A FRIDGE FULL OF FOOD...

Good & Good For You: Crockpot White Chicken Chili

Wasn't feeling very lively this weekend so I made a crockpot full of white chicken chili and a pan of cornbread for us to eat all weekend. This one is a nice change from dark bean chili, with a little lighter texture and taste, super easy to put together and forget. Sometimes, like when the cook in the family isn't up to snuff, easy is a must.

Crockpot Chili: It's a Texture Thing

 

This was a learning experiment based on a 30-hour-awake day I'll share with you. 

One day last week I couldn't sleep even though I'd been up since before dawn the day before. I ended up going from 4am one day, up through all of that night, and then finally got sleepy about 11am the next day. I know. Weird. But by 10am I realized that if I was going to save us from eating icky fast food for dinner I needed a plan. I had all the ingredients for chili but by that time of morning my brain was so fried I was probably a danger with a stove.  Sort of like drinking and driving, insomnia and appliances with massive heat do not go together.

My answer:  It's a crockpot, isn't it?  The idea is to dump stuff in and forget it, right? That's what I did. I didn't brown the ground beef or saute the onions. It all went in together and cooked for the six hours I slept. I woke up to great chili.  Here's what I liked most about it:  the texture.  I've talked before about the fact that although I'm not a vegetarian I don't eat a lot of meat. I grew up in a meat-centric house so I like the taste of it but I hate the texture. One of the things I don't like about chili is having the softness of the beans and the relative hardness of the meat. I know. I know. It's strange but it is what it is.  In some dishes I want lots of texture but in foods like chili, I don't. I usually end up picking out the chunks of meat and throwing them back in the pot for Gene.  This method solved that problem.  The long slow cooking time broke down the fibers of the meat to the point that it was all a uniform texture and I liked it. So if you're like me and have a meat/texture or a sleeping/need for quick food problem, this is the chili recipe for you too.

By the way, I froze a container of this to use on coneys or for chili mac later on.  It's PERFECT for both of those dishes.

Mama Always Said "Eat Your Vegetables!"

 

This is now my favorite secret weapon for getting all my veggies in each day which is harder than it looks, as we all know.  Four is no problem but when you try to up it to six or eight servings it's more of a struggle unless you're really on your toes.  This is one of those quick, easy, flexible soups that is making its way into my home lunches and work lunches with ease.

On this particular day I used bagged frozen vegetables of green beans, carrots, peas, and corn, but I've also used a mix of broccoli and cauliflower, lima and green beans, and whatever I happen to have in the freezer.

I like this soup because it's super quick, only 3 ingredients really and they're right there in the pantry all the time, very filling, and it tastes good on top of sneaking in an extra 2 servings of vegetables. 

Quick Veggie Pasta Soup lunch for ONE:

Recipe by Glenna Anderson Muse

In a medium sauce pan, bring to boil:

1 15 oz can no fat, low sodium chicken or vegetarian broth plus 1/2 cup water

Add in 1 cup frozen vegetables of choice

Season to taste with salt & pepper, and Cavender's if you have it.

Simmer for 10-15 minutes.

Add in 1/4 cup alphabet or other tiny pasta

Simmer for an additional 5-8 minutes.

Top with a sprinkling of parmesan cheese if desired.

Serving:  1

Calories per serving:  225    Carbs:   29      Fat:  1    Protein: 9  Fiber:  5.5

Weight watchers points:  4

 

Congratulations to Ruth on reaching her 100th Presto Pasta Nights!  This week's historical round up will be posted tomorrow on Ruth's blog Once Upon a Feast at www.onceuponafeast.blogspot.com.  Go say "Hi!" to Ruth and see all the great pasta dishes from week.

The Comforts of Sher's Home: File' Gumbo & Sharp Cheddar Mac & Cheese

This post and all the links contained in it are dedicated to Sherry Cermak, author of the What Did You Eat blog who died of a sudden heart attack a week ago today.  Sher was my friend, my confidante, and my personal cheerleader for the last decade.  I loved her, I miss her, and I cherish every memory of the friendship we shared.  I am a better person for having had the good fortune of having her in my life and I will always be grateful to Heavenly Father for allowing our paths to cross.  The fact that we met on a Robert Redford fan site is the ultimate proof that God does, indeed, have a sense of humor as twisted and perverse as our own.

All over the food blogging community today, you will find Sher's friends cooking her recipes in her honor as our way to say "Good bye and We love you, Sherry."

Personally, I couldn't decide which one dish to make from Sher's blog to honor her by so I picked the two dishes we probably talked about the most over the years.  The first is Sher's family's File'  Gumbo.  I love this dish not only for it's deeply comforting taste but for the stories Sher would tell about it and how hilariously offended she would get when her family's file gumbo was confused with regular gumbo.  She told me many times, proudly, that her family's gumbo was a thing of purity and should be touched by no Andouille, no chicken, and certainly no okra, not that they had anything against okra per se, it just didn't belong in their gumbo pot. According to Sher who was passionate on this subject, to say the least, it was actually close to heresy to even mention the words "okra", "sausage", and/or "chicken" in the same breath with Gumbo.  Shrimp and crab only, please.

As for the second dish, if you asked Sherry her favorite food she would say "Cheese", or at least that's what she always told me.  Her all time favorite was Cowgirl Creamery's Triple Cream.  She said it was heavenly.  I keep intending to mail order some but haven't gotten around to it yet.  When I do, you'll be the first to hear about it.

Sher's mac & cheese dish from Martha Stewart has no Triple Cream Cowgirl Creamery cheese in it but it was damn good anyway.  Sher and I used to laugh about how we both loved mac & cheese so much even the Kraft blue box was a treat now and then.  Yeah, except the blue box has no actual cheese in it, ahem. But it's the taste of childhood so it's still worth a splurge now and then.

The tomatoes in this recipe are a wonderful addition, roasted with thyme for summery herbiness.  When I first saw this on her blog, I thought "Tomatoes????"  But they really are necessary for the full effect.  No wonder Sherry was drawn to this recipe.  I have a feeling her love for fresh tomato, home-made bread, and real mayo sandwiches from the first sun-warmed tomatoes from her back yard were legendary to more folks than just me.

A Twist on Gazpacho

I've been working on increasing our veggie intake, specifically looking for first course options other than salads.  Not that I have anything against salads but, I confess, I get bored with them and with it being summer, hot soup doesn't thrill me at the moment.  When Lynn and James came over for dinner the other night I decided at the last minute to whip together some yogurt creamed chilled gazpacho and see how that went over at my house. Pretty well so we'll be doing it again.

Presto Pasta Nights #45: Split Pea/Alphabet Pasta Soup

For the lovely Ruth at Once Upon a Feast's weekly Presto Past Nights blogging event, I made soup. Again. But really, can you ever eat enough soup?  It's filling. It's good for you. It's comforting.  That's a win-win.  This time it's a little difficult to see my pasta so I'll show another pic. 

Not only does this soup have split peas and alphabet pasta in it, it also has yellow and brown lentils, wild rice, and barley. Then, when I made it I added onion, carrot, green and red pepper, and celery which makes it vegetarian.  I haven't decided to go exactly back to strict vegetaranism but I have decided to make most of my meals non-meat. I have to have a little wiggle room for seafood and the occasional steak.  It's like any diet. Once I say "absolutely no more of that food will ever be consumed by me again" is the exact moment when I can think of nothing else and would walk on a bed of nails on my knees to get that, so knowing myself, I'm saying that I will eat much less meat than ever before.

Just FYI,  I didn't put all of those peas, lentils, rice, pasta, etc., together but I was glad when I saw it at the Amish Store in Branson and will be buying more.  They have several dried bean/pea soup mixes that are just wonderful. With the veggies I can saute at home and herbs I can add myself, it's a full but quick meal to put together.

The mixes can also be ordered directly online from The Amish Country Store.  Most of the products are made by Missouri Amish families.

Thanksgiving turkey redux: Turkey Orzo Soup

I can't believe it's been a week since I've posted!  Man, that just shows you what working the weekend and having a bad cold will do for you--makes you a lazy bones!  I've almost literally done nothing but work, sleep, and whine the last week.  I've had my cold since Thanksgiving and somewhere along the line I wasn't careful enough and gave it to Gene, who I think is sicker than I am, although I whine louder and you know what that means: the squeaky wheel is the bigger pain in the butt.

But we're finally both feeling a little better so I have no excuses but to get back to my life including cooking tonight instead of ordering out and today, with God as my witness, I will be working on my novel. That back-up cd hasn't seen the light of day in at least a couple of weeks and I originally promised myself it would be finished by the end of the year which is fastly approaching. Sigh.

But before I pull that out, let me tell you real quick about the soup I made the other night that was, as Mr Food says "Oooooohhhh, so good!", and another pasta soup for Ruth's weekly Presto Pasta Nights.  Check her blog on Friday to see this weeks round up! 

Thanksgiving Leftovers: Turkey Pasta Soup

Ruth over at Once Upon a Feast hosts a great weekly food event called Presto Pasta Nights.  She posts a round up every Friday of the previous week's great pasta dishes. 

I'm getting back into the groove of  pasta night with my turkey leftovers in a pasta soup last night.  It's all about the broth, comforting in its turkey goodness with an attention-getting mix of pasta shapes to devour.

One of the interesting little secrets about this soup was that I followed Gene's initiative and spooned it over some leftover dressing from Thanksgiving.  It may sound odd but it's really yummy, giving the soup just an extra weight and oomph, turning it from "just soup" into a full meal for Gene.

Home-made Noodles post Halloween

Mmmmm...fat, succulent home-made noodles just like Mom taught me.  Nothing better for these chilly fall evenings.  Now if those bums that call myself my family had saved me any on Halloween I wouldn't have had to cook a second batch! Kidding.  I did make a huge pot of chicken and home-made noodles for Halloween night but I'm nothing but flattered that they were all gone that evening.  Funny, and one of my brothers had even brought his own plastic to-go containers to scam leftovers with. Sorry, Kenneth!

So last night, Gene had home-made noodles AGAIN but this time I chose to make beef and noodles to give him a little different taste sensation.

What can I say? They hit the spot! 

I love this recipe because even though my mother and I had a rocky relationship most of my life, we were a good team in the kitchen. As I've said before, my mother was a wonderful cook and an outstanding baker. She had a cake decorating business out of our home and I was drafted at an early age, as the oldest daughter of five kids, to be her sous chef and dishwasher. As I aged I graduated in my duties in Mom's kitchen to being her baker, assistant decorator, and the fill-in chef for family dinners. That's where the noodles come in. They're not hard at all but writing down the recipe is. You know how it is with recipes you've made for years, so long and so naturally that you no longer measure anything or think about what you're doing.  It's the same with this but Halloween afternoon when I made them, I did try to pay attention and write down the details: 

Pampered Chef Party-- A Success!

I'll show some people pics later but I'll be honest they didn't come out well.  You know how we food bloggers are, we can capture the essence of cheese but not of Charles.  So hey, let's not feel bad about doing what we do better or best, right?

So for food pics, here's one of the overall food table:

Starting at the loaf of bread cake at top and going clockwise:  vegetable skewers, spinach dip, olives stuffed with sun-dried tomatoes, pepperoni bread, cheese, homemade-ish onion dip, and crackers. On the stove was a pot of homemade Chicken Noodle soup.  That seemed to go over well. I made 5 quarts and when everyone had left there was only one medium-ish individual bowl left of mostly broth.  My chicken noodle soup recipe can be found HERE.  Funny, the last time I served it was at a girls' night party. Hmmm...I have to rememeber it always goes over well.

The one sort of funny thing is that most of the veggies skewers weren't eaten.  Several people commented that they thought they were beautiful but I can't figure out if no one wants to be the guy to dismantle it, or what?  If anyone from the party is reading, let me know what you were thinking.  This is my favorite way to make a veg tray but when I do people always make a point of oohing and ahhing but not of eating. 

Directions for the veggie bucket set-up after the jump.

The cake:

From another angle:

I liked it once I got the whole thing finished and all of the stuff set up around it.  It's funny because I only see the flaws and all the trouble I had with it but a couple of people who were there didn't realize at first it was a cake and not a loaf of bread. That made my night!

With the exception of the salt cellar on the right, everything you see in this pic (okay except the platter and lines) is made of sugar. The cake is coconut layer cake with coconut buttercream filling, covered in fondant and hand-painted with a pastry brush.  The utensils to the left are sculpted from gumpaste.

Here's a close up of the vegetable skewers. This is my favorite way to make a vegetable tray--vertical!

Everyone just left. Everyone seemed to have a good time. Hope so. I know I did.  After the main presentation part of the Pampered Chef demonstration was over we basically sat and yacked about everything from eating rabbit and squirrels to Paris Hilton and her constant flashing of her squirrel. It was a bit of a running theme.

My friend Jennifer brought me knock off Paris Hilton perfume.  Ahhhhh, how much I loved it! Really. It's fun.  I love the thought of wearing the version she makes no money from.  Hee.  Jenn, you did mean for me to keep that, right?  Uhhhh, if not drop me an email. I just sort of assumed.

Ashley did a great job with the presentation and made fabulous Jerk (no men involved in case you were wondering like some of the rest of us) Chicken Salad.

Here's Ashley:

More tomorrow along with recipes for the coconut cake. Recipes are now posted. Click below. Also, there are more personal pics from the party on my personal blog, G's Spot.

UPDATE ON SHER'S CAKE:  UPS shows the cake as being scanned and leaving Springfield on the big jet 15 minutes ago and is scheduled to be on time for delivery by 10:30am in the morning. So far so good! Sher will let us all know the minute it arrives and what shape it showed up in.

UPDATE AGAIN ON SHER'S CAKE:  UPS shows it loggin in at midnight in the Kentucky depot and still listed for on time delivery.

LAST UPDATE BEFORE DELIVERY:  Sher's cake was logged in and then out again from Mather CA between 5am and 5:30am, then it arrived in West Sacramento at 7:05 and was then logged in at the truck for deliver by 7:15am this morning.  Wow. I'm impressed. 

UPDATE UPDATE:  It ARRIVED!  Go to www.whatdidyoueat.typepad.com to see Sher's reaction!