove garlic, minced

• 1 teaspoon freshly ground cumin

• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground coriander
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

Let sit for at least 30 minutes for the flavors to meld.
(From the Joy of Cooking website)

The yogurt sauce was so delicious with my cold chicken skewers and cut up veggies! I thought maybe I’d save some for Matt to try, but alas, I pretty much licked the dish clean, which I can do when I’m sitting by myself in my studio with the curtains drawn. I was so proud of myself for A.) eating leftovers, B.) packing a lunch, and C.) eating healthy that I decided to blog to tell the world about it post haste. With all that and a blog post added to my credit, I feel I’ve definitely earned that leftover serving of tiramisu I also packed myself!

Pas Mon Jardin

les fleurs dans le jardin de ma mère

Factual Statements:

• This is not my garden.
• This is my mother and stepdad's garden.
• I lack the patience to learn any real photography skills.
• I lack the patience to learn any real photo editing skills.
• Sometimes nature is so pretty, it demands you take its picture even if you don't have photography skills to do its beauty justice.

Mon jardin, il est vivant!

Well, my garden may not actually be alive again, but at least this clematis revived enough with the paltry rain to produce a few more blooms!

Dans Mon Jardin en Juin, Vous Auriez Trouvé...

[In my garden in June, you would have found*...]

une belle pivoine

[A beautiful peony]

les petites fleurs roses

[Little pink flowers]

 

beaucoup de fleurs violettes

[A plethora of purple clematis]

 

les roses rouges

[Red, red roses]

 

Mais maintenant, en juillet, vous trouverez...

[But now, in July, you will find...]

 

les pivoines morts

[Dead peonies]

 

les petites fleurs brunes 

[Little brown flowers]

 

pas de fleurs violettes**

[No purple flowers]

les roses séchées 

[Dried roses]

 

un chat avec les yeux fous 

[A crazy-eyed cat***]

 

*I'm not gonna lie, I had to look up the past conditional conjugation, among other things...

**I really thought this should be "rien de fleurs violettes" but Google Translate insisted that I was wrong

***In truth, the crazy-eyed cat was always there. I thought maybe he would scare off people coming to the door asking me to sign petitions or buy magazines, but alas, no.

Focus on Spring

Everybody's looking forward to the full blooms of Spring...

...And to the day I learn how to focus my pictures better. :)

Spot the Buckthorn

Our yard came with many varieties of plants. Some are low maintenance and very pretty:

A pretty little lungwort

Others need constant tending so they don't take over everything:

I'm looking at you, bottle brush thingys!

One of our neighbors, who owns a gardening business, took me around the yard identifying everything, including dozens of small trees that she said were a fast growing invasive species. She recommended cutting them down.

"What did you call those trees?" I asked the neighbor, "Bowtruckles?"

"What a funny word," she laughed, "No, they're buckthorns."

Embarrassed, I suddenly remembered where I had heard the word "Bowtruckle" before. (See "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" by Newt Scamander)

I felt indignant that she had suggested removing all the privacy and coziness that I liked about our yard, but I soon learned the necessity of subduing these invaders - for the sake of the many beautiful plants that were being choked out, and for the sake of my neighbors' yards!

And so began the War of Yard Reclamation. I could tell you many stories of great battles from this conflict, with victories going to both sides, but we must save that for another time. For today, I just want to teach you about the main enemy: Rhamnus cathartica.

The common buckthorn is native to Europe but brought to the US as a decorative shrub. It is sometimes used as a laxative. This explains the "cathartica" part of the name, as "catharsis" means purging, of either emotion or the bowels.

Fig.1 - A buckthorn seedling being eradicated

Buckthorn trees can be male or female, with the female trees producing small, purple berries. Even though we have removed the largest specimens, sprouts continue to come up around where the trees once stood because the seeds in the berries can take several years to sprout. Fortunately, I have learned to spot buckthorns in all stages of growth. (Fig.1)

Fig.2 - A young buckthorn that has re-sprouted

Buckthorns are very hardy and can re-sprout if you don't get the whole root. If the root remains, alternate limbs can grow. (Fig.2)  It is not worth attempting to remove them unless you have proper weeding tools on hand. I had to leave this one after I photographed it because I was only armed with an iPhone, and there's not an app for that.

Did I mention that in addition to being prolific, hardy, and invasive, the mature ones also have thorns, as their name suggests? Well, they do. Last year I thought I had just a scratch on my leg after a battle to wrangle some trimmed branches into the compost bin, but a week later a 1/4" thorn worked its way out of the wound.

Fig. 3 - Before we moved in [main picture] and the same view 2 years later [inset].

Several years, LOTS of sweat, a professional tree trimmer, and many scrapes later, we managed to take out the motherships and the standing army. (Fig.3) All that remain are the scattered rebels, popping up here and there, trying to stage a coup. But I've built up my own army of weeders, spades, and shovels, and I'm not afraid to use them.

Really, though, I wrote this whole post just so we could play a little game I like to call Spot The Buckthorn! How many suspicious looking leaves do you see in this picture?

Show me the buckthorns!

I can't be 100% certain I'm right based on this photo alone, but these are the suspicious leaves I see:

How'd you do? Want to come over next weekend and see how you do in real life?

Dans Mon Jardin, Vous Trouverez...

[In my garden, you will find...]:

les voitures

[A selection of unearthed toy cars]

un arbrisseau jaune

[A highly-trimmed forsythia bush Matt nearly eliminated during an aggressive purge (when it was not in bloom) before I stayed his hedge-clipping hands]

les fleurs violettes

[purplish blue members of the Harbingers of Spring Brigade]

une tulipe

[A lone tulip, determinedly emerging from beneath 2" of mulch and a pine tree]

les fleurs jaunes

[a pretty cluster of rain-kissed daffodils]

un gazon avec beaucoup couleurs

[the patchwork yard-of-many-grasses]

les gnomes

[the gnomes, MGoGnome and Derpy Drawers, formerly of "Gnomes Knoll" (the grassy area seen above that was painstakingly leveled last year)]