Busy Day with not Much to Show

Good morning, my friends. I hope y'all are ready for the holidays. If you have to go out today, you have my sympathy. We're as ready as we can be here, but there's still lots of cooking to be done before we're finished. Certainly it could be worse. 

I had a long list of to-do's yesterday morning. It was hard to know where to start. I decided to start with the quilt binding. Smitty was there to help out.

It was squared up, and the binding strips were ready to be sewn to the quilt. With such a big quilt, it took a little time. When it was finished, it looked like this:

I started this quilt way back on November 16, 2020, and so I'm feeling pretty good about having it this close to being finished. I had a lot going on yesterday, but I managed to fit in a good long stitching session with it. Now, I've turned the first two corners. Don't let those two corners fool you, though. I'm only just barely one-quarter of the way around, even if the corners are half done.

A good part of my day was spent in the kitchen. As I mentioned, I wanted to make another batch of the Cranberry, Orange, and White Chocolate Biscotti. Biscotti isn't hard to make, but it is at least a half-day-long process. 

Also in the kitchen, I was trying out a recipe for Slow-Cooker Coq au Vin. I've made Coq au Vin in the traditional way, and it can be delicious. I had some pearl onions I wanted to use up, and so this slow cooker method appealed to me. It's not my favorite kind of slow cooker recipe since I practically had to make the whole dish before I even turned on the slow cooker. I prefer the kinds of things you can dump into the crockery and then flip the switch. This one was actually quite a bit of work. It looks good in the picture, though. This is the picture from the Cook's Country website.

I hadn't planned a side dish for mine, and so I gave Mike a choice between noodles, rice, or a side of peas. He chose noodles. I neglected to take a picture of mine. It was appetizing enough in appearance, but I'm afraid Cook's Country let me down this time. I had to agree with this commenter:

For all the yummy things that go into this dish, it was pretty bland and underwhelming. I adjusted salt and acid, but it was just missing something. My chicken was also dry, but I think that was more a result of my slow cooker than the recipe's cooking times. I'll continue to make coq au vin the usual way.

Yeah. I couldn't have said it any better myself, except that my chicken was not dry. It was falling off the bone. It might be tasty enough if one wasn't expecting the flavor of coq au vin, but it was too much effort for a rather flavorless end result.

The other kitchen business I had to take care of was to get tonight's dinner marinating. I'll start this pot of Chile-Braised Short Ribs later this afternoon. Here's the picture from the website:

Looks pretty good, huh? It's an unusual recipe. It uses "flanken" style shortribs. They're the ones that are cut more in a strip rather than in a block like the shortribs I'm accustomed to seeing. Also, they are "marinated" overnight in what the recipe calls a "marinade," but actually amounts to a paste made from dried and toasted "New Mexico chiles." 

When I made this the first time, I'd never heard of New Mexico chiles, and I wasn't at all sure I would be able to find them. I found them in abundance in the ethnic food section of my grocery store. They are the shape of an Anaheim pepper. I'm thinking they're what many of us know as "Hatch" peppers. Yesterday, I toasted them, removed the stems and seeds, then soaked them in boiling water to soften them. Then they were pureed with some other liquids and spices. When that was done, I rubbed the paste all over the ribs and one sliced onion. Now, they're in the refrigerator where they've been sitting overnight. Today, I'll just added some chicken broth and put them in the oven for two hours before adding in the vegetables. From there, they'll need one more hour, and then dinner will be served.

With the bulk of dinner preparations already done, my list is shorter today. I need to do one housekeeping chore, and then I'll be able to spend most of the day sewing. Right now, I'm focusing on getting the quilt binding finished. It would be nice to add one more finish to my list for 2024.