Riding on Hold; Eating, not so much

It's just a few days until AIDS Lifecycle, so riding, as is the tradition, has been pretty much on hold until rideout on Sunday. Normally, we would have ridden this past weekend, but Jerry headed down to Southern California to visit his dad, and since I'm still not riding my half bike, the only riding I did was maybe a total of an hour on the wind trainer.

But I did do some eating, and even did some cooking.

I worked all day Monday, even though it was Memorial Day, but got home in time to make a nice dinner for Jerry's return. I cooked my standard: roast chicken. I roast a whole organic chicken on a vertical roaster. I really do find that organic chicken tastes better and it's worth the few cents more a pound. I rubbed some olive oil on the skin and then ground some African spices on it. Don't ask me what's in the African spice blend. All I know is, it tastes good and has a bit of a kick to it.

On the tray below the chicken were a combo of cut up red potatoes and halved brussel sprouts. I love roasting brussel sprouts. It's my new favorite way to cook them. I love them in almost any form, but this has got to be my favorite.

I roasted the chicken in my convection oven, starting out at 350, goosing it up to 375 for a little while, and then down to 325. I didn't really time it, but it was more than an hour, and it was done beautifully.

While all that was cooking I made a rhubarb crisp. Mark Bittman has a recipe in the week's (or was it last week) New York Times that looked simple and delicious, as his recipes usually are. I cut up a couple of pounds of rhubarb, added a small amount of sugar, orange juice and zest, then, on top of that the crisp was brown sugar, flour, oats, cinnamon (more than he called for) and walnuts. His recipe called for pecans, but the walnuts were the first bag of nuts easily reachable in my freezer; plus, I like them better.

The crisp was still warm when we ate some, topped with vanilla ice cream. I had a cup of espresso with it. Perfect!

I can't believe the ride is in just a few days. I haven't even thought about packing, and for the first time, I have not raised my minimum. I have sent out a last-minute plea to friends. Let's hope they come through.

The Friday before the ride is a spaghetti dinner the Pos Peds are sponsoring. Looking forward to seeing everyone and grateful Beau's work colleagues, rather than me, are preparing the dinner.