Road Trip: Weekend cooking

I like slow weekends. Some of them are a blur of activity with social visits, Kai's various activities, errand running and shopping. Others can be a lot less hectic, getting most things done on Saturday, leaving a lovely quiet Sunday for some time at home. Yesterday was one of those Sundays, I went to Granville Island first thing in the morning and came back with a small mountain of groceries. I then spent most of the day in the kitchen with occasional breaks to play some Skyrim or help Connie with her house organizing mood she was in.

I started out making a pasta sauce, I like to cook big pots of sauce or soup that we can enjoy during the week, to avoid those hurried weeknight cooking sessions that invariably mean we don't eat until 7:30pm and I am still busy cleaning up the kitchen at 8:30pm. This one is a favorite staple, a very rich meat sauce that has pancetta, ground beef and ground pork in a rich beef broth with oregano, nutmeg and tomatoes. It goes very well with pasta, a generous helping of parmesan cheese and cracked black pepper.

I then moved on to a banana bread cake, our neighbor makes it sometimes and sent us the recipe. I decided to give it a try, prompted by the three overripe bananas sitting on the kitchen counter. I love baking and working with butter, flour, sugar and the KitchenAid mixer.

Next up was dinner, nothing more classic on a Sunday than a whole chicken with roasted vegetables. I buy whole free-range chickens at Granville Island. This recipe is not the usual roasted chicken but an even simpler concept of cooking the chicken in a sealed Dutch oven with some simple aromatics. I season and sear it, then add some carrots, celery, garlic and fresh rosemary to the pot. This then goes in the oven at 250F for about 1.5 hours, resulting in a beautiful moist, tender and juicy chicken. It also yields a good 1/2 cup of delicious gravy so this recipe is a winner.