Flavors of life

Tuesday was a night of flavors. Tasting, truly tasting, all of the different things food has to offer. I had a lot of leftover pesto beans & rice that I had cooked up in the crockpot for the baby shower, so I wanted to use that up for dinner. With it, I decided that I would look up some chicken marinades on allrecipe.com and see what I could find, and what I saw was a yummy sounding blend of worcestershire sauce, GF soy sauce, dry mustard, lemon juice, red wine vinegar (except I didn't have that so I used some rose wine I had in the fridge), and parsley. I put it in a bag Monday night and let it soak until I returned home from work with Val on Tuesday night. The website reccommended that I grill it, but I once had an incident involving lighting a grill, a boom, and some singed eyebrows so needless to say that was out of the question. I do have a trusty old George Foreman leftover from college, and I was hungry so out it came. In 10 minutes we had dinner. I was hoping for an allright dinner at best, but when I took a bite of the chicken I had one thought: "Why have I never marinaded chicken before?" I mean, I've added things like olive oil and spices, but never such a wonderful mix of flavors that leave each bite a mystery. Fantastic. I do think though that this marinade might be well suited for chicken wings so look for that in the future.

I haven't been feeling well, and didn't want to stand and make dessert, so I stopped on the way home at Flayvors in Hadley to see if I could pick up a pint of Pumpkin Icecream. I really do think that one of the best things about fall is everything in the world comes in pumpkin. I also splurged for a pumpkin latte this week as well!

I took Val back to campus, and we decided that since it was mid-terms for her and a painful week for me, we would give ourselves a project. We dressed up my dog Jake in his Halloween costume, and took him for a walk around the green to see how many people would look and say how cute he is. Sadly, only one girl really looked at him and smiled so I dropped by my friend Kurt's on the way home because I knew he would appreciate my efforts. And really...how cute is that dog? You can't help but smile. Perhaps I shouldn't admit how many times I've put that costume on him this week, but some weeks need more comedic relief than others!