I guess I feel a little better. Honestly, though, I'm extremely overwhelmed with my life right now. I'm stressed about having a baby (what if I'm a sucky mom? What if I continue to be lazy? Don't you have to have your own shit together to be a parent?) I'm stressed about school (I'm already a little bit behind on classwork, and I'm kind of freaking out about the master's thesis - I feel so over that paper already. It feels like a whole new project now, and that's daunting as hell. Which brings me to the next stressor in the Anxiety Parade - if I'm no good at working independently now, how the hell am I supposed to do it when I'm done???)

And I'm trying this FlyLady shit - don't get me wrong, it's a good plan, and I think it's doable - but I'm so goddamn tired all the time! I feel like something is always giving way, and I think I should be able to do it all. Which I suppose, upon reflection, is a mite unreasonable, but there it is. Sheer guilt and perfectionism - what am I worried about? That's the personality profile of the perfect academic!! (Or else the completely neurotic one with sever writer's block.)

On another note, at least we cooked dinner tonight. And R has been (zigzagging) towards helping with the house more (one benefit of the FlyLady thing - when it's really clean, there's more impetus to keep it clean.) I made Chicken Paprikash for the first time. (That's another thing - I'm trying to use up food from the freezer and pantry for the next week or two. I've been a little too much of a hoarder and it's hard to find things in both freezers now, so I want to clear them out to make room for more cooked doubled meals rather than just ingredients. Plus it's time to rotate it all.) So look out for less fresh ingredients and more frozen/pantry dry staples coming up this week. (Like risotto - I've got a shitload of arborio rice in there that I very rarely use, and it's probably 3 years old. Making risotto this week!!)

Anyhow, here's the recipe as eventually modified (for health reasons and what we had on hand reasons) - the original is from the Fanny Farmer cookbook.

Chicken Paprikash
3 large chicken breasts (it calls for bone-in whole cut up chicken)
4 tbs butter
1/2 cup chopped onion
2 tbs sweet Hungarian paprika
1/2 can diced tomatoes
1 cup chicken broth
3 tbs flour
1/4 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup full-fat yogurt

Melt the butter (I also added a touch of olive oil to reduce burning) in an iron skillet and brown the chicken breasts well on each side over med to med-high heat. (This spit at me like a motherfucker, so be careful. It burned me under the eye.) Remove chicken to a platter and saute the onion till translucent over medium. Mix in paprika and cook 1 minute; add the tomato and chicken broth. (If it's very liquidy, reserve 1/2 cup of broth for later.)

Lower heat and simmer for 7 minutes; add the chicken back and cover; cook for 30 minutes, turning once. Remove chicken to a platter. Sprinkle the flour over the stuff in the pan and whisk briskly till smooth. Cook for 3 minutes. Gradually add enough of the reserved chicken stock to make 1 cup liquid sauce; add the cream and whisk. Remove from heat and whisk in yogurt. Spoon over the chicken and serve.

They say to serve it over noodles, but guess what? I was trying to use up some new potatoes, so we boiled those and broke them open and ate it over that. It was a touch on the bland side - it would probably be better with lowfat sour cream than the yogurt, and perhaps with a combination of hot and sweet paprikas instead of just sweet. But it was certainly respectable (and my husband liked it a lot.)