A couple weeks ago when I opened the fridge to assess the eating situation (a daily occurrence), I noticed there were a few funner-than-usual ingredients—grilled chicken, roasted broccoli, lemons. Stooped over, the chilled air swirling around my face, I got struck with a sudden hankering for something new and exciting to eat.

Something bright and vibrant.
Lots of veggies.
A big flavor punch.
A little exotic, maybe.
Kind of salad-y, but fortifying.
Family friendly.

So I lugged my Cook’s Illustrated tome from the shelf by the chimney and set about scouring the index for the perfect dish. I found it, too! Not just a recipe to use things up, but a recipe worthy of purchasing ingredients for.

The original recipe seemed rather fussy, calling for cooking the meat in butter, boiling the broccoli in the pasta water, etc, etc. But since my broccoli and chicken were already cooked, I was a couple steps ahead. My advice: do what I did! Here’s how:

*Grill the chicken ahead of time. Grilled chicken is faster and tastier than nearly any other chicken method—I DID NOT KNOW THIS UNTIL THIS SUMMER, WOE IS ME—and it is my new, to-have-on-hand meat. I buy large packs of boneless thighs from Costco and then grill a whole bunch at one time. We eat what we want, and the leftovers go into the fridge (or freezer), ready to be chopped up and added to anything.

Process: cover the bottom of a large pan with a single layer of chicken pieces (there is no need to trim the fat—it’s all good) and drizzle the meat with olive oil, sprinkling liberally with salt and black pepper. Place the pieces—flipping them so the oiled tops are on the bottom—on the grill. Sprinkle the tops with more salt and pepper, and drizzle with more olive oil (if you want). Grill on medium-high heat for 20 minutes or so, turning every few minutes, until the meat is nicely browned and the juices run clear when stabbed. THAT’S IT. I served a piece to my mom, alongside some curried lentils, and she got all gaspy. “Oh my! What is the marinade? Is it vinegar based?” “Nope, no marinade,” I said smugly, tee-hee-hee.

*Roast the broccoli. (Y’all probably do this all the time already, right?) Fill a large pan with fresh broccoli, drizzle it with lots of olive oil, give it a dusting of salt, and roast at 400 degrees for 20 minutes or so. I serve it as a side dish, keeping leftovers in the fridge for later meals or to add to soups, stir fries, curries, pastas, whatever.

ANYWAY. If you have those components on hand, this meal comes together right quick. I doubled the recipe and the leftovers were fought over.

Pasta with Chicken, Broccoli, and Oven-Roasted Tomatoes
Adapted from The Cook’s Illustrated Cookbook.

When fresh, the dish is saucy, but as it sits, the pasta soaks up more liquid. Either way is delicious, but I’m partial to the wine-y sauce.

6 tablespoons butter, divided
2 onions, chopped
12 garlic cloves, minced
1½ teaspoons dried thyme (or 4 teaspoons fresh)
4 teaspoons flour
½ teaspoon red pepper flakes
4 cups chicken broth
1½ cups dry white wine
2 cups freshly grated Parmesan, plus more for serving
2 cups oven-roasted tomatoes, cut into strips
2 pounds grilled chicken thighs, cut into strips
3 pounds oven-roasted broccoli
1 tablespoon dried parsley (or 2 tablespoons fresh)
1 pound pasta (rotini, penne, or ziti)
lemon wedges, for serving

for the sauce:
In a large kettle, melt 2 tablespoons of butter, and then saute the onion with ½ teaspoon of salt until the onions are soft and slightly brown.

Add the garlic, thyme, flour, and pepper flakes and cook for 30 seconds. Whisk in the broth and wine and bring to a simmer. Cook for about 30 minutes, uncovered, until the sauce has reduced by 1-2 cups. It will require all your will power to refrain from ladling the sauce into a mug and drinking it straight. Stay strong.

Add the chicken, Parmesan, tomatoes, broccoli, parsley, and remaining butter. Cook for another 2-3 minutes, or until heated through.

to assemble:
Cook the pasta according to package instructions, reserving 1 cup of the pasta water. Drain the pasta and add it to the sauce and meat. If you’d like more liquid, add the reserved pasta water. Season with salt and pepper. Serve, and don’t forget to pass the lemon wedges and more fresh Parmesan.

This same time, years previous: the quotidian (10.6.14), catching our breath, it’s for real, a good book, one foggy morning, at least I tried, rustic cornmeal soup with beet greens, a touchy subject, and the donut party, part one and part two.

As I mentioned before, my husband and I agreed to take over the homemade donut stand at the Virginia Mennonite Relief Sale. The sale was this past weekend.

Over the last ten months, I’ve messed around with recipes, run numbers, had several meetings with the previous donut-makers, pored over the three-ring binder of detailed photos and instructions that they so thoughtfully created for us, made lists, checked them twice and thrice, and, after much agonizing, placed the final order for ingredients.

A couple weeks ago, my husband I did a preliminary walk-through of the donut-making spot: the Ruritan club’s chicken shack at the fairgrounds (where the relief sale is held). It was not encouraging. Low ceilings, uneven concrete floors, a row of fryers (I’ve never even seen a fryer up close), several Pepsi machines, a few rickety tables. How in the world…???

And then I started not sleeping. I’d wake up in the middle of the night and think, “We need 140 pounds of mashed potatoes but we’re only making 35 recipes. That can’t be right!” and then I’d struggle with mental math for a very long and entirely unproductive time. In the morning, I’d be like, four pounds of mashed potatoes times 35 is 140, duh. Finally, for the last three nights leading up to the sale, I resorted to Benedryl.

My husband took off work on Thursday and, after what might be the worst family stress-fight we’ve had in a long time, we all went out to the fairgrounds to begin setting up. We scrubbed the place down, laid donated carpet remnants (to facilitate clean-up), rearranged the room, hauled in the donut-making equipment that was stored on the relief sale truck, and washed supplies.

That evening we dropped the younger two children at my parents’ house (where they would stay for the next two nights before transferring to my friend’s house for the third night).

Friday morning, my husband and I, plus the two older kids, headed back out right for a full day of prep work. We finalized the room’s arrangement, and then the supplies started to arrive. Gallons of milk, cases of butter, cartons of eggs.

And the dry goods: 50-pound sacks of confectioner’s sugar, granulated sugar, vanilla, and mace. Except instead of the “three boxes of mace from the bulk food section of the store” that I had ordered, they sent three buckets of the stuff—you know, what the store gets and then repackages to sell.

When the forklift of flour pulled up to the door, the mace mistake was still fresh on my mind, so I stopped one of the kids to double-check the label. Good thing I did, too, because they had sent 700 pounds of all-purpose flour instead of bread flour. The relief sale organizers flew into top gear, searching local stores for flour. They cleaned out a couple stores before finally finding a bulk food store that had the remaining six hundred pounds of bread flour in stock.

“They’re packaging it up in five-pound bags for you,” the volunteer announced triumphantly. “They might not be exact, but they’ll be close.”

My heart plummeted. Not exact? We had the recipe calculated to the ounce! It had to be accurate. But there was no point in saying anything.

We spent the afternoon mixing the glaze and pre-measuring the sugar, yeast, and salt, wrapping everything up in good time. Yes, I thought. We can get in a good nap.

But then the flour arrived. I set a bag on the scale: 5 pounds 9 ounces.

“We’ll have to rebag it, all of it,” I announced wearily, and to my husband, I muttered, “I am so going to lose it.”

One of the relief sale workers overheard me. Without saying a word, he took off his coat, stepped up to the table, and for the next hour and a half, he twistied shut the remeasured bags. He did more than that, though. His presence prevented me from having a full-blown meltdown. Civil service, literally.

That evening, we went to bed at 8:30. We managed to actually fall asleep, but then the fire alarm went off … twice. Of all the nights! And then my son’s wake-up alarm went off at 11:48—some crazy nuclear siren type alarm—except he had hooked up his phone to his sound system so the beeping was heart-stoppingly loud. So much for sleep. “It’s not even tomorrow yet,” I said, pulling on my jeans.

We arrived at the fairgrounds soon after 1:00 am, and for the next 12 hours, we made donuts. It was an absolute blast.

Some details:

*For the first eight hours, the fairgrounds were fairly quiet. It was dark outside. It felt like we were in our own little, very busy, world. And then around 9 o’clock, the place exploded. Suddenly there was a line. Never before have I had that many people waiting to eat my food!

*There were three shifts of volunteers, about 30 in each shift. Many of the volunteers were experienced and knew more about the process than we did which was wonderful.

*For eleven hours, our older son stood outside in the pavilion (because he was using a gas cook stove) and scalded milk, melted butter, and blended the hot liquid into the mashed potatoes with an industrial immersion blender.

*From the mixing table to the proofing room to the rollers to the runners to the fryers, glazers, and boxers, the system was like a well-oiled machine. My husband and I did supervision, quality control, and problem solving but hardly any of the actual work.

*There were a few glitches (our dough uses less yeast so it took longer to rise, we ran out of boxes, we went over-time and had to call in extra volunteers), but they were totally manageable. It’s just donuts, I kept telling myself (and my fretful husband).

*Exhaustion happened. Around 11:00 am, my face stopped working—I could hardly smile, and it was a struggle to form words. My entire body ached, even my toes. I was hungry. Dehydrated, too. I felt like I might start weeping at any moment.

*The clean-up crew = angels. While I stood around vacant-eyed, they made things happens. Even when I walked out and laid down on a picnic table, they kept at it.

We got home mid-afternoon. Unpacked a few things, washed up dishes and a bunch of kettles, ate a donut, vacuumed. My son went to bed at four, and my husband and I were in bed by five. I slept for thirteen hours.

The end.

PS. Except not really. We keep talking about the process, making changes, planning for next year. In church this morning, my husband made a preliminary sketch of how he’d like to re-organize the proofing room.

PPS. We are not at all sick of donuts. Crazy, but true.

This same time, years previous: the soiree of 2014, a lesson I’d rather skip, the quotidian (10.1.12), Sunday cozy, pulled braised beef, and serious parenting.

For my birthday, my husband got me a bottle of wine. Welcome home to the circus, he wrote on the card.

“I  picked it out because of the label,” he said. (Which I happen to think is a totally legitimate wine-shopping technique.)

Later I had the kids pose with the wine.

What a bunch of punks.

Speaking of punks, while I was away, the older two dressed up in black and had my younger son take pictures.

Apparently, after my son picked up his new, mostly all-black uniform from the city rescue squad (he now holds memberships in two squads), they got inspired.

My little twits, acting all tough. It totally cracked me up.

Back to the birthday.

The house was scrubbed clean (at my very specific and much-repeated request), and the kids gave me enough candy and chocolate to keep me going for a long time. My older daughter presented me with a mammoth box of Eggo waffles because Stranger Things. (I made her watch the first episode because I am an evil mother who delights in scaring her children.* She loved it. She also spent the night on our floor.)

The kids had never eaten Eggos and were intrigued. My older daughter calls them “Eggles” and likes catching them when they pop out of the toaster.

My younger daughter made me a cheesecake.

It  was perfect: creamy, smooth, and utterly delicious.