I never knew I could...

When Bryce and I got married I informed him that I wasn't much of a cook. I quickly learned that his mother is a great cook. She even gave all of her kids a "Mom's cookbook" when they left home with all her favorite dinner recipes, and do you know how many there are!? I just counted and there are 54 main course recipes, that does not count the appetizers, beverages, and dessert recipes. 54 main course recipes, do you know that the average person has about 14 meals that they make over and over?

So after Bryce and I got married I realized that it was suddenly very important to me to feed him, it is my way of taking care of him. He can fix things and make more money than I can, so I can feed him and keep our house clean. So I started learning how to cook some things, I learned his favorite of his mom's recipes (Spaghetti Pie) and learned a few of my mom's favorites as well. When I had 14 recipes I was feeling pretty good about myself, no need to push it, average is good. But Bryce gets bored. He likes lots of variety and everytime I bring up "do you want tacos for dinner?" he says "we just had tacos" (even if it was three weeks ago...).

So last night we invited two of our very good friends over, we used to call them our "church friends," because we met them at church, but they said that sounded weird to them and prefer to be called our "drinking friends" because everytime we see each other (even at church) we have a little drink! So in all my infinite wisdom and thinking that I can do more than I actually know how to do, I decided to roast a chicken (you know, try something new!). I have a recipe, follow recipe, easy right? About 2 hours before they are supposed to show up I start to panic, the recipe says things like "tie together the legs and tail and put lemons in the chicken cavity and pull the wings down so the tips touch behind it's back." I start to think, I don't even know what this all means, what was I thinking trying something new for company!?!

But I decided it didn't really matter if I got the chicken positioned correctly as long as it was cooked clear through all would most likely be well. So I mixed up the herbs and oil and spread it over the little chicken in my roasting pan I had never used that we got for our wedding. Stuck in the meat thermometer just as the instructions said and put it in the oven. Not long into it Bryce calls and I tell him I think everything is going well, but something smells like it's burning and I can't tell what, maybe it's just because the roasting pan has never been used before...

Bryce gets home about the time I take the chicken out to add all the yummy vegetables and he looks at me and says "Keely, that is a plastic meat thermometer, you can't leave it in the oven, you are smelling burning plastic." I am aware of the hilarity of this now...but at the moment I was very stressed about this chicken and now the fact that I am clearly an idiot on top of trying to cook something I've never made before. Fortunately, Bryce could tell this was not yet the time to make fun of my stupidity and offered to go buy me a new one at the grocery store. I decided it didn't matter, we would just cut into the chicken to make sure it was done.

The chicken was amazing, moist and tender, and all the vegetables were sweet and seasoned and cooked just right! It was probably the best meal I have ever made and I am rediculously proud of myself over it. Our friends also loved it and were very impressed with my cooking abilities as well. Burning up the meat thermometer wasn't very cool, but then I tell everyone about it, so that's cool. I did not take a picture of my chicken, so I borrowed this picture, but my chicken really did look this good!