Herbs, a Symphony & Chicken

I got up extremely early yesterday morning and drove to Brighton to Anthony's Herb Festival. I went last year and it's a nice little place to go and buy herbs and plants and other random homemade things. I bought some onion chives, two different kinds of mint, two pepper plants, a spinach plant and a scented geranium. I also bought a bar of homemade lavender scented goat's milk soap (I even got to pet the goats) and a jar of homemade strawberry jam for Doug because he always complains we never have strawberry jam/jelly. My mom went too, she was going to work a shift in the Tipton County Master Gardeners tent, but she got there early so she could walk around and shop. The festival is at an actual farm and it's such a pretty piece of property, two houses and lots of barns and greenhouses. It's all beautifully landscaped too, if I lived on a farm I would want it to be this place.

I got home after the festival and started to cook because we had grand plans to go to the Sunset Symphony last night. The symphony is the final 'hurah' of the Memphis in May celebration. I was going to make a little picnic dinner for us to take and enjoy. Then about 3:30PM (while I was breading the chicken drumsticks) it started to get dark and the wind was blowing pretty hard. The heavens opened up and it poured. Luckily there were no tornado warnings or anything but I realized then we probably didn't want to go downtown to the symphony and sit on the muddy ground. So instead I made our picnic food and we stayed home and eat and watched two of the three Netflix movies we've had for at least two months. We saw "Who Killed the Electric Car?" and "The Business of Being Born" both really great, eye-opening documentaries.

I don't really have a recipe for the chicken or the pasta salad, but these are the ingredients and how I made them.

Oven Baked Chicken Drumsticks
6 drumsticks, rinsed with cold water and patted dry
1 3/4 c. panko breadcrumbs
1/2 c. whole milk or buttermilk
5 dashs of Tabasco sauce
2 tsp. cayenne pepper
4 tbsp. butter

Mix together milk and Tabasco sauce in large bowl, add drumsticks. Cover and marinate in the refrigerator for 1 hour.

Heat oven to 425F, line a baking sheet with two layers of aluminum foil, add butter and place the sheet in the warm oven just long enough to soften the butter. Mix together panko and pepper, remove drumsticks from milk marinade and roll in panko mixture. Shake off excess and lay on baking sheet. Bake the drumsticks for 20 minutes, then turn them over and place back in the oven for 20 more minutes.


Cleaning-Out-the Pantry/Freezer Pasta Salad
1/2 box of pasta shells (or any short round pasta)
1/2 bag frozen green peas
1/2 bag frozen broccoli florets
1/2 container Hormel Real Bacon Bits
1/2 envelope of Hidden Valley Ranch Dressing mix
1 small container sour cream

Steam or boil peas and broccoli florets together until tender. Drain and set aside in large bowl. Cook pasta until al dente, drain and mix together with peas and broccoli. In small bowl mix together sour cream and ranch dressing mix, add this to the pasta, pea and broccoli. Mix everything well and add the bacon bits. Serve chilled.