Pat the Chicken

I keep running across these recipes that say, "Pat the chicken dry with paper towels," and then the instructions go on to tell about spices or frying or whatever.  I never quite saw the necessity of that.  I often soak my chicken parts in water for hours before cooking, so yes, then I will [usually] pat it dry.  But not always.

Last week, in a rush for lunch, I bought chicken tenderloins -- little strips of skinless, boneless breast meat.  Mushrooms were on sale at Aldi super-cheap, and I had my heart set on some delectable Chicken Marsala.  I dredged the chicken strips in seasoned flour.  When I set them into the thin layer of hot oil, ... uh ... the oil ... uh ... exploded.  Most of the burns are decently healing over, but my left wrist is still a mess of raw skin.

My guess is that the moisture in the chicken was the problem.  From now on, I'll pat the chicken dry! That's lesson #1.

Lesson #2?  I must remember that a burn should be patted dry before the aloe application.  I pulled my arm out from under the cold faucet and started rubbing on aloe.  But it was diluted by the water all over my arm, and thus not as effective as usual.


By the way, that Chicken Marsala was amaAAAzing.

Cotton Kills

While growing up, I hated wool. It itched.

Most colleges have PE requirements. One of the classes Philip considered taking was Winter Camping. Friends told him that the class requirements were one weekend away with the whole class, camping, and to know that COTTON KILLS.

Yeah, right. Those little balls of fluff grab the daggers from the Killer [Dust-]Bunnies and plunge then into people who are using the cotton-balls for first-aid purposes??

Okay, here's the scoop from the kids who took the class. When cotton gets wet, it cannot hold warmth. Wool is different. If your wool socks or your wool sweater is damp, the clothing can still keep you warm. But not cotton clothing. On my paper route once, I bumbled into discovering the truth of this. It was below freezing, but I managed to step into a puddle of slushy water that had melted partially because of the salt on the roads. Wet socks. Wet cotton socks. After a few minutes of really really cold feet, I peeled off the socks and went bare-footed in my sandals for the rest of the paper route. It was warmer to have naked skin than to be clothed in wet cotton. But when I've shoveled the driveway in wool socks and gotten wet feet, I'm okay.

That warmth thing kinda makes up for the itchiness, eh?
Makes me covet more wool.

Clean Headlights

I had just washed the van the previous week. But boy, with the thaw over the weekend, we were picking up some heavy-duty grime on the windows of the van. I had to wash them over and over at the gas station, and the muddy water just rolled off the windshield onto the hood.

We hopped into the van Saturday evening to go from our hotel room to the college to enjoy the musical there. Something was wrong with the headlights. Never before had both headlights gone out at the same time; that seemed a very odd coincidence. But we could detect a change from the running lights to the headlights to the brights. So it didn't seem the lights had burned out. And yet, we could hardly see. We wondered how well the other drivers could see us.

Turned out that the dirt on the lights was SO HEAVY that they were severely dimmed.

I was aware of wiping snow from the headlights when I scrape the car windows. But washing the headlights when I wash the windows was something that had never occurred to me before this weekend!