You really shouldn't ever read the 1st post, it's usually boring...

Well, here goes... I figured the day before Christmas Eve (and the first of three days straight of cooking) would be as good a day as any to start writing this thing. Time will tell how long I stick to it...

Today began the prep for Christmas Eve dinner. After a long, exhausting visit to the grocery store to stock up for the coming marathon weekend in the kitchen (3 holiday meals in a row) and a few hours distraction watching a terrible, but pretty, movie; I set to work...
The eventual goal for the meal is to have brined, roasted cornish game hens with sliced, baked potato things and some sort of greenery. (here's where this thing gets educational)
The brine recipe I have comes from the book Charcuterie  by Micheal Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn, and let me tell you; if you love meat, particularly of the salty, cured variety, and want to be able to craft this meat yourself; you need this book! It's brilliant and chock full o' yum.
Anyway, among various aromatic things like tarragon and onions and lemons and of course lots of salt, the recipe calls for 1 gallon of water. Well that seems easy enough; bring 1 gallon of water to a simmer and fill it with the flavor-y things. So I get out my largest pot and start measuring out a gallon of water (using the blender container because it goes to 6 cups and my measuring cup goes only to 2). Turns out my largest pot holds just over 1 gallon.  Until you add an onion, a head of garlic, and 2 lemons... Then there's a lot of steaming and sizzling and all sorts of unpleasantness.  But at least now my house smells wonderful and I have brine ready for my hens tomorrow.

The only sad part has now been re-reading this and realizing that I am desperately out of practice at writing in a way that is interesting to read. Or maybe I was never that good to begin with, but I'll keep at it.