Naked in Italy

I was watching No Reservations the other night *of course* and what came on but a commercial for a new show, which starts tonight. This got me very excited and happy. Why? Because it’s a new JAMIE OLIVER show! We have not been getting enough Jamie Oliver here in the states for a looooong time. TLC showed his “School Dinners” show one week, but that was it.

The new show is “Jamie’s Great Italian Escapes” and it’s on tonight (Wednesday) at 7 (central). Dare I forgo my embarrassing habit of watching America’s Next Top Model? I think that I should. Jamie is much much better for my brain.

This reminds me, a month ago or so someone sent me an e-mail with a Word document attached which claimed to be Jamie Oliver’s new cookbook “Naked Chef 2.” It said it was released by an angry insider at the publisher before the book was to be rsomethingr aomething. The word document is indeed filled with more than 100 Jamie Oliver recipes (I recognized some of them from teevee), but I hadn’t heard anything about a so-called “Naked Chef 2,” so I put my goodies gumshoe hat on and, well, I just checked it out at Snopes.com. Yeah, they are all Jamie Oliver recipes, but it’s not an actual book. Someone just compiled a bunch of his recipes, which were available all over the internet already, and put them on one document.

And remember, TONIGHT! New show! *squeeeee!*

a dinner to start november

i'm doing my best to embrace the colder weather and shorter bleaker days of fall. Food helps, of course. Tonight I made a very fall-appropriate dinner to ring in November (where the heck did October go, anyway?!?). It was a simple dinner of sweet potatoes, fennel, garlic cloves, onions and shallots dressed in some olive oil and seasoned simply with salt, pepper and paprika and roasted in the oven. While those were starting to roast, I rubbed olive oil, salt, pepper, paprika, garlic powder and onion salt on so chicken breasts, then browned them a bit in butter in the skillet. Then I put the seared chicken on top of the veggies and continued roasting everything together (oh and I poured the chicken-y butter into the roasting dish as well).

I sauteed some swiss chard in butter, olive oil, fresh garlic, salt, pepper and sugar for a bright green side dish. I ate everything with a dark ale. It made me like the season that much more. Although I really could use some work on my swiss chard preparation...it remained a little too bitter. My roasting skilzz, however...heck yes.

Without further ado, here's some pictures: