duck-shaped pain

What does being on break mean to me? The return of leisure reading. Thursday, I started out strong. I went to the library and checked out five or six books that sounded promising. I brought them home, and sat myself down in my comfortable chair, ready to read. I made coffee, changed into comfortable clothing, and generally prepared myself for a good day's worth of reading.

This did not happen. My brain refused to process the information, and I was unable to even feign interest in what I was reading. My only successful read was a book I had read a couple of times before (Orange Roofs, Golden Arches: The Architecture of American Chain Restaurants). [1] I only skimmed that one, though. It became apparent that in order to ease myself back into reading for fun, I'm to have to start with something simple, like the directions on the back of cornbread mix or Parade magazine.

Or, I could just watch TV instead.

I roasted a chicken for dinner tonight, using a roasting pan my aunt gave me for Christmas last year. This is the first time I've used this pan, because it is huge. My chicken was relatively large -- seven or eight pounds -- and yet, it looked lost in the vastness of the turkey-grade roasting pan. I thinly sliced some little red potatoes and placed them under the roasting rack, so they could book in the chicken's juices. They could have been greasy, but they turned out crispy and buttery and pleasingly brown instead. I also baked some onions in a red wine and mustard sauce, and served it all with some garlic peppercorn bread I bought at the bagel shop this weekend. It was an incredibly good dinner, which made up for the fact that I ate a microwave burrito for breakfast (I was out of milk).

[1] I would recommend this book to anyone interested in vernacular architecture, or even in 20th century American architecture in general. It shows how many developments in "high" architectural style eventually trickle down to fast-food restaurants, and it also provides a general history of how chain restaurants developed and why. It's easy nowadays to decry the plethora of chain restaurants clogging up American cities, making many places feel eerily identical to thousands of other places around the country. But chain restaurants developed to meet genuine needs, and it is interesting to read how we got to where we are now. Plus, the book has lots of entertaining pictures of bad, bad restaurant interiors and employees in embarrassing uniforms. Alas, it is very much out of print, but if my library has it, certainly yours does, too.

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