gezundheit.

I have a cold.

T is not all about the sleeping. Or the pooping, which may explain the sleeping since he's been knocking us out with the gas.

He has been up three times each of the last three nights. Finally, last night at the 4am wake-up call, he had unloaded the poop of the century. I'm hoping that means that he'll snooze hard tonight because I doubt I'll kick my little cold quickly on the amount of fractured sleep I'm currently getting.

To make myself feel better I am making a roast chicken. I am slightly obsessed with roast chicken. Not so much the actual dish as the concept of it. I think it's because Ina writes about and talks about roast chicken like it's the second coming...and also because the concept is so soothingly and simply French. And I love few things better than the concept of France.

Anyway, I'm doing a little improvising. I've made Ina's roast chicken several times, and while it's always good, it's never goooood. The delicious aroma is always more intoxicating than the taste. I've made it according to the gospel of Alice Waters. I've winged it.

Today? Today I am going to conquer it. I am determined to make it taste as fabulous as it smells.

I started by washing and drying the bird; stuffing the cavity with salt, pepper, a halved lemon, a tablespoon or so of dried thyme, and five cloves of garlic that I smashed to smithereens; and lovingly rubbing the old girl down with olive oil, salt, and pepper. Then I browned a couple of halved onions in a very, very hot skillet in an olive oil/butter combo. When they were nice and brown and smelled like heaven, I 86ed them from the pan and tossed them in a bowl with a quartered lemon and a drizzle of olive oil. Then I browned some carrots in the super hot skillet. After I removed the carrots I browned the skin on half the chicken. I didn't really think that one through, though, and gave up before browning the other half for fear of catching my kitchen on fire with splattering oil/butter.

Now the whole concoction is in the giant skillet, waiting to go into the oven. And when it's all roasted, I think I'm going to deglaze the pan with a little Octoberfest and chicken broth to make a nice au jus. (I can't call it a pan gravy because no one in my house would eat something called gravy, including me.)

I'm also going to roast some green beans and make croutons from the weekend's leftover cornmeal brioche. (The brioche and accompanying Cinnamon Honey Butter are a whole different post. Because that butter? Dang.)

If roast chicken with carrots and onions, green beans, and cornmeal brioche croutons can't make me feel better, I might as well hang it up folks.

I'll report back on the fabulousity or the epic failure tomorrow. I know you'll wait with bated breath.