Tomorrow is my mom’s n-th birthday, so Will and I prepared dinner for her at our new house.  I think she liked it because I had never seen her eat so much before!

For dinner, we had roast chicken, broccoli rabe, potato salad, eggplant caponata, and a green salad.  I’m not sure why there are so many pieces of silverware out when all we used were chopsticks.

Today was also the first time I’ve ever roasted a whole chicken. I don’t know why I was scared of doing it before. It was incredibly easy, just as Thomas Keller said it was on his video! I used some sustainable, organic, brouhahah chicken that I picked up on a whim at the nearby Sprouts. I stuffed a quarter onion, half a lemon, and some rosemary inside the cavity, trussed it, tossed it onto a pan, and roasted it in a 450F oven for 1 hour.  The resulting chicken was really flavorful and moist, even the white meat, which I usually hate!

The eggplant caponata came out pretty well too. I used this recipe. I think next time, I’ll cook the eggplants longer. The recipe doesn’t call for it, but I also put in about a quarter cup toasted pine nuts. The eggplants weren’t underdone or crunchy this time, but I bet it’d be better if they were cooked longer and even slightly more browned.