Monday: Cold and Beautiful (with roast chicken and biscuits!)

Why hello!

It's a beautiful cold sunny Monday and now, of course,

the sun has set again... 

I walked over 5K steps.  It was cold, sunny, brilliantly white snow covered ground,

and I just loved it.  I live for cold sunny winter days with blue sky... 

***

Today was a much better day for me in terms of discouragement! 

I also spent a good few hours editing 3 essays, a 4 pager, a 3 pager and 

and 1 page essay (which is a book review). 

I can tell you one thing, my essays need a good 10-20 edits 

before it's worth sharing at all! Lots of work but good work,

I hope, I pray. 

My dream is one day to have something to publish somehow/

somewhere.  Right now, I am just trying to work on essays to

have something to work with and to be able to talk to others about.

***

I was talking to my Husband about how long it took,

how I thought one of the essays was nearly ready to send to a friend

when I read it through again and found yet more things to change,

more that needs work.

I remember my time in school, the many papers; the professor's red all over

the paper.  I've never been a good first draft writer when it comes to essays.

I find that by edit 5 some things become clearer 

and then so much more needs to be fixed,

but I need to go through each draft to find what needs fixing.

I can't skip any of the edits because I won't know what the next edit needs

until I finish the edit I am on. 

It's like a muddy pool that is being cleaned.  

Once it is cleaned, any grit or dirt remaining or any leaky pipe

bringing in unclean water, or even the source of the problem to begin with,

finally can be addressed and taken care of.

***

Of course the same I find is true in life.

You often don't know how to fix a bigger problem in your life

until you start working on a smaller problem first.

***

So I roasted a chicken in my cast iron skillet.

It went well, save the fact that I did not realize it was still nearly

frozen on the very inside, which basically had

frozen (red) slush bits inside that I had to take out.

I always use disposable gloves when preparing any raw meat...

So that was not a problem!

So I poured a small one serving bottle of wine over it,

buttered it inside the skin and outside.

Put half an onion inside and garlic inside the skin.

Poured herbed olive oil over it and more butter.

It sure made the skin nice and crisp and a deep gold. 

It also took way longer to cook that I expected for

baking at 425F.  It was a small chicken and took at least 1.5 hours.

I think more than this but am not sure.

***

I made Marion Cunningham's Rescue Biscuits again,

of course not rolling them or cutting them,

merely whipping up the batter and dropping them on 

the parchment paper covering the small baking pan!

***

Well. It's late at night again.

Surprise, surprise.

I am thankful for this day.

***

May God bless and save us!

May His face shine upon us and 

call us Blessed....