Adventures with the Whole Chicken and Pumpkins

Oh hey there Interwebs!

I have had some very happy things in the world of culinary skills happen to me lately and a funny thing as well. I don't have pictures for everything, but here's a small smattering.

Hi, I'm Imogene, the whole chicken. This is just after my tail was removed. I look a little lumpy because LunaMusings just buttered me.

This is me in the crockpot, all rubbed in seasonsings and more butter.

LunaMusings's  hands after rubbing me. There was a lot of paprika so she's a bit stained.

I was so proud of how Imogene turned out. There were some issues, being that Imogene was unfortunately a conventionally raised chicken but other wise she made a lovely dinner and bone broth for the next day.

Speaking of the next day, I was making a chicken, potato and black bean soup with spinach. I soaked the beans all night with a little vinegar in hope that not only would it soak them properly but get rid of the unsightly purple broth thing. I put the beans in with the chicken breasts and some of the broth. This is what happened.

Yes...they are purple.

Very purple.

I ended up having to discard some of the broth because it was Just. So. Purple. Luckily Imogene produced enough yummy bone broth that it all turned out okay. But for the record, double soak and rinse your black beans before adding them to a crock pot soup. Purple is not an attractive look for chicken unless its a raspberry vinaigrette.

Anyone else have some crazy things that have happened to your cooking adventures? I'd love see them!

As for the Pumpkins part of the title, that is the next challenge theme brought to you by the lovely Karmada of Crash Bang Laboratory! Come join in the fun! http://blog.crashbanglabs.com/2012/09/theme-for-week-of-932012.html This is the initial post about her idea. Keep going through her posts to find the edits to the process.

So much for a posting schedule.

Well, I'm off to great start. I barely get a chance to post as it is and I miss my first chance to do this right. DERRR! As promised though, I'm going to feature some fun things and fun people I find inspiring. Today's feature is Crash Bang Laboratory. You can find the blog here: http://blog.crashbanglabs.com

While there are two people who are part of Crash Band Labs, the blog and their new and thus empty website is run by Kristie Good, aka Karmada. The blog mostly focuses on her adventures at Anime Conventions, including but not limited to her lovely cosplay costumes, selling her artwork and the many trials and tribulations of doing both. Further more, she is hilarious. I have seen her in person, first at JAFAX 2010 as emcee/judge of one of the cosplay contests, and at Shutocon where she and her partner in crime led panels on how to do cosplay the right way. They said they were there to make the mistakes so you don't have to. That is such a comfort!!!!

She also has a deviantArt account, found here: http://karmada.deviantart.com/  I hope she doesn't mind that I'm totally stalking her gallery as we speak. She has such a cute style and cooky perspective, I can't help myself.

Seriously. SO ADORABLE! Ahem...pardon my in-blog yelling. But seriously, look at the eyes on the lower panel. Thank you Karmada for being one of the greatest highlight of my Friday Interwebscapades!