Even Gravy

Now that I am a grown-up, I get to choose exactly what I eat. Since I live alone, I have a tendency to just take the path of least resistance - sandwiches, leftovers, frozen stuff - mainly because if I do cook I end up eating the same meal for the next few days. And between you and me, my sister got the cooking gene and I got the baking gene. I can cook but just don't enjoy it as much as I love baking. But over the last month or so I have been trying to eat more complete meals - which means cooking.

One day at the grocery store I had a coupon for $1.50 off a cook-in-the-bag chicken and the chicken-in-a-bags happened to be on special also. What could be better than minimal clean up? So I decided to roast a chicken that night.

When I got home from the grocery store, I preheated the oven and put the chicken-in-the-bag in the oven and went on to occupy my waiting time by watching Oprah. After a while I put the potatoes on to boil since I wanted mashed potatoes with my chicken-in-the-bag and decided on having broccoli with my meal.

Everything was turning out just fine. The potatoes were almost cooked and the chicken was done to perfection. When I looked in the bag from the chicken-in-the-bag there were drippings. Hmmmm, I should make gravy.

I've seen my mother make gravy every Thanksgiving and Christmas and have even helped. But the one thing I have never done was make the slurry to thicken the gravy. I watch the food network a lot and know you can use corn starch or flour. I only had whole wheat flour in the pantry so decided on using corn starch. Well, everything was going along fine - until the corn starch box fell in to the bowl when I was adding it to the slurry and wayyyyy to much corn starch went in. But I went with it, thinking it would still turn out ok. I'm a glass is half full kind of cook.

As I am stirring the gravy, it starts to turn out fine. But wait a minute, isn't it getting really thick? Oh my, that is thick. Let's add some water to thin it out. That isn't working, it is just getting thicker. (I remember laughing at this point thinking this might be the creature from the chicken-in-the-bag.)

Well, folks it only got worse so I gave up and ate my broccoli, chicken, mashed potatoes without gravy. And it was delicious.

But I think I will stick to baking.



For all of you curious and brave enough, here is a picture of my gelatinous mess




YUMMMMMY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!