A FRIDGE FULL OF FOOD...

Snow Storm Comfort: Paula Deen's Hot Chicken Salad

I first had this recipe about 20 years ago at my cousin, Ann's, table and  everyone in our family loves it as a casserole with a salad for dinner, on Liza Ashley's Angel Biscuits as an appetizer, or with crackers as a snack.  Chilled chicken salad is great but hot baked chicken salad is just a delicious and versatile and very warming on a cold winter's day.

Unbelievably, I couldn't find my handwritten recipe card of Ann's recipe but during a quick search I found this Paula Deen version that had one difference:  cheddar cheese.  Hmmmm.... cheese is always a good thing.  I like both versions, can't even pick a favorite, so I think my next time making this dish will all depend on my mood and if I have the cheese handy in the fridge or not.

The recipe is wonderful served piping hot or room temp, and heats up beautifully in the microwave.

Click for the recipe:

Paula Deen's Hot Chicken Salad

 Nutrition per 3/4 cup serving:  Calories:  381.6;    Protein:  20.2;   Carbs:   2.8;   Fat 32;  Fiber:  2.

 

 

 

 

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Home-Made Buttermilk Herb (Ranch) Dressing

 I know that in some circles "ranch" dressing or dip is considered passe' but, to me, it ranks up there will all my favorite comfort foods like mashed potatoes, mac & cheese, chicken pot pie, and all the rest of the delicious, non-pretensious things that are so lovely and comforting to eat.  I do admit, though, that ranch dressing out a bottle from a grocer's shelf doesn't thrill me but making it home-made with fresh herbs is definitely the ticket! 

It's also much better for you.  Think about it.  Sure, it's a little more work to put the ingredients together but when you make it from scratch, including the mayo, you're talking about eating eggs, cold-pressed oil, buttermilk, dill, parsley, garlic, etc., all whole foods  not tons of chemicals and preservatives. That, and the fresh creamy herby taste make it worth every one of those 15 minute spent preparing it.

Copycat Benihana Chicken Fried Rice

 Just like a kid, I love having dinner at Japanese steakhouses like Benihana but sometimes I want the rice and/or veggies without the 1 1/2 hour program and all that food in the different courses.  When I have the desire but not the patience, I make my own at home.  Chicken Fried Rice is a great one-pot meal in the style of Jambalaya or other stove-top one-potters.

Easier and faster than it looks, just think about how quickly those Japanese chefs whip up the fried rice before moving on to the steak/chicken/shrimp entree.  And the leftovers are great for lunch the next day or my work lunchbox.

 

American Classics: Julia Child's Deluxe Chicken or Turkey Salad

 

Nobody's perfect. We all have the opportunity to learn and grow our skills in everything in life.  Gene has admitted a couple of times over the years that my chicken salad is, well, a little boring.  He likes the way I make potato salad, devilled eggs, and tuna salad, but says my chicken salad is "just okay".  Not that he's a jerk. He's my most enthusiastic supporter and eater, and over 25 years my cooking has put 20 lbs on his once too-skinny frame, so I take no offense.  He loves my cooking but I took this as an opportunity to improve my skills.

I added a rotisserie chicken to his grocery list this weekend while I was working, just for this purpose, and decided to go back to the basics and re-learn how to make a good, basic, no frills, chicken salad.  Who better than Julia Child to teach me? 

After reading over a dozen recipes that were either similar to my way or added more frills (pineapple, grapes, nuts, pasta, etc) than I wanted for a classic dish, I hit upon Julia Child's "Deluxe Chicken or Turkey Salad from her book The Way to Cook.  The ingredients are basic but the preparation is not.  Julia uses a two-step method with a ten minute recess that does, indeed, produce a classic, no frills, but delicious and flavorful chicken salad perfect for the classic all-American "Iron Kids" sandwich.  With Julia's method, she tosses the chopped meat with olive oil, herbs, and seasonings, and lets those ingredients get comfy with each other before coming back and binding it together with the mayo.  The two step method makes a world of difference in how the final dish's flavor resonates. The chicken and herb flavors take the lead and happen to be bound together with mayo rather than mayo flavor dominating.  Adding the fruit, nuts, etc, would also work well with this recipe but for those like my hubs who like it on the "classic" side, this is the recipe and method we'll be using, and he agrees. (Personally, I love the walnuts in it--I love the crunch!)

In four days, August 15th will be the 100th anniversary of Julia Child's birth. We are all better cooks for her enthusiasm and her career. Thank You, Julia!

Summer Porridge aka Yogurt Oats

 

When I first saw this recipe, called "summer porridge", "yogurt oats", or "overnight oatmeal", I honestly thought it sounded gross but so many people were enthusiastic on Pinterest and other places on the web that I knew I had to give it a chance. It's not like I'm not an adventurous eater anyway, and with these ingredients I knew that at the very least it would be very good for me. (I just needed to check it out to see if it was "good" in the concept of "good & good for you".)

Guess what? It's my favorite way to make oatmeal now.  Hot oatmeal in the winter is filling and somehow defines cold weather for me, but the summer? Not so much.  Now I have a summer oatmeal to enjoy and start off the day with a nice healthy meal that keeps me going.  And more than just breakfast, it's now included in my lunchbox almost every time I go to work as my go-to healthy mid-night snack that keeps me going until 0700.

This healthy habit plays off another of my new favorite healthy habits:  Sangria Water, where I fill a pitcher with filtered water and fruit of all kinds and let it soak overnight, giving me great fruit-tasting water to drink all day and then the fruit to put on my oatmeal for the next day. So the Sangria Water  I made yesterday, with peaches and blueberries, became the peaches and blueberries that topped my yogurt oats this morning for breakfast. It's a win-win, for sure.

 

Cauliflower Salad with Grapes

If you like the broccoli raisin salad, you'll like this, it's very similar.  I created it out of desperation. With only two of us in house, it's hard to make batches of things I can't eat by myself if the hubs doesn't care for it.  Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying he's super picky or that he won't try new things, he just doesn't like broccoli.  But. What I have found is that when I substitute cauliflower in some of my favorite broccoli recipes, he loves it as much as I do.

For me, I love both broccoli and cauliflower so this is another great salad with that sweet, sour, creamy, bacon smoky flavor combination I crave.

 

 

Mexican Villa Fake-out: Home-made Burrito Enchilada-Style

 

Let's start with a HUGE Thank You to Jamie D who read my original post about our hometown Mexican Villa and sent me a taste-alike recipe from the 'net for The Villa's enchilada sauce. Like Springfield-style Cashew Chicken, The Villa is a Springfield original, it's ours, and we're wild about it!

Using Jamie's sauce I created our own Burritos Enchilada-Style last night and we loved them. In a private email Jamie had said "When the chili seasoning hits the sauce your nose will know it's The Villa."  Yup, sooooooooo true!  Not that we won't be ordering from the restaurant itself anymore but it is a nice home-style meal as well that I got a huge kick out of creating. It will be fun to make it for friends or family sometime and see if I can fake them out.

Navy Bean and Ham Soup (Slow Cooker)

 

I've been trying to keep homemade soups in the fridge this winter for something nutritious to snack on or grab for work lunches and bean soups are my favorite.  Even though I happily eat them all year round, they embody winter cooking for me. I love how meaty and hearty they are, while knowing that they're absolutely good for me on every level from the fiber to the vitamins to the protein.  One of the ways I've changed my cooking style of bean soups, though, is to pump up the vegetable volume. I used to use veggies as seasoning and now I usually have as many onions, peppers, carrots mixed in as beans.  I love the way they fill out the taste and cook down along with the bean starch for that porridge consistency, sort of thick bowls of warmth on a gray day.

Happy 50th Birthday, Gene! Nannie's Banana Pudding Just For Gene

 
  
Happy 50th Birthday to my wonderful hubby, Gene! 

On the other hand, I can't believe I'm married to an official old man, AARP candidate, self-proclaimed "cranky old bastard".  How do these things happen in life?  They just sneak up on you with a baseball bat in the night.  :-)

Had a great party for old bastard (hey, his words!) last night with a few old friends to help usher him along into this over the hillishness and of course I have a few stories to tell.

Let's start with Friday, the day I was prepping food for this little shindig but in the middle of the afternoon I needed to go get my allergy and asthma shots. I'd just put on a pot of water to hardboil eggs for deviled eggs and, standing in the kitchen, told Gene "Just let them boil hard for 10 minutes and then turn them off and let them be."  His response was to scowl and bang his hand on the counter, yelling at me "I'm so damn tired of you starting crap and leaving me to finish it and take care of everything!"  My eyebrows were somewhere in the fifth dimension, I believe. While THINKING "You. Are. A. Dead Man." I SAID quietly "Are you kidding me?"  He immediately laughed and said "Yes! I am! You should see the look on your face. That was hilarious."  Yeah. Hilarious.  He almost didn't make it to that Big Five Oh.

But of course it was funny and I've been telling everyone.

He's been so ornery the last few days--it's been really fun and funny around our house. He also bacame his own birthday chronicler from time to time as he photographed the birthday prep.  After uploading this one, I asked "Why did you take a picture of me picking egg shell pieces out of the eggs?" He said "You were doing something with your hands?" 

Cute little dirty old man! :-)

 

I put up the fall and part of the Halloween decorations for last night and then added a few spiffy old man party things including this caution tape across the door and wound some of it around the pillars on the porch. We also made him wear a ribbon/button that said "OH NO THE BIG 5-0" and he stuck a little caution sign I'd bought for the dessert table into his shirt pocket that said "Caution: 50 year old having a senior moment" so I guess he was as decorated as the house.  He also had a baseball hat that read "50:  Been there, done that, can't remember it."

 
The Motley Bday Crue--Front Row:  Dee McKeel and Birthday Boy, Middle Row:  Debbie Henderson, Barb Schurke, Tammy Jahnke, and Jenn Garrison (Campbell).  Back row:  Jeff McKeel, John Henderson, John Schurke, Corbin Campbell, and Dave Jahnke. And not in the photo,  Darrel and Leigh Hasty, friends through Corbin and Jenn.

The connections are:  Jeff and Gene grew up together in Marshfield...John H. and Corbin and Gene were all in the radio game together for the last two and a half decades...Barb and John work with me but Gene loves them too... and Dave and Tammy have been neighbors and friends for over 15 years. 

We ate tons, told lots of fun stories, played a little poker... 

What a wonderful evening--thank you all for joining us and celebrating Geno's transition officially into old-man-hood!

And now for the recipe.  Gene's favorite dessert is my Nannie's (grandmother's) old-fashioned banana pudding, the truly southern version using 'Nilla Wafers.  She used to make a big bowl of it for him every year for his birthday and as a special treat whenever she thought he needed a little Nannie pick me up or whenever he did something extra special nice for her which was often. They were pretty tight. I love that they loved each other so much. The bittersweet part of that is that Nannie is no longer with us. So in memory of her and her love for Gene I get to make the banana pudding for him.

Eat Clean Diet: Minestrone

 
At the beginning of the year, I talked about this year being the year (that sounds familiar to EVERY year, doesn't it?) that I really do concentrate on eating healthier and cutting junk food out of my diet.  With half the year almost gone, I realize that to a great extent I have been successful. I am eating many more fresh vegetables and much much less junk food. Am I perfect? Nah, but I'm learning to enjoy better foods more often instead of just as the guilt tucks in.  I also talked about four books at the first of the year that have been helping me on that journey  http://afridgefulloffood.typepad.com/my_weblog/2010/01/happy-new-year-ring-in-the-new-year-with-renewed-commitment-to-health.html#tp

One of those books is The Eat-Clean Diet by Tosca Reno. There's also a companion cookbook and a web site:  www.eatcleandiet.com.  Most of Tosca's principles line up perfectly with The Mediterranean Diet in that she focuses on real, as fresh as possible, wholesome foods, getting rid of the junk food, good fats, deleting sugar, and concentrating on complex carbs.  Another principe of Eat Clean that I'm experimenting with is she suggests eating every 2-3 hours and to combine protein/complex carbs, both to keep blood sugar stabilized.  I had an epiphany on that one. Because I work long night shifts I find myself often craving soda to the point of getting a headache and sick to my stomach while at work. I suddenly realized that while I was thinking I was craving the caffeine, I'm now wondering if it's not a blood sugar drop instead. I'm experimenting this week by following Eat-Clean to the letter.

A great way to get lots of vegetables in without any chemicals or trans-fats is soup, specifically veggie soups.  This Minestrone recipe is very good and a pleasure to eat. I don't even feel like I"m deprived.  I'm eager to sit down to a bowl of it.  I will make one caveat.  The recipe as written is a HUGE batch.  I cut it in half and still have a huge crockpot full but it's perfect for a family of more than just two people, or for dinner plus nice lunch leftovers, or for me, like this weekend when I'm working a three day stretch.  It gives me quick grab and run meals at home and at work that keep me out of the hospital crapeteria and not even glancing at the vending machines.