What the Folk!

Because I was incredibly lazy, I had crumpets with vegemite for dinner. Yeah, not really very satisfying...

I wasn't sure what I wanted for dinner last night, and not much was appealing to me while looking through my cookbooks. (I was also feeling grumpy about not being able to get ground turkey here, since I did have recipes that called for that that did appeal.) Then inspiration struck and I thought of chicken and dumplings. Perfect! Comfort food, but still somewhat healthy and all I really needed was the chicken thighs. I was able to use up the last of the celery, peas and zucchini that I had on hand.

Since they don't sell the thighs separately, I also now have some chicken legs to use for tonight's dinner, which will probably be some sort of Asian noodle, vegetables, and the chicken, with sweet chili sauce.

Oh Indigo, chicken and dumplings is one of my all time favorite meals! I remember growing up visiting my extended family in the mountains of Tennessee and all the aunts and my mamaw would be in the kitchen making the dumpling from scratch. And they would serve it with homemade buttermilk biscuits because you can never have enough carbs in one meal! Yum!

Mmmmmm, sounds great! My Gramma made homemade dumplings that I can't duplicate. How do you do yours, Indy and red?

We're have 2 small filets (beef) with...I dunno...a baked tater and salad, I guess. You can see I didn't put much planning into tonight's meal, lol.

Oh I don't make dumplings. I just eat them.

Ever seen the movie Dumplings? Yeah...I don't eat dumplings now...

Tonight was frozen tortellini cooked in broth. It was a soccer night so we had to put something together quick (thankfully I was working from home otherwise even this would take too long). If you're ever in Montreal and you like to cook Italian you must check out Milano, a wonderful Italian grocery store in our Little Italy. Their stuffed pasta can't be beat and they have excellent sausages too (yesterday's dinner).

SuzyBatt, we do capeletti in brodo (broth) on Christmas quite often, which is pretty similar to tortellini. Yummy stuff!

Dumplings are actually insanely easy to make. My great-grandmother used to make them all the time, but when my mom tried to ask how she made them, she was like, "you take a handful of flour, a pinch of salt," etc., and my mom was thinking, "but your hands are bigger than mine!" It really is pretty simple, though. For just the two of us, I use about 1 cup of flour, a tablespoon of melted butter, a half teaspoon of salt, 1 teaspoon of baking powder, and around a 1/2 cup of milk (buttermilk if you've got it, regular stuff is fine, too). I also like to add in some herbs; thyme is good with chicken dishes, as is dill, but parsley or anything else tends to work, too. Just mix until it's just come together. Don't overmix. Then just drop in spoonfuls on top of the chicken mixture and cover with a lid and let the whole thing simmer for 15-20 minutes. Keep the lid on, though, because essentially you're steaming them, so you don't want to let the steam escape by opening the lid.

Thanks, Indy- that sounds easy and delicious.

My Gramma would take her dough and either stretch it or roll it and make strips, and then cut those strips into rectangles and lay them all over the chicken mix and cover.
I like the spoonfuls myself...

Wow...this sounds so good...I may have to make it today or tomorrow as the weather is cold and gusty. Chicken and dumplings on this kind of day sounds perfect.

Tonight is our Christmas celebration with my family before they head back to Florida. So my mom is making ham, mashed potatoes, corn, brocoli and rice casserole, with a pumpkin pie for desert. And she's finally teaching me the buttermilk biscuit recipe that's been handed down in her family for 4 generations! I'm really excited. Then we get to open presents!

Sound delicious, Red! And getting to open presents early is always fun!

I have this ginormous benefit tomorrow. OK, not that big, but 200 people. And since we won't have any kitchens at the facility, I'm precooking most of the dishes tonight and then we'll bring them over. Secretly, most of this stuff is pre-made. There was a day where I would have made everything myself from scratch, however, working 60 hours a week put a stop to that. So tonight dinner has included mini quiche, spanikopita, pretzels with that awesome horseradish mustard sauce with pan roasted shallots. I avoided the meatballs but there's some chicken sausage coming up that might make a nice third course and then I'll finish with roasted pears hahahaha. By tomorrow I won't be interested at all, I'm sure. I'm just thankful that the 6 gorgeous cheeses we got are being kept in the fridge of a different house or there might not be any cheese for tomorrow :D:D:D

That all sounds great and major kudos to you for pulling all of that off while working 60 hours!

Wow, Em, that sounds amazing! I'm jealous of your cooking prowess!

Tonight I made baked mac & cheese - comfort food at its best. I've made it a couple times before, but this time added a couple cloves of garlic, paprika and nutmeg at the suggestion of my friend at work. It was quite good, but it always seems to end up too dry. Not sure if it needed more butter or more heavy cream or something.

I had the most amazing taco tonight for dinner. We ate at a local place called Torchy's Tacos. I had the "Trailer Park" taco which consisted of a fried chicken strip, green chilies, cheese, pico de gallo, pablano ranch sauce, and lettuce on a flour tortilla. Now you can get this taco "trashy" which means substituting queso for the lettuce. (Like I'm not gonna sub queso for lettuce if that's an option!) So yeah, I had a Trashy Trailer Park taco for dinner. My tummy burns a bit now but it was totally worth it! Yum.