While the Trainer's Away or Dinner At Ten

Last night I decided to take advantage of the fact that my trainer was getting ready to show off her magnificent muscularity at some major national competition and my 8:00 gym appointment was cancelled.
Oh yeah I know, I could have gone to the gym anyway and given my all to the treadmill, but I just said no.
Instead, I decided to cook.

Our favorite Aussi domestic goddess Faux Fuchsia has posted about how cooking can be a de-stresser after a long day at work.  And, of course she was correct.  There is something therapeutic in the act of chopping and cooking and serving and eating that makes you forget about your daily issues.
And cooking raises your serotonin and dopamine levels....or so I tell myself.

Of course all this took time, and after getting home late from the office, then deciding on what to make, then going to the market for last minute ingredients the actual cooking process didn't get started until 8:30 last night.

Maybe it was because of Jill's current Ina Garten obsession or maybe it was because I had leftover roasted chicken the fridge, I decided to cook chicken pot pie using Garten's vegetable pot pie recipe
...with slight alterations.
I used way less butter, I left out the saffron and instead of making pastry crust, I used bisquick for the topping.
The kicker in the recipe was the chopped fennel and the pastis.

Behold the magnificence!
Yes, maybe it was 10:00 before dinner was served but it was worth it.
...but tonight it's back to the gym...

And on a different topic altogether
Faux Fuchsia, who's been traveling around England, the Isle of Jersey and Brittany has been bragging on her blog about the cuteness of Jersey cows. Sorry FF, you may be a domestic goddess and you certainly know your bromeliads from your begonias, but in terms of animal appreciation, those Jersey cows have nothing on the beautiful bovines of Switzerland and Austria. 
Voila, Austrian heifers in their Alpine floral spender.

Pictures snagged from Paradis Express, a pretty blog by a gardener from the suburbs of Paris. 
If you like landscape and floral design, check out her blog
and don't worry, it's not about cows.