Someone requested that I start blogging with recipes, food experiments, and food disasters that I try, so here goes.

Last night I came home and knew I had to come up with something for dinner so, looking around, I saw that we had some frozen chicken, a couple of acorn squash that had been sitting in the garage for about a month, and a bag of baby carrots. Well, what the hell do you do with that?Here's what!

First of all split the the squash , remove the seeds, drizzle with a bit of olive oil (ALWAYS keep olive oil on hand,) and tuck some rosemary sprigs (from the garden) into the hollows. Get them onto a 425 degree oven. They are going to need about 45 minutes to soften enough and you can get the chicken going.

Now, for the chicken, you can leave it frozen, but finely chop a little less than a quarter of a red onion and four cloves of garlic. (I love that stuff!) Now, drizzle as much olive oil as you like in a hot pan - remembering that olive oil is a very healthy "food of the gods", use it liberally! You can also put about an eighth of a stick of butter - then dump the onions in. Once they are cooked through and getting glassy, dump the garlic in and cook it through quickly. REMEMBER!!!! If you cook garlic too long and it browns it gets bitter and ruins the whole dish so watch out! Once that garlic is cooked, pour in about two cups of chicken stock (always have this on hand!) and place the chicken in the pan, as well as about a half cup of chopped herbs. I went into the garden and picked thyme, basil, sage and oregano, but you could add marjoram and whatever else you like. (It seems like my kitchen flower garden is slowly becoming an herd garden!)

Once you have added the chicken and herbs, add a small package of baby carrots and cover. Once it has reached a boil turn it to medium and cook for about 40 minutes. You could also add mushrooms and red wine, preferably a pinot noir, if you like and slow cook this. I guess it would then be a version of coq a vin, without the bacon! Sure would be good though!

So after about thirty minutes it will cook down quite a bit and you need to really watch it at this point, making sure you have at least a bit of liquid in the pan. Now check on your acorn squash. Remove the squash, if it's tender, scoop the flesh out of the shells into a small loaf pan, add some butter, brown sugar and chopped pecans, and return to the oven for about 15 to 20 minutes - all the while keeping an eye on the chicken. Once the squash is done (which my wife says she could make a meal of alone!) the chicken should be ready. Serve it up and eat it! Even the kids liked it!

That's all! Next up -Butternut Squash Soup!