Books I am reading

These are the books that I am currently in the middle of reading. I’m pretty far along with Youth in Revolt, I just started Smokin’ Seventeen and the chicken book is a work in progress as I reference it for building one in my backyard. I don’t know how the slow cooker book made it into the stack except that it sort of migrates everywhere in the house. I’ve been making decent stuff out of it so maybe it wanted some attention. I’ll review the books as I finish them but I am a slow reader so don’t hold your breath.

Fix-it and Forget-It is underrated bedside reading material.

Dinner and a side note

Today is Monday. Monday is usually errand day at our house. It is the only day we can do things together and make decisions about things we have been putting off about the house. For some reason we both decided it was a day to stop by Lowe’s and buy stuff to make a chicken coop. That is another post in and of itself. On our way there I saw this sign.

Not to be confused with a dancing bear venue...but simply a place where ladies dance bare.

This sign is funny to me for many reasons. For one, there is a picture of a bear crossed out. Two, it is in industrial Portland and is a reminder to me that despite the amount of hipsters that populate this town, nothing says class to me than a giant naked lady billboard sign in a working class area. It’s great. Portland is a city of so many contradicting social classes that I never get bored. In truth, I’ve lived in Oregon for about eight months and have rarely ventured out of this city. When I do the feeling is surreal because the rest of Oregon and Washington (not counting Seattle) is not like this. They are more Christian, simple and small town-ish. A meat and potatoes type of people rather than duck confit with a side of $5 lap dances. That’s Portland.

But getting back to a point….this post is about dinner. We went to QFC after our Lowe’s trip and bought salmon for $7.99 a lb. That is a steal. I should have taken pictures of the dinner we made but we ate it too fast for me to remember to do anything about it. So I will post about tomorrow’s dinner. Anyways it was the man’s dinner and though I must confess he is a better cook than I, I feel like my dinner’s are better to post about since I need to put more of an effort than he when it comes to making things taste good.

So I bought this

and this

Nothing fancy. I washed and patted dry the chicken. Then I followed the steps for the marinade (added beer not water….apple cider vinegar rather than white vinegar). Put it in a bag, gave it a nice shake and stuck it in the fridge. This is what happy chickens look like when they’re getting 10 hours of sleep.

It’s going in the slow cooker tomorrow to roast with some yellow potatoes and vegetables. We will see what comes of it. In the meantime what am I suppose to do with the innards and neck? I’m not going to put them in the roast to eat them because neither of us like that stuff. Should I make a gravy out of it?