I am the greatest chef in the world.....Chuck!

I have finally realized what I was in my last life.... no, not a mongol princess or Leonardo da Vinci, I was: an army chef.

or at least I surmise..... because whenever I cook, I make a humongous production out of it and produce enough food to feed... well, an army. I recently had a taste for pastel de choclo, which I've mentioned previously in this post (aside: mr big stuff, you are supposed to know so much about music and you couldn't even guess my fav song....? and the title is in the URL....!?!) so I decided to finally cook some. the reason I haven't made it in the eight years since I've lived in Chile is that it is a complicated dish that takes a lot of steps to make. well, I finally decided if I had to go through that much trouble, I might as well make a lot..... then I could freeze it and eat it all winter. it's both delicious cold-weather fare and it's easily frozen and re-heated, like most cassaroles.

cooling the hard boiled eggs - these are sliced and put with olives in the chicken layer. yes, it takes me two cookbooks to make one dish... so I couldn't remember how to boil eggs...so what!!!!






cooking the meat (I could only fit half in the skillet at a time) and the chicken is slowly cooking at the back.... and I'm taking pix to blog about later! I am the greatest! don't try this at home.... Chuck!





huge bowl of meat... and this is just the bottom layer!









Maria carefully monitors my progress.












I had lots of chicken juice and bones left to make a big pot of chicken soup! all I had to do was throw in the veggies and then add water! that thriftyness appeals to the army chef in me, not to mention my scottish DNA.






argghhhhh! I can't find the pic of them all cooking in the oven!!! suffice it to say, there were 13 2-portion size to go in the freezer and 1 big one to eat this week! I'll update the post later with the 'ta-dahhhh!' pic - for now, I'll post a previously promised pic: the lovely Japanese prints from Susan & Paul... up on the wall!! now my apartment looks and smells great!













I've also updated the kitty-cat diaries and I'm getting to work on my bloggie photo album next!

************************
grab your applebottoms and celebrate blue jeans day...you-know-who!


****************************************