Ode to an Enamel Cast Iron Dutch Oven

Oh! how I love my Calphalon chive
It cooks chicken quite well--
And that's no jive!

There you have it, Gentle Reader--solid evidence that I'm no poet and surely do know it. (I'd tell myself to stick to my day job, but I don't have one!)

As I sit here and lick my fingers from supper and try to blog, I congratulate myself for having the foresight to lug that big 'ol enamel cast iron dutch oven around Chicago the day I bought it and to lug it home (which entailed standing watch over it for two and a half hours at Midway). Trust me, folks, this thing is heavy. Not something to be dropped on pets or small children or wayward appendages.

I chose a pretty simple recipe, chicken with mandarin oranges, to inaugurate the Dutchie because (1) I've never used one before, and while my very helpful and knowledgeable sister-in-law swears by her own Le Creuset Dutchie, I know me and my ability to totally FUBAR something simple, so I wasn't ready to embark on some complicated feast for my first time own with 'ol Chive; (2) the recipe is one I hadn't prepared before and didn't want to be all nervous about mucking up the recipe and ruining my expensive-but-acquired-on-deep-discount (and find out how good Calphalon's lifetime warranty is); (3) I'd been editing monographs all day and knew I'd be hard-pressed for time for elaborate preparations once I got my 20 monographs scanned and uploaded for the coders in Delhi and (4) I have a massage tonight at 7:30, and I needed to have supper on the table well in advance so I wouldn't resemble a beached whale while at said appointment.

As you probably already know, the chicken turned out finger-lickin' good. Okay, the chicken itself was just, well, chicken. The mandarin orange sauce/glaze/whatever that you pour over it and let simmer before serving--that was finger-lickin' good. I think the husband and I could whip up some of that and eat it over rice as a meal in and of itself. The boy, naturally, wouldn't touch it. Quoth the boy, "Now that I see what kind of sauce it is, I don't like it."

Thanks, son. Love you too.

The husband and I are admitted suckers for citrus. Yes, you can screw up citrus, but when you're using ready-to-go products (lemon juice in a bottle, orange marmalade in a jar, single-serve cups of mandarin oranges), it's kind of hard to screw up. (I know, I know--famous last words.)

As for the Dutchie, I'm anxious to try it again. It came with a Mediterranean chicken recipe and a cranberry wild rice pilaf recipe that look quite scrumptious, so I'll have to give them a whirl sometime. I'll add them to the ever-growing pile of recipes I so very much want to try but just need to get my rear in gear and make. I was eyeballing a cabbage pooriyal recipe I so very much want to try but am reluctant to do so for fear of screwing it up and for knowledge that the boys won't go near it. Le sigh...

Okay, 'tis time for that massage. Begone foul knots in my upper trapezius! Get thee to a nunnery, oh lumps in my supraspinatus! Be thee banished to the hinterlands, oh wearisome SI dysfunction!