March 25, 2012 Dinner – Roasted Chicken and minted potatoes and peas.

March 25, 2012 Dinner – Roasted Chicken and minted potatoes and peas.

Tonight, our friends, Cynthia and Ricardo came over with some drawing for the modification of our garden and dinner.  Suzette went to Costco for a chicken and we skewered one chicken on a Spandex rack and stuffed slices of lemon, butter and sprigs of fresh tarragon from our garden under the skin and roasted the chicken in the oven for 1½ hour at 350°.  In addition, we quartered and cubed Yukon Gold potatoes we had purchased at Trader Joe’s on Saturday (3 lb. for $1.99).  Suzette tossed the potatoes in Spanish olive oil, pepper and coarse Maui salt and roasted the potatoes for 1 hour at 350°.  When the potatoes were finished roasting, we chopped about 1/2 cup of fresh mint from our garden and we then blanched one 10 oz. package of fresh shelled green peas (10 oz. for $3.29) in minted water and strained the peas and poured them onto the potatoes .   Cynthia and Ricardo brought a bottle of Clos de Bois Russian River Chardonnay and a salad that went nicely with the chicken and potatoes and peas.  We served a bottle of Fumé Blanc from Trader Joe’s ($12.98).   For dessert we ate Belgium Butter and almond cookies from Trader Joe’s in the garden.

A lovely evening with temperatures around 68° and the first meal cooked with tarragon fresh from the garden.  Thank goodness we are finally starting to have fresh spring produce in our garden.

Cynthia is designing a modification of the back yard, so we talked for a while about that.  Ricardo is designing sets for the Disney Lone Ranger films.  We sat in the gardne until 9:30 with a small fire in our outdoor ceramic fire pit   Yeah, it's spring! 

Bon Appétit