dinner for the burkes (or, why shana's morning sucked)

In our Sunday School class, we have a great tradition of preparing dinner for a family who's just had a baby every Tuesday and Thursday for six weeks after the baby is born. I signed up a few weeks ago to make dinner for one such family, the Burkes.

I actually remembered the date, and asked John to thaw out some chicken so that I could prepare the meal last night, and John and the kids could drop it off today while I was at work.

Since I justed wrote about it recently, I decided to do almond chicken, honey-glazed carrots, jasmine rice, and chocolate pie. Well, I got busy last night doing nothing and totally forgot to make the dinner.

When I woke up this morning at 6am, just 90 minutes before I planned to be at work, with dinner not even started, I knew it was going to be a hectic morning.

I couldn't make almond chicken because I didn't have time to marinate, so I decided to go with roast chicken, the old stand-by. I got that started and went to work on the carrots. After peeling and chopping and pouring in honey, I took a look at my recipe, and realized that oops, I didn't have lemon juice, which comes in at the end of the recipe. I already had honey on the carrots so I decided to throw then in and roast them with the chicken. Crisis averted.

Now the rice. Well, turns out we had about 1/4 cup of rice, not really enough for a family of five, I was thinking. OK, risotto. Nope, I used the last of it last night for dinner. OK, fine. Steamed haricots verts. I felt like I needed something else, so I threw in the ingredients for focaccia into the bread maker on the dough cycle, and starting writing down intructions on how to finish it for John.

Finally, I went to make the pie. It is an absolutely fantastic pie recipe, but you make it in the microwave and our microwave quit working a couple of months ago. OK, fine. I will whip it up at home and just take it to work to cook it. Then John and the kids can swing by and pick it up on the way.

Oops, no vanilla. FINE. So I put the rest of the ingredients together, and headed to Kroger. I picked up the vanilla, and headed to my office. Well, on the way to Kroger, my purse was next to my big Pyrex measuring cup full of ingredients. Pulling out of Kroger, I realized that I had put it somewhere else when I got back in the van, because there goes about 1/3 of my pie mix, sloshing over the side of the bowl, onto the upholstery, and pooling in the passenger chair. No time to stop, and nothing to clean it up with, I kept going.

So I got to work, cleaned up the mess, and made the pie. I left it in the kitchen to cool for a few minutes before putting it in the refrigerator. And this was all before 8am.

Dinner for the Burkes: roast chicken with honey roasted carrots, steamed haricots verts, foccacia, and chocolate pie.

Recipe for Chocolate Pie

Dry bowl
2 cups sugar
4 heaping Tbsp cocoa powder
4 Tbsp cornstarch

Wet Bowl
2 cups milk
4 egg yolks
2 tsp vanilla

Whisk together contents of dry bowl and wet bowl. Cover with a paper towl, and put the bowl in the microwave for 4 minutes. Stir. Put in the microwave for 3 minutes. Stir. Put in the microwave for 2 minutes.

Spoon into a pie crust (I like chocolate graham cracker). Let cool for a few minutes on the counter, then cover and refrigerate. After it's set, spoon whipped cream over the top, cover, and put back in the refrigerator.

Yum, yum, yum.