You are only as old as you feel

On Thursday night I met with my bookclub in Old Town for dinner/drinks/book discussion.  We met at a brewpub that sits on the corner of this plaza pictured above.  The red umbrellas are on the back patio of the brewpub - we sat on the front patio because we wanted to eat sometime during this century.  You see, in my old age and stuff, I forgot that Thursday nights in Old Town means that there will be a live band playing in the plaza...which means a lot of people, and at least an hour wait at the restaurants in the area.
 
Live music was already playing as I arrived at 7:30, but it was a smallish crowd, so I guess it wasn't a super-popular band.  We lucked out with just a short wait for our table out on the street-side front patio.  The view from our table was pretty cool as we watched the thunderheads build and the cloud-to-cloud lightning begin to light the night sky - the sultry weather that had suffocated the front range all day was building into quite the spectacular thunderstorm.  With the appearance of impending rain, we promptly parted ways and I walked back by the plaza as I headed for my car. 

I rounded the corner and could hear the familiar strains of the beginning guitar rift to Sweet Child O' Mine, by Guns N' Roses.  A cover band... hmmm.  I have to admit I was drawn in, so I meandered towards the center of the plaza, where the stage is situated.  In the crowd there were summer college kids, a few families, high school kids (who probably have never even heard of GNR) and several young homeless people with large backpacks and mangy dogs...  The typical downtown mix. 

The crowd was electrified by the music (it was actually pretty good) as well as storm.  The breeze was blowing, the clouds were building higher and higher, and the lightning was pretty intense -  but the storm was remaining a safe distance away.  It is strange the energy that builds in the air when bad weather moves in...  You can actually feel it.

I wasn't exactly comfortable standing there alone (I felt awkward), but as I watched the crowd I felt a brief flash of youth.  Back when I was 21-22 years old, I lived on Mountain Ave., a street that is a straight shot to Old Town.  My roommates and I would walk down frequently and hang out on concert nights.  I also worked at a restaurant just a couple of blocks away, so I would walk down after work if the music was still playing.

On this night, I looked around the square and saw the large concrete steps where I and my roommates: Carolyn, Michelle and Margie, sat and listened to Opie Gone Bad, some 16? 17? years ago.  That was our last concert together...  A few feet from there, close to the fountain is where I sat with Dean and Jordan and a two-month old Rylan as we stayed for a concert one hot summer afternoon.

I turned to leave.  I was missing my family and the memories were making me sad.   As the saying goes: You are only as old as you feel....  Well flashbacks to my younger days make me feel old and either wistful or full of regret.  What made me feel sad on this night was watching a small group of college girls as they stood in a huddle, swaying to the music.  They were young and pretty, dressed casually, and looked like they were enjoying themselves.  I was envious.  I miss the feeling of that kind of camaraderie.  I miss my old friends - each and every one of whom has moved away over the years.  I miss the nights where we would people-watch and snicker at the drunken fools in the crowd - or actually be one of the drunken fools in the crowd.  (just kidding, mom!)

Time is most certainly marching on...so why is the beat getting faster?

Show your work!!

(Yes, Honey, this one's for you.  You're welcome.)

So, in a flash of inspiration, we (er.. my husband ) solved a problem that has been nagging at us for over a year:  How to finish off the sandbox.  We purchased shade fabric last year, when we built it, but we couldn't come up with a design that would allow us to easily attach the fabric during the summer months, and then remove it during the winter, and have a framework that would support the fabric and not allow it to droop.  We were stumped up until Saturday morning, when we decided to Google images of pergolas and Dean saw a design that used a pyramid shape as a framework for the roof.  Ah-ha!!

So Dean ran some figures and we made ANOTHER trip to Home Depot to get more lumber for the composter because the MOTHER of all composters clearly does NOT have enough heft to it yet.

Dean cut and measured and cut and measured all day.  And I stained and stained and stained all day.  (My mother asked me *why* we are making the composter 'look pretty'?  It is wood, and will be filled with yucky, wet stuff.  It's gotta be relatively waterproof.  And yes.  It needs to look pretty.  Because our yard is ugly and it needs at least something nice to look at in all its dead-grass, weed-haven vastness!

Saturday came and went and on Sunday morning I went to check something on the computer.  It was still on Dean's login and there it was: trig calculations for the pyramid roof.

(gasp!)

(CHEATER!!!!!!)

Dean came in at just about that moment and I turned on him immediately...

"I thought you were some sort of math whiz!  And here you are, using the COMPUTER to do the math for you!"  (add in a you-were-totally-awesome-up-until-now glare...)

Dean replies with absolute indignation, "I was just checking my answer!  (he turns and goes back into the garage and comes back with two white boards with math calculations all over them)  Here you go - see!  I showed my work!"

Indeed he did.  It even looks pretty.  And in color!

So, I have to take it back.  My husband does show his work.  And it shows up in places like this:

Please forgive me for sounding like Baljeet.

Now, originally, this whole missive was going to be about how much math we have used in our landscaping, gardening, building efforts as of late.  Jordan got to be here for some of it.  He helped plot out a circular bed for me.  We were talking about properties of circles at the time, so it gave us an excellent opportunity to discuss radius, diameter and circumference.  Dean pounded a peg in the middle, and I told Jordan that I wanted it 6 feet across.  So Jordan figured out that he should measure and attach a 3 ft long piece of string to the stake, and - walking around in a circle - mark out the perimeter of my circle so we could see where we needed to remove grass.  I wish Jordan had been here to see the pyramid beams as well - although trigonometry is way above my head.  When it comes time, I will be learning right along with him.

I have a feeling our teacher will demand that we show our work....



Insert me here...



Insert me here and I would die from happiness.

Exhaustion for sure....but it would be due to a dream fulfilled.

I have always had a secret penchant for all things agricultural.  My upbringing seemed to skirt around the issue, but I never got to have the full-blown experience.  I even envied the kids in 4-H.  My family would go to the County Fair, and I would cast sideways glances at the kids in Wranglers and cowboy hats and wish that I was one of them.   They knew stuff.  They weren't scared to hold a chicken.  They weren't scared to walk around with a 600 lb steer.  The girls knew how to can.  The boys knew when the wheat was ready for harvest.  They all got to drive a tractor as soon as they could reach the pedals.

For me, I am so thankful that I at least had some exposure.  My dad is a veterinarian (now retired), so I got to wrestle a sheep a time or two so dad could do whatever he was needing to do.  For the record, I do not like sheep.  They stink and their wool coat is oily.  And that stuff doesn't wash off easily.  But I liked traveling with him to the various places around town where he did his work for the university.

When I visited my grandparents in Wray, out on the eastern plains of Colorado, I would go out with my grandpa when he needed to do some sprinkler work.  My grandpa was a jack-of-all-trades in his later years.  He began as a farmhand, and when he returned from the war, he and my grandma settled on a farm for a short while, and then he gambled and built a large greenhouse to make a go of it as a tomato-grower.  I don't remember the specifics, but the venture didn't work quite as well as planned.  I recall being with him in a very large greenhouse, and walking along rows and rows of tomato plants as well as what seemed like hundreds of geraniums.  Those two scents will be forever linked in my memory.  Anyways, in his later years my grandpa (with the help of a few teenage boys - poor kids, my grandpa yelled a lot ) installed sprinkler systems in and around town.  I remember traveling around to these places in the back of his little blue pick-up.  I would sit on the tailgate and let my feet drag on the pavement whenever he crossed the street and went a little too fast over the gutter dips.  One time I even bounced out... and he kept on going!  Luckily we were only just going down the street to the church, so I just walked the rest of the way.  Once in awhile he would drive out to a small farm or two, and chat with the farmer, and I would just wander around, mesmerised.  Chickens!  There were chickens wandering around, everywhere!  Won't they run away?  Horses would wander over, looking for a treat.  Dogs would be running around.  I just wanted to stay and never leave.

We visited family (long lost second-cousin type family) in Nebraska one summer.  They lived on a hog farm.  Pigs scare me.  They are absolutely huge and push their weight around.  The smell made it even hard to breathe.  But once again, I was in awe.  There was just so much 'life' all around you - animal sounds all day and all night.  The kids all had chores, and they wore boots and hats to do it.  Cool.

My only 'Ag' experience is home gardening.  I was in my early 20's when I finally got my own place, and building my own garden was on the top of my wish list.  My boyfriend and coworkers made fun of me for doing something so... 'domestic'.  I can't help it - it's in my family.  My dad gardens, my aunts and uncles and my cousin.  It used to be the family joke that as soon as dinner was over, the talk would immediately go to gardening.  I wish I had done a little less eye-rolling and a little more listening.  I have a very short memory when it comes to how to do something, so I have to call my dad up several times a week during the growing season to ask him the same questions I asked him last year.  And the year before that.  And the year before that.

Even though our city passed an ordinance a couple of years back that allows backyard chickens, our HOA does not allow it.  So for now I have to settle for living vicariously through the several of friends who have them.  I have yet to hold a chicken...I'm still afraid of getting pecked.  But I long for the time when I can have my own coop.  We still have a couple more years in this house before we can entertain the thought of moving, and you can bet that high on my 'must have' list is ample gardening space and the ability to have a chicken coop.   And maybe a goat or two.  And a small barn.  And a tractor.  And.....

Magnets, Dinosaurs and Pennies

May was the month of field trips.  We have done several this past year, but mostly with the Daisies.  I haven't done too many with the homeschooling group this year.  Mostly because I have a four year old with a fierce independent streak and a two year old that is a runner.  Both boys make field trips a tricky proposition - so I have to be very selective about what I can do at the moment.

Jordan went on a trip to Rawhide Power Plant on his birthday with his grandma.  Little ones were not allowed on the tour, so it was (mostly) just kids 10 and up.  I'm glad he got the chance to go - but this month has been such a whirlwind that I haven't had the chance to ask much of anything about the visit or what he thought of it.


We chose to do Little Shop of Physics this year because it is a perennial favorite of ours, and there is enough to do to keep even Colin occupied.  LSOP is hosted every spring and fall by the Physics department on the Colorado State University campus.  They have four classrooms dedicated to housing all sort of hands-on experiments.  My memory is lame, but each room has a theme - something along the lines of electricity, magnetism, something and something else.  (See?  lame.)  There is a ton of cool info on their website, so check it out!

Notice I didn't get any pictures of Jordan.  He asked for permission to hang out with a friend and travel through the rooms with her at their own pace.  I guess we've reached that stage... it's no longer fun to hang with your siblings... but I can totally understand, and am glad that he feels comfortable doing that.

Next up was a family trip to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science.  We were supposed to go to Homeschool Family Day at Elitch's Theme Park, but it was cold and rainy that day, so we went to DMNS instead.  We had friend Abbi along with us, and it was such a nice way to spend the day.  No agenda, no time constraints... just fun.  Jordan and Abbi enjoyed an hour of exploration time in the museum on their own, and they had a good time.  These little tugs of Jordan's at the apron strings are much easier to handle than a hard jerk, so we let go and give permission when it feels good to do so.  They loved a little dose of independence and they did great!  While they were off exploring, we went to check out the dinosaurs.

We also checked out the temporary snake and lizard exhibit.  The kids had fun looking at the different animal exhibits and playing with the props in the theater section.

Jordan and Abbi 'snake racing' on their bellies



Then it was off to the DNA lab to don some lab coats and do some experiments....

Last field trip for the month was a visit to NCAR, or National Center for Atmospheric Research, in Boulder, CO.  This was last Thursday, the day after Jordan left for his summer visit to Oklahoma.  Rylan was already missing him terribly.  I signed up for this field trip since it was a class that was geared towards her age group, and I thought she would enjoy it.  It was also her first 'class'/field trip like this.  When we got there, we waited with the others for several minutes to see if any more of our group was going to show.  Unfortunately there were a few who didn't... :(  Our guide opted to do the tour first and then the class.  Our guide was great - he really knew his stuff and gave a very in-depth discussion into our atmosphere and everything in between.  Maybe...a little too in depth.  After 60 straight minutes of talking, combined with a respectable amount of showing - enough to keep an adult engaged, but not a 5-6 year old, Rylan decided she was *done*.  Both of the boys were *done* after the first five minutes.  And then it was me chasing, shushing and chasing and shushing....and chasing and shushing before I decided I was *done* as well.  And we hadn't even got to the real reason we came - the class!  Rylan could not be persuaded to stay - and well, I admit it, I was relieved.  I didn't know how much longer I could stand trying to keep the two little ones under some semblance of control.  So, at least I know where we stand.  A successful field trip for Rylan must include very limited grown-up talking time and a lot of doing time.  I will know what to look for in future field trips, now.   Rylan is a lot like her older brother, in that respect.

This was all they wanted to do - watch the pennies go down the whatchamacallit.  Hundreds of them.  Well... okay...about 30.  40 tops.



Living Slowly

A couple of weeks ago, Tsh, over on Simple Mom, wrote a post about living slowly.  She asked her readers to ponder some questions:

1.  What does living slowly mean to you?  How would you define it?
2.  What is one thing you would add to your life if you had spare time?
3.  If you could say 'no' to an obligation, what would it be?

So this post has been percolating in my mind for awhile, since I had no time to sit down and write all that has been going on in my life until this very week.  This post was meant for me!!  This May has been the craziest one yet - yet living slowly is all I want - it is the key to my personal happiness.

1.  How would I define living slowly?

Not living by a schedule.  Oh how I wish I didn't have to be a slave to a schedule.  I'm not talking about the internal family schedule - like doing chores and schoolwork - that is what keeps our family life sane and gives us structure.  It's when the busy outside schedule messes with the internal schedule, that all hell breaks loose.  The outside schedule is the classes, meetings, field trips, errands that have to be done by such-and-such a date, appointments, scouts, playdates, MNO's and so forth.  Don't get me wrong - each and every one of those 'things' are important in their own right.  But lately it has been too much of a good thing.

I relish the days that we can move about our day with no need to be constantly looking at the clock.  That if we want to meander, we can.  If I want to deviate from our plan of action for the day, we can.  An exceptionally beautiful day means that we can ditch the books and go enjoy some time outside.

Living slowly means that the kids can have long, extended play sessions (where true creativity and problem-solving happens).  That I can get lost in a book.  That I can do a load of laundry and see it all the way through - from start to finish.  That I can bake an impromptu batch of cookies.

2.  What is one thing that I would add to my life if I had spare time?

Art classes.  I have no artistic skill, but that is not what I am after.  It's the way I get lost in what I am doing that I lust after.  It sort of feels like a drug.  When I am painting or sculpting or whatever, I am completely and utterly absorbed in what I am doing.  When I live 99.9% of my life with the constant distraction of multiple things going on at the same, a chance to focus on a single task is my mental refuge.

3.  If I could say 'no' to an obligation, what would it be?

Laundry?  Dishes?

Seriously, if I could say 'no' to something it would be scouts.  And I just did that - so I hope things get better.  I can't even begin to relate how frustrating it is to coordinate a group of individuals who all have different levels of personal commitment.

Another obligation that I have considered saying 'no' to was our homeschooling group.  We have been through a very rough couple of years.  Out of our current membership of 150 families, I am in regular contact with about 10?  15?  The rest we never see or hear from unless there is something they don't like.  I resent the apathy in our group.  We have recently gone from loosely organized to incorporating into a non-profit and forming a Board.  I am now on a board of nine members as one of a team of two that manages the membership aspects of the group.  This will increase my time commitment, but it will be no where near what scouts was requiring.  It also means that I work with just the board - all ladies that I know pretty well and have a great deal of respect for.  And we have a common, unified goal - and we are all pretty committed to pulling our group up by the bootstraps and creating a better entity in the interest in serving our local homeschooling community.  That is something I can truly commit to without resentment.  But I wholeheartedly say 'no' to the obligation that our board has to organize and 'entertain' the membership.  I won't do it.  Lots of the families are in the group for only one thing: social opportunities for their kids.  In and of itself that is not a bad thing, but it's the ones that EXPECT things to fall into their lap.  There is no initiative on their part to plan things or create things for the kids to do.  I organized several field trips a few years back and then just burned out.  It was too much work and homeschoolers are notorious for signing up and then not showing up.

So on this day I am glad to put the busiest month of the year to rest.  I am so thankful that June is here, and we can look forward to living more slowly.

How about you?  How would you answer these questions?

Adding with Cuisenaire rods

As we have been working through Rylan's lessons (she is midway through Year 1 of MEP), she has been having difficulty readily identifying number partners when adding.  When we hit the practice pages for adding up to six, it was time to have her use some number strips.  Instead of printing out and cutting up a bunch of strips, I just pulled out our box of Cuisenaire rods, and wrote their 'value' on them with a Sharpie.  And then I helped her build these patterns to help her see the partnerships better.

But.  I didn't tell her what we were building.

And I know we got somewhere with this because all of a sudden she exclaimed, "Wait!!!  I see something!  I see a pattern!".

Bingo.

Moroccan Chicken Tangine

So, on Monday morning, while Dean was sawing lumber and building the composter (and the kids were outside "helping"), I enjoyed the relative peace and quiet of the house by trying to knock off an episode or two of America's Test Kitchen from the DVR.  I have 21 in queue right now...

First up was an America's Test Kitchen version of a Moroccan dish called 'Chicken Tangine'.  I have never cooked anything remotely like this.  Ethnic foods for me have been limited to Mexican and ... well, Mexican.  I can't call spaghetti 'authentic' Italian.  I just can't.  There is very little thought process that goes into it (sorry if you are Italian and I've just offended your grandmother).  I'm talking about SPAGHETTI.  Sure, I have a rather ingredient-heavy recipe - but hey - you throw it all into a crockpot and simmer it for hours.  Where's the challenge?

With Chicken Tangine, it was a 21-step process.  And it begins with food prep.  You need six different spices just to get started.  I had all of them, but the age of two of them I couldn't vouch for.  One of the bottles had a label on the bottom with my maiden initials on it.  I put it there in 1992, when I lived with two other roommates and we just stored all of our spices together.  1992.  So that makes that bottle 20 freakin' years old.  I sniffed it.  It smelled vaguely of sawdust.  How is it, in the past 20 years, I didn't use all of my cayenne pepper?  About ten years ago I got into the habit of labeling my bottles with the month and year that I opened it.  I know that about 3/4 of my spices need to go, based on age (most lose potency even just after 6 months).  That is an expensive proposition.  But in ethnic cooking, where spices are the headliners, you can't skimp - so it was off to the store.

Since I didn't have a prep team to dice and measure everything for me, I had to go through the recipe and do it myself.  Toast some almonds.  Mince and mash lemon peel, garlic and salt together until you have a paste.  Slice onions, olives, carrots... and on and on.  Each into it's own bowl until it was all ready to go.

Here is some sage cooking advice that isn't mine, but I know it works:  Prepare all of your ingredients beforehand.  Line them up in little bowls, dishes, spoons, whatever you have on hand.  Because as you see chefs on the cooking shows emptying bowl after bowl of different ingredients into the cookpot as they go - there is a reason, and it's not to look fancy.  It is so you can pay attention to what is going on in the pot.  You don't want your back turned, madly dicing the onions, when you chicken is burning.  Do it all beforehand, so that you can pay attention to what you are doing.

This recipe required ingredients and techniques I've never done before.  Shallots.  I used to dislike onions.  A lot.  I am now reformed, but because of my dislike, I never, never tried shallots.  Oh - my goodness - I have missed the boat!  They are mildly oniony, and they soften like butter.  No kidding.  I am going to plant some.  Immediately.  My usual, pathetic, lame grocery store - soon to be former grocery story, didn't have any.  ANY.  So I pulled up some images on the internet to show Dean, and sent him after some at a different store.  He came through  - I didn't know they could grow as big as the ones he brought home, but they were very good.  So glad I finally tried them.  The other thing I have never done before, believe it or not, is cut up a chicken.  I don't like dark meat, so almost all of the chicken I cook is breast meat, or I buy a whole chicken, jamb it on a beer can and roast it in the oven, and give the drumsticks to Jordan.

I watched the cooking video three times to get down the method of cutting up a chicken.  They make it look soooo easy.  ha.  I had a weak pair of kitchen shears, and a dull chef's knife: a lethal combination.  Luckily I didn't hurt myself.  I couldn't find any of the joints that were supposedly "just right there", or cut out the back bone without hacking into the breast meat quite a ways... Uugh.  I bagged up the backbone, wings and other various bits and pieces in a Ziploc to save for a day that I will make a chicken broth.  I felt like I was left with only a fraction of the chicken that it once was...  but at least I did it.  Next time I will be prepared with a sharper knife.  And a mean pair of scissors.

Next up was to make some couscous.  I've never attempted this before, either.  I had a disaster with polenta a while back and I vowed to stay safe with rice.  And only rice.  I do thank the testers at America's Test Kitchen for finding a way to make it easy and practical - take it out of the box, but not follow the box's directions.  It turned out awesome.

So there you have it: four new things to add to my 40 Things: ethnic recipe, shallots, cutting up a chicken and making couscous.  No wonder it took me two hours to get dinner on the table!

One other piece of advice: If you are already a fan of Fly Lady, you probably already do this.  Partially fill one of your sinks with soapy water, and wash and rinse your cooking dishes as you go.  As you can see in the picture, there were a ton of dirty dishes generated in act of making this recipe.  Most of them could be cleaned with a just a swish in the soapy water and a quick rinse.  I only had two pots at the end - the chicken pot and the couscous pot that still needed washing.  I was thankful not to add anymore to my dish pile.  I still have the perpetual pile next to the sink that never.  goes.  away.

Here is the recipe, from America's Test Kitchen

Chicken Tangine

1. Make your spice blend, set aside
* 1 1/4 tsp paprika
* 1/2 tsp ground cumin
* 1/4 tsp (each) of ground ginger, cayenne, coriander and ground cinnamon

2. Make lemon paste, set aside
Take one long strip of lemon peel (use a peeler and make sure there is no pith), and one clove of garlic and mince both until very fine.  Sprinkle mixture with a little salt and then take the flat of the knife blade (use a nice, wide chef's knife), and wipe it back and forth, mashing the mixture.  The goal is to release the lemon oil.

3. Dice one small yellow onion and place in a bowl, and add two long sections of lemon peel on top.  Set aside.

4. Mince 4 cloves of garlic, set aside.

5. Slice 3 - 4 carrots, set aside.

6. Slice 1 cup of Greek green olives.  (I used Spanish because that is what I had on hand)

7. Pour 1 3/4 C chicken broth into measuring cup, set aside.

8. Rinse one whole chicken, remove bag of giblets and pat dry.  Cut off thigh at the hip joint and then separate thigh from the drumstick.  Remove backbone with scissors and discard or keep for broth.  Remove wings and discard or keep for broth.  Take remaining to halves of breast and divide each into half.  You should have four pieces of dark meat and four pieces of white - sprinkle with a generous amount of salt and pepper.  (Using dark meat is essential to building the flavor in the dish - or so ATK says.  I may try this recipe again, and do so with all breast meat and see if that is so.)

9.  Heat 1 Tbsp of olive oil in a dutch oven on med-high heat until it is just smoking - the chicken should immediately sizzle when you add it.  Add the chicken (it will be crammed) and brown on one side.  Turn and brown on the other.

10.  Remove chicken from pot and set aside.  Drain off all of the oil except about a tablespoon's worth, and then add the sliced onions/two slices of lemon peel.  Saute until brown and softened.  If the pot gets too dry and begins to burn, you can add a Tbsp of water or two.  While you are waiting on the onions, remove the skin from all of the chicken pieces, using a paper towel. (discard the skin)

11.  Add the garlic and saute about 30 seconds, then add the spice mixture.

12.  Stir the onion/garlic/spice mixture until the spices bloom and get fragrant (about 30 seconds)

13.  Pour in chicken broth (be careful - the pot is super hot!).  Scrape the bottom to release leftover chicken bits as you stir.

14.  Add 1 Tbsp honey.

15.  Bring mixture to a boil and then reduce heat to medium and add ONLY the dark meat.  Cook for 5 minutes.

16.  Carefully cover dark meat with the carrots, creating a platform upon which you can place the four white meat pieces.  You are essentially 'steaming' the white meat.  Cover and cook for 10 -15 minutes, until the breast meat measures 160F.

17.  Remove chicken to a plate and tent with foil.

18.  Add the olives and cover and cook for 5 minutes.

19.  Add in the lemon 'paste'

20.  Add 3 Tbsp of lemon juice

21.  Add 1/4 C chopped cilantro and bring mixture to a simmer.

22.  Return the chicken to the pot (including the juice on the plate) and simmer for five minutes until ready to serve.

Couscous:

1.  Toast 3/4 C of sliced almonds in a dry skillet, flipping them around often, until they are a nice golden brown and have a nice, nutty aroma.

2.  Melt 3 Tbsp of unsalted butter in a 2 qt. saucepan.

3. Add 2-3 shallots, sliced thin, and saute until softened.  (about 3 min).

4. Add one clove of minced garlic, cook until fragrant - about 30 seconds.

5.  Add two cups of couscous and stir and toast until couscous has a nice, nutty aroma - about 4-5 minutes.  Be careful - it can go from toasted to burnt in just a few seconds - so stir constantly!

6.  Add 1 C water, 1 C chicken broth and 1 tsp salt.  Stir well and bring to a boil.

7.  Cover and remove from heat.  Let sit for 7 minutes.

8.  Fluff with fork and then add 1/2 tsp grated lemon zest, 2 tsp lemon juice, 1/4 C minced parsley and the toasted almonds.  Toss gently.


Serve the chicken atop a bed of couscous.

(I personally thought the chicken breasts were a little dry and flavorless using this method.  Next time I *might* eliminate the dark meat, and cook the breast meat directly in the sauce)  Otherwise it was a hit.  Even Owen, the pickiest of the kids, had cleaned his plate before I had even finished serving Dean and myself.  I love the complicated mix of flavors and the aroma....oh, the aroma!!  (and wouldn't you know it - I forgot to get an aftershot!)