Menu 1: When Good Foods go Bad From BrideBleu

Menu 1 takes very healthy fresh foods and adds a lot of fat a sugar, making them less healthy. That troubles me. I haven't figured out whether I want to just make the recipes with no alterations, or to tinker with things like 5 TBSPs of butter in the peas.

We all thought the cucumbers were good but a little salty. Next time I will actually rinse them before drying them off, to eliminate more salt. I used mint from my garden, which still has some cold-weather herbs in it.

The chicken was very nice. I thought the technique of cooking the sides, then the breast resulted in a beautifully browned chicken. Of course, we fed the skin to the dog and cat, but it looked lovely. We used a local organic chicken and we thought it was very nicely flavored, and that we could taste the thyme (from our garden). I cooked the giblets in water for the animals and used the water from that instead of using 1/2 cup of water in the roasting process.

The technique used for the gravy is the one we always use, so it was not new.
The only thing I do, that the recipe didn't mention, is to spoon off the fat before I let the liquid reduce. The fat does not add flavor. I also added all the remaining water from the giblets before cooking it down. If I had cooked potatoes (I didn't), I might have added some of that liquid, too.

The peas were yummy, but swimming in buttery juice. They made me think of Mom's adage: 'if you add enough butter to anything, it tastes good'. Possibly it was the frozen peas/onions that made the excess of buttery juice. Possibly the lettuce was really juicy. I think I would have preferred the peas with less juice. I'm going to try the technique again with less butter and next spring, with fresh peas.

The dessert: couldn't get strawberries or peaches and didn't substitute anything because the recipe gave permission (use less fruit, it says, instead of not fresh fruit). I'm really trying to stick with local, seasonal produce as much as I can. I also cut the sugar considerably. I probably used 1/8 cup. I'm feeling a little guilty about it, as if I broke the rules, but I know we like our fruit on the tart side.