Muggsy's Brain

Four times a year we deep clean the roasting machine, it's long, involved, greasy & dirty and it takes a bunch of hours. Today I was fortunate enough to have the Fabulous Armadillos use my roastery as a rehearsal space for their upcoming Motown show at the Pioneer Place in St. Cloud. Sorry, folks, it sold out weeks ago. So all day I was treated to a live band playing songs like Respect, Natural Woman, The Tears of a Clown, Shotgun and many more. Okay, that's not such a great video. But this one is! His name is Julius Andrews IV and he won the pre-teen division of the Minnesota State Fair Amateur Talent Contest in 2009. Having him there brought tears to my eyes it was so cool and beautiful! All in all, I had a GREAT day at work!

Tonight's menu is a chicken lasagna, since I haven't done it yet it's not so much a recipe as it is a plan. It's pretty much just your standard lasagna made with diced chicken. Usually I'll use browned hot Italian sausage when I do this. Ingredients: 1 lb. chicken breasts, skin & fat removed 1 can (14.5 oz.) diced tomatoes 1 can (29 oz.) tomato sauce 1/2-3/4 cup baby portobello mushrooms, chopped 1 tbsp olive oil medium sized onion, chopped 2-3 cloves garlic, chopped 1/2-1 tbsp Italian seasoning 1/4 tsp (seriously small amount) fennel seed 1 egg 1 small container part skim ricotta cheese 1/4-1/3 cup grated parmesan cheese 1-2 cups shredded mozarella cheese 9-12 lasagna noodles, par-boiled salt pepper Preheat oven to 350° F I've already taken the chicken breasts, washed them and patted them dry, added a sprinkling of salt & pepper to both sides and fried them in a heavy pan using no oil for about 2 minutes per side. They're nice and caramelized, they ...

A week or so ago I bought a whole chicken and decided to cut it up myself. I'd never done that before, so I looked up a couple of videos on YouTube and went to it. It's an incredibly economical thing to do! I spent about $6 and got about $10-12 worth of meat out of it, and a nice carcass to make soup, which is what I did tonight. I never make the same soup twice, but there are always similarities, in this case, this is what I did: 1 chicken carcass, breast meat, thighs & wings removed -- don't worry, there's still plenty of meat several cups of water (5 or 6?) 1 medium onion, chopped 3 cloves of garlic, minced 4 medium carrots, sliced 3 stalks celery, sliced 1 can diced tomatoes 1 can white beans -- including that nice, starchy water 1/2 cup frozen yellow corn 1/2 tablespoon salt a good dose of ground pepper 1 tsp dill weed 1/2 tsp turmeric 1-1/2 tsp dried parsley A few shakes of red pepper flakes Most of my measurements are by eye so I am only guessing the amount....