The Enchanting Adventures of Renard Roux

Well since I recently dyed my hair pink I figured I needed to be out letting the last bit of Summer dazzle off of my lovely pink tresses, so I hit the park a lot with Stacy, Amanda and our pack of dogs. I swear, we all got the pick of the litters because all our canine companions are great! Renard and Chevalier and I have grown a lot closer these last couple of weeks because it's just been us living together in the big house. You can tell we love to cuddle!


I'm no meteorologist, but I'm assuming the days of Summer are gone now, and the recent rain showers have been supporting that theory! Stacy, Laura, Amanda and I took shelter from the cold weather at a local Japanese restaurant and did a whole bunch of sake bombs (and walked responsibly).


However, a few sake bombs weren't going to satisfy us on our day off so we walked to the local market and picked up some plum wine, Brut champagne and a peach to create Plum Peach Perfections! It's actually a very sweet drink and sneaks up on you so make sure you're not planning on...moving...much.


The girls and I decided to have a nice sit down dinner last night so I threw on my apron, filled up my bags with ingredients and platters and whisked myself away to their condo to do some heavy duty pasta cooking. On the menu was chicken and sage sausage pasta in a rose sauce, plums with chevre and cracked pepper and an heirloom tomato mascarpone salad. My mom also happened to entrust four delicious cupcakes from Mrs. Delish's bakery in my care so I brought those over as well. Let me brag about my cooking skills here-- the meal was fantastic. Nothing makes food taste better than good friends, jazz music and griping about men!


I think that covers the last three days pretty well, but there's never enough time or room to blog when you're always adventuring. Hope you're all having a lovely time enjoying the last days of Summer!

Au revoir,

Firstly, you need chicken! I happen to know where some live ones are, and they say the fresher the better...But I actually had some frozen tenderloins that did just fine! I took 6 frozen tenderloins and put them on a cooking sheet in the oven for about 22 minutes with the temp set at 350 Fahrenheit. While the chicken is baking it's a good time to do most of the prep work for the other ingredients.

I like the sweetness of red bell peppers more so than the watery taste of celery, and celery has no nutritional value, so I nixed it in preference of one whole medium red bell pepper diced finely. Next I diced 1/4 of a red onion as well as 2 thinly sliced green onion stalks. I then took a cup of red grapes and halved them so that their juices would mix better.


Hopefully your chicken should be nice and moist after 22-25 minutes (depending on oven strength) so once it's tender go ahead and place it in a large bowl and place in the refrigerator for ten minutes or until cool enough to handle. Once the tenderloins are manageable go ahead and shred them in the same bowl until they're in bite size morsel.

Now add all your produce ingredients (bell pepper, onions, grapes). I also added 2 tsp of salted sunflower seeds and a few unsalted peanuts I had on hand to substitute the traditional cashew, but virtually any nut or seed will do. I tend to vary my spices each time I make chicken salad, but for this particular batch I added salt and pepper to taste. Then I added 1 tbsp dill, 1 tsp garlic powder, a pinch of paprika and a pinch of celery salt. There's other stuff, but I really add things in the heat of the moment so I can't recall... Experiment and I'm sure you'll find a flavor you enjoy!


All these spices are necessary to replace the calorie heavy-hitter mayonnaise, but we still need a wet ingredient to bind the mixture, so I opted for 1 cup of plain greek yogurt and 2 tsp spicy mustard. Once everything is in the bowl just mix it up until you're happy with the consistency. After that serve it on some toasted bread or in some greens--either way is delicious!



Of any of you make this and have suggestions, improvements or comments I would love to hear them!

Au Revoir,

A little earlier in the week Amanda and Stacy came by for martinis and dinner, so while Amanda was mixing up our choice beverage for the evening (chocolate martinis) I was cooking up a bacon and asiago chicken buccatini pasta with fresh parsley, basil, onions and tomatoes from the garden.


Since we were already on a chocolate binge the next day Stacy and I set about baking some chocolate inspired cookies. The first batch had dark chocolate chips, marshmallows and plenty of cocoa powder. They were soo good fresh from the oven and all ooey-gooey! The second batch was smaller and we nixed the marshmallows so we could throw in some heavy whipping cream and Bailey's alcohol for some tiny tea cookies. These were scrumptious as well!

The nearby town of Talent was having its annual Harvest Music Festival and our friends in Jive Coulis were playing so naturally we attended it. It was a pretty cool shindig with lots of our friends and some killer break dancers ( whom I was unable to snap pics of). Us girls brought our dogs along as dates, but Renard was more interested in Parker's kitten, Alma, than the music!


That about sums up this week. I had loads more pics, but you have to understand that doing these frames for each picture is literally sucking the life out of me... When I find a more economical way of doing this then expect more photo-heavy updates!

Au Revoir,