The Morton Matrimony

Kristen and I hosted our first dinner party as a married couple last night. The impromptu event featured both our parents. I spent the afternoon grocery shopping and preparing food while Kristen whipped the apartment into guest-shape.

I was really excited by the prospect of having dinner guests because it’s literally been years since I last cooked, a pastime I loved in college. The process was made even better by the new arsenal of knives, utensils, pots and pans we received from the wedding.

The meal du jour was Stuffed Chicken with Tomato Salad & Toasted Baguette. We clipped the recipe from Real Simple magazine a few months ago. The meal was a huge success. Everyone loved the food, and our families always get along really well. We also looked at some wedding & honeymoon pictures.

I’ll probably make the recipe again, so I have the following observations and changes:

Greenlife has great deals on locally-grown herbs, considerably cheaper (and better) than Wal-Mart.

The pocket should be deeper than 2-inches. The cut should trace the contour of the chicken breast. On a related note, prepare more filling.

Use fresh artichokes. Canned ones are packed in oil and messy to chop. You can always add olive oil for cohesion, but you can’t take it away.

With fresh thyme, it’s better to err towards less. With fresh parmesan, it’s better to err towards more.

The cooking instructions for the chicken are garbage. Sear both sides and finish in the oven. (Kremlin caught on to this very early on and saved the meal!)

I wish we had had the foresight to take pictures because the final product looked stunning on the plate.

My mom brought along fresh watermelon and tomatoes from her garden. She also delivered a hand-cranked pasta maker I purchased from an estate sale years ago. We devoured the watermelon after dinner, and the tomatoes will be used this Friday as I attempt to make pasta and marinara completely from scratch.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 11th, 2008 at 8:40 am and is filed under misc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.