wannaGROW: Chives (and Cheddar and Chive Focaccia)

It's a bit amusing to have a wannaGROW on the topic of chives, as most people have such voracious chive plants that they don't want them to grow! I've lucked out with, yet another, discovery in our garden... a lovely and small and reasonable little chive bush.

I read on one garden website that "chives do not thrive on neglect," which I laughed at because I really haven't given my chives much TLC. Partially because I don't want them to spread like crazy but partially because I am still figuring out what I need to do with all of these plants in my garden. 

CHIVES TIPS

I've learned that you should harvest the chives by cutting them about two inches above the soil, using scissors, to encourage regrowth. So, unlike the rhubarb where you should absolutely NOT cut, here it is okay to cut. Harvest from the outside edges to the inside. Remove the flowers, as they appear, to keep the plant vegetative and producing.

Chicken and Waffles

I'm not a big fan of leftovers. I can manage eating a copy of a meal once before I need to really repurpose it or risk it going sideways in the fridge while I avoid it. To minimize this, I seem to try cooking less or inviting guests to reduce the potential amount of leftovers that I need to deal with. This time, however, I felt particularly inspired and wanted to reinvent the leftovers into a dish of its own merit and tastiness.

Enter, chicken and waffles, leftovers extraordinaire from a spectacular roasted chicken and cheese souffle dinner. I have had a few incarnations of fried chicken and waffles in restaurants. Definitely tasty. Definitely a biiiiiiig meal. Barring the fried chicken, why couldn't I make a roasted chicken and waffles dinner? (Or, for those of you facing pounds of leftover turkey, make roasted turkey and waffles??) Cheesy, herbacious waffles... warm fragrant chicken... smothered in gravy... dabbed with maple syrup. What's not to like??

Smoky Mac and Cheese

All I could think about when I woke up to several inches of snow this morning was that I needed some sort of warm, oozily fantastic comfort food... and what better to scratch that itch than to make mac and cheese.

Mac and cheese is the best way to use up whatever cheese remnants you have migrating around your fridge. I never seem to have much of any one kind of cheese, so aside from the roux, each batch of mac and cheese seems to be a completely new invention.

After reading a few different mac and cheese recipes on Epicurious and scouting out the contents of my fridge, I decided today's mac and cheese was to be "smoky." I had about half a round of Applewood Smoked Cheddar, a few pieces of Applewood Smoked Bacon (leftover from sandwiches earlier this week) and some chipotle peppers left from my last batch of Chipotle Caramel Corn. Hence... smoky.