First week
Fourteenth week
A whole chicken costs $14. (It's Murray's Chicken.)
Cut into 4 pieces, I've got 2 full legs (left) and 2 breasts with wing (right). The breast is boneless except for the half wing I left on there. I could have left the whole wing, but realized this too late. (Lesson learned: always read your Julia before making the first cut)
Bake the breasts until golden and you have dinner. Put the legs away for later. (I deboned them and made a crockpot stew.) So that's two dinners from one bird.
Here's part of that breast, with a shiitake gravy. Plus brown rice & broccoli.
1. Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band: The Beatles. My parents had this on vinyl back when vinyl was the only viable listening choice. I was raised mainly on classical music with a smattering of folk, so Sergeant Pepper's blew my mind. Once I figured out how to play records, I would put this on and lie under the coffee table with the sleeve and liner. I liked to read the lyrics whilst they were sung (sorry Jarvis Cocker) and stare at George Harrison in the gatefold. He was TOTALLY DREAMY. (Wow, I looked up "gatefold" on Wikipedia to make sure I was using it correctly, and the demo photo is of the exact picture I'm describing. Freaky.)
2. Thriller: Michael Jackson. Incredible in so many ways.
3. Like a Virgin: Madonna. I was not the girl in our school who actually dressed up like Madonna every day (black lace, mini skirts, multiple necklaces, frosted hair with bows). But as your average American girl in the early 80s, I was caught up in Madonna's vast charisma. Like a Virgin is not just an album, it's a madeleine of happy 80s memories. It reminds me of running away to New York City and getting a modeling contract, chewing gum in a sassy manner, partying at art-dance clubs, sleeping on the floor in an alphabet city squat, and generally living like a Tama Janowitz character as much as possible. (I never did any of these things, except maybe the gum, but Madonna transports me there anyway.)
4. Big Lizard in My Backyard: The Dead Milkmen. OMG! In early high school, my friend decided to get "into" punk rock, which doesn't seem very punk rock in retrospect. I think she liked a guy who liked that music, so she decided she'd like it too. She bought Dead Kennedys and Black Flag and DRI and the Forgotten Rebels and spiked her hair and wrote things on her jeans jacket in black marker. She also, possibly by mistake, bought the Dead Milkmen. I took to it right away--fast, irreverent, and so so funny.
5. The Lion and the Cobra: Sinéad O'Connor. Sinéad is like the anti-Madonna. Super real, gritty, raw, bald. I remember the day Nancy, still one of my best friends, played me this record after school and told me about Sinéad. We memorized her weird yelps and warbles and Gaelic raving. This was about when high school got a bit more bearable; I stopped worrying so much about fitting in and started enjoying being an individual.
6. Horse Rotorvator: Coil. Mmm, industrial. It makes me feel all warm & fuzzy inside. Dark and gorgeous and gross and morbid, it's actually a great pick-me-up if you're in a bad mood or if the weather is getting grey or the days growing darker... like now. This album was very helpful when depressing things were happening in my life.
7. Appetite for Destruction: Guns 'n' Roses. I think this is the first on the list that was my very own commerical album--not someone else's or a tape-of-a-tape. I went to Buzzo's and bought this with my own money (on tape, of course) and I'm still listening to it. Basically any taste I have for cigarettes or Jack Daniel's or tailgating or monster stadium tours can probably in some way be related to this album.
8. I Just Can't Stop It: The English Beat. What a relief to discover ska. Thank you, college!
9. Fishbone EP: Fishbone. Is it cheating to list an EP? This album or whatever is just so vivacious and fun and noisy. I think with the possible exception of #12, the English Beat/Fishbone tape has gotten the most play of anything in my life. (I had #8 and #9 back-to-back on the same yellow cassette.)
10. London Calling: The Clash. In first year university, the guy across the hall came into our room, put this on the tape player, lay on my roommate's empty bed, and sang every song to himself. I fell in love with it (not him). This is just pure goodness.
11. Red, Hot + Blue: A Tribute to Cole Porter. It must be cheating to have a various artists collection on my list, but here it is anyway. Like Sergeant Pepper's was my introduction to pop/rock sounds, this Cole Porter collection by pop artists was my entree to music that swings. You know how in High Fidelity the narrator claims he can explain how he got from Deep Purple to Howling Wolf in 7 records (or something like that)? Well Red Hot & Blue led me to Frank Sinatra, Tommy Dorsey, Fred Astaire, Benny Goodman, Joe Williams, Ella Fitzgerald, Anita O'Day, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Irving Berlin, the Gershwins, Shirley Horne, Dinah Washington, Bobby Short, Hadda Brooks, etc. etc.. Basically it showed me that music I thought was stuffy, unbearable and "for old people," was actually really, really cool.
12. Paul's Boutique: Beastie Boys. I discovered this late, after believing all the crappy reviews when it first came out. But they couldn't keep me away for long because I LOVE THE BEASTIE BOYS. This album is an amazing piece of work and endlessly entertaining. I am still figuring out some of the samples they put on there. A true desert island disc.
13. Blood Sugar Sex Magick: Red Hot Chili Peppers. My deep onetime love of the Chili Peppers now seems fairly uncool. But I did so love this and also the albums that came before it. (The ones that came after it? No way.) When musical attention was largely focused on the grunge coming out of the American Northwest, I was turning to Southern California and the Chili Peppers. I drew their eight-armed asterisk logo on my wrist all the time in some kind of fake tattoo solidarity.
14. Elastica: Elastica. In the mid-90s there seemed to be a bit of concern over whether it was OK to like "Britpop." I'm not sure if it was the Brit part or the Pop part, but I did like it. While Blur and Oasis were fine, Elastica, fronted by the well-read Justine Frischmann, was awesome. I had a theory that each song paid individual tribute to a different band or genre... this song is the Cure and this song is Blondie and so forth. I have now forgotten all the brilliant arguments I put together to illustrate that theory.
15. Nightsongs: Stars. Stars gave me hope that lush, romantic, forlorn pop like the Smiths might rise again. As if there was any question about their planned direction, the first Stars song to get much play was their cover of "This Charming Man" (c.f. Little Darla Has a Treat For You, volume 15). I have documented my love of Stars elsewhere, but this album is what cemented it in the first place.
So what about you, care to share? Leave comments or Facebook about it!
Here are the 2 bannetons (or "brotforms," aka bread molds) that I got--one round and one long/oval. My dough is rising in the background.
Here's my shaped dough on the baking sheet. The flour in the banneton makes a pretty pattern on the dough.
Then I slashed it with my dedicated box cutter. (Still gotta get one of those fancy bread blades.)
Here's the baked loaf. It was kind of huge, but I really liked the shape! Also see that gigantic wire rack it's resting on? Another purchase with my CSN prize! (It is LOAVELY. <--That was a typo, but I left it.) 
As usual, I don't like to post other people's recipes cuz it's not my intellectual property. But I'll recap the ingredients: whole wheat couscous, macadamia nuts, cherry tomatoes, kale sauteed with garlic and dill, diced celery, parsley, all dressed with lemon juice and olive oil. We were shocked at how good this was--maybe it's those high-calorie macadamia nuts that hide in the couscous. The flavors were great and the different textures pleasing. We definitely had seconds. (One note: the original recipe calls for broccoli, but we used kale. Afterward we couldn't even picture it with broccoli because the kale seemed so perfect.)
Here's a Simple Lentil Salad from The Nourishing Gourmet. This is yummy--cute Puy lentils with cucumber, orange pepper and basil tossed in a garlic-kissed vinaigrette. I usually get boring brown lentils and I am loving the tiny, soft French ones. The Nourishing Gourmet also suggests adding feta, and I can see this being good with any number of other veggies: zucchini confetti, chunks of tomatoes, thin pieces of radish, maybe even some sauteed greens like the couscous salad.
