Sunday Dinner and progress, and fruit crumble, too

Sunday has become a good cooking day around here, what with the weekly family dinner with HS and all.  

Today was all about roasting vegetables and chicken.  

The vegs are spaghetti squash, tomatoes, another kind of squash and gnocchi, all tossed in olive oil, balsamic vinegar, cumin, turmeric, baharat, and sumac, with kosher salt.  The curry leaves will rest on top as they roast.

A chicken leg each, tossed in breadcrumbs from the remains of the hot biscuits made with red lentils, and various other spices that occurred to me.  They will roast alongside the vegetables.

Then the fruit crumble, a mix of Martha and Rose.  The topping is sort of Martha, except that I used whole wheat with the oats, and added in nutmeg and crushed walnuts.  The fruit is some of that apple supply from the local tree, which reminds me to make applesauce for Tgiving, and prune plums waiting in the freezer for just such a chance to star.  

I added brown sugar (well, white with added molasses) to the plums and salt plus nutmeg, and macerated that for an hour, so that liquid emerged.  Then I did a reduction of the liquid, swirling it around in the pan, no stirring (swirled, not stirred, sounds like a movie star), this being the Rose part, then added in the resulting syrup over the fruit in the dish. I'd been thawing the apples during this procedure, since I'd noticed the plums suddenly looked a lot smaller after macerating and needed some company.

So that's tonight's dinner. With the addition of a terrific hot veggie, no idea what veggie, pickle, my Indian neighbor sent over this morning via husband!  I can taste cumin, coriander, and hot pepper, but I don't know what the veg is, some small sliced green thingy.

They'll get a share of fruit crumble in their near future, I think.

Yesterday was a mad rush of helping next door neighbor take action against squirrels which have invaded our building, inside the skin of the place, inside the soffits, you name it.  He had parts of his ceiling open for electrical work, and parts of the storage area, for a new breaker box, so we urgently set to work to close them.  And that extra insulation material from a couple of my own jobs were just the ticket.  He now has squirrel proofed at least the inside of his house, and has partly insulated the storage area.  Everybody happy, not least me, because the leftover insulation stuff came in handy right when needed.

He found a place in the soffit near the corner of the building where a squirrel sized hole had been evidently gnawed, explaining one of their doorways into the soffit.  Another neighbor said he'd seen a squirrel running up the front of the building yesterday then mysteriously disappearing somehow.  Evidently into the soffit.

 And, at my strong suggestion, since he'd also seen a squirrel in his eaves where he stores stuff -- his dogs detected it -- he invested in a couple of havahart traps, the kind where the animal is caught but unhurt and can be transported to a better location, and he baited and set them up.  And found that these gifted squirrels sprang the trap, and got the bait, from outside the trap.  Nobody caught. 

But since I saw squirrels mating like anything on top of my fence this morning, perhaps we've at least unnerved them into leaving and continuing their wild gyrations outside.

So perhaps it's Gary and Liz 0, squirrels sort of 0, this time. Anyway you can see why I was glad to stay indoors and cook this morning, no climbing up and down and measuring and cutting. Also cooking smells great. 

I wonder if there are any plans afoot for aroma apps?  this one would get my vote.