Sunday Dinner

Sunday dinner was the culinary highlight most weeks in my family. Even the dog figured that out, scratching up the back door, anxious for the extra special bone or scraps of some sort that she knew she could expect. Except she was out of luck if we had chicken: chicken bones were too soft.

Sunday dinner today is roast chicken, with a spinach salad of my own creation and a stuffed potato. For dessert I quartered the recipe for Tilslørte Bondepiker, or “Covered Country Girls” and baked it in a small star-shaped dish with moderately successful results. I’d have made the whole recipe had you all been coming. In fact, even if you happened to be celiac I could have made this recipe, as it has no flour at all, just apples, butter, sugar and eggs, sprinkled with chopped almonds.

The bonus of roasting a chicken is cooking up the bones for stock for soups for the week. One more week of classes before our “spring” break, rather ridiculous considering we got eighteen inches of snow and a howling blizzard last Tuesday night and the college was closed on Wednesday. Of course, stalwart Canadian that I am, I emailed my students and said I was going in anyway and hoped they would come for lessons if they lived on campus and could walk. Anything but adding to my interminable list of makeup lessons! But who knows, I heard a cardinal sing spectacularly on my way to school on Friday morning. They brighten the landscape with their flashes of red in the winter, but you don’t hear them sing. I’m taking it as the first sign of spring.