La fin des tours

This week-end we celebrated the end of two important tours - the Tour de France and the Tour de Whitehorse. It was an opportunity to learn a very important lesson - it's not the size of the Tour, but how you watch it that counts. The Tour de France meant waking in the wee hours of the morning and catching glimpses of the ride while brushing your teeth or making breakfast. The Tour de Whitehorse meant buying a couple bottles of wine, some St. Andre cheese and a loaf of bread and sitting on the side of the Robert Service Way screaming "Vive le Tour" at the top of our lungs. Although I'm not sure our cheering was appreciated by the participants, it was certainly more fun then sitting in front of the television. To celebrate la fin des tours, we cooked up a big French dinner...and by French, I mean we referred to the chicken as poulet. The nice thing about dinner was it was largely supplied by the garden. The best part of the meal was definitely the Tour de France Poulet.

Tour de France Poulet

  • Roasting Chickens
  • Butter or Bacon Fat (don't underestimate the deliciousness of bacon fat)
  • Fresh Garden Herbs (thyme, sage, savory, oregano and unidentified herb like plants)
  • Baby Potatoes
  • Salt and Pepper

Mix the butter/bacon fat with the herbs and mash them all together. Lift up the skin of the roasting chicken and stuff in the herbed butter. Rub extra herb butter all over the chicken skin and put some inside the cavity. Put the chicken on a grill above a roasting pan (if possible) and put the potatoes underneath the chicken, this way all the yummy chicken drippings fall on the potatoes. Salt and pepper the chicken and put it into a pre-heated over that's at 450 degrees. Wait about 15 minutes and then turn the oven down to 325. Cook your chicken for about 1 1/2 hours (or until it's done). When you have 15 minutes left, you can add swiss chard to the potatoes for an iron boost (or if you have a ridiculous amount of extra chard in your garden). ENJOY!!!

The rest of dinner included roasted eggplants and garden zucchini, garden salad and broccoli with gouda. The broccoli sure tasted yummy, but has left a big hole in the ol' vegetable garden. Soon the beets will be ready and I've already been stealing the occasional carrot.

The garden is looking good these days...my favorite section this year is the fuschia zone that features nicotina, petunias, sage, geraniums, snapdragons, pansies and dianthus. Time is running out, I'm going to have to take lots of pictures before the evil Mr. F makes an uninvited appearence.

Sierra posted this on Jul 30, 2007 from the kitchen | | permanent link