Chicks and Dumplins'

Chicken and Dumplings has got to be one of the yahoo's favorites (well, the girl yahoos, anyway!) It's a perfect crock pot meal for our family on the go!

Here's what it takes:

Start by spraying the crock pot with some non-stick spray, and plop in a few chicken breasts - since I always have a mega-sized bag of these in the freezer, this a fantastic meal to make with them - and they can go in frozen!

Toss in some chopped onions....

and a couple of cans of soup in any combination of Cream of Mushroom, Cream of Chicken and Cream of Celery...


You can also add some seasonings here - poultry seasoning mixes, salt, pepper, oregano, sage, thyme, garlic...whatever floats your boat!

Let this cook for a few hours (around 4 or so) on high...and it will start to look something like this...


Now it's time to shred the chicken...this will work wonderfully with just a few forks - plant them into the chicken and pull....and when you're done (and really, this should not take more than a few minutes...your chicken is going to be so tender and juicy!) add a bag of frozen veggies and mix them in.

Now comes some personal preferences...I've made this several ways....adding nothing...adding water...or adding chicken stock/broth. Add about one soup can's worth or so...the veggies will add some liquid to the mix, so the more liquid you add, the soupier your meal will be.


And the easiest dumplings every made - refridgerated biscuits! Just pop open a can and cut each one up into small chunks and just drop them right on top of your mixture. One can of "Grands" sized biscuits or two cans of the smaller ones will do the trick.

Let these cook, covered for a bit (at least an hour or so). Notice how nicely they've gone all "Ball Park Frank" on you and 'plumped while you cooked 'em'!

If you want dumplings that are more 'noodle-like', you can go back and stir them into the mixture after they've plumped a little bit. If you like them more like biscuits, simply let them continue to cook on top, and they'll eventually end up with a nice, brown baked look to them.


After a grand total cooking time of about 6 hours - 4 before adding veggies and dumplings, and 2 after...you're delicious Chicken and Dumplings are ready to eat!

Something smells fishy....

Mexican dishes have always been popular with the yahoos...and so, we tried adding a new one to the rotation - a bit healthier and definitely popular!

FISH TACOS

Fish tacos are incredibly fast to make, healthy, and YUMMY! I usually start by getting my accompaniements all set first, so that some flavors in the sauce have time to 'meld' and because the fish takes no time at all to cook, I leave that for last!

So first, I typically mix up a 'custom' sour cream sauce that works wonderfully with these tacos:

2 tablespoons of sour cream

2 tables spoons of mayo

about 2 teaspoons of lime juice

and usually a dash of Frank's Red Hot Sauce

Mix and let sit in the fridge while you get the rest ready.

I prefer to eat these tacos with some fresh salsa and avocado...the kids typically drown them in the 'usual' toppings, which includes onions, cheese, Chi Chis salsa and sour cream. I buy the salsa in the deli section at our 'supermarket' and some avocados to slice up...this can be tricky, as our store doesn't always have that perfectly ripe avocado. And if you don't use avocado a lot (which we seem to) I've included how I slice them up for my tacos.

Slice in half and twist to release. Then I use the largest knife in my drawer and whack it into the pit....

and give it a little turn...

this releases the pit. Now, if the avocado is just the right amount of ripeness, it's easy to just peel off the skin. Sometimes I've used a vegetable peeler as well. If the avocado is too ripe, you're going to end up with a pile of mush when attempted this...so tread carefully in your avocado picking...

Once it's peeled, just slice the halves for inclusion on the yummy taco!

Next comes the fish...I typically use Mahi Mahi...I have used tilapia before, and while the flavor was fine (since tilapia has almost no flavor...), the consistency was very different - it's a much 'flakier' fish, and doesn't hold up well in chunks like the Mahi Mahi does. You can use cod, orange roughy, red snapper....you know....fish....

Cut the fish into cubes to prep it for your pan.

Now, on to the pan....some olive oil....

Fresh garlic (with my trusty Pampered Chef Garlic Press)

and about a couple tablespoons of lime juice....

Saute this for a bit and then add your fish....

It's only going to take 6 - 8 minutes for the fish to finish, as both the heat and the lime juice cook it up nicely....and you can add some fresh ground pepper to boot....

Now it's time to assemble your taco - I 'smear' some of the sour cream sauce into my tortilla...

followed by the fish, avocado and salsa....and voila! YUMM!!

We typically have a lettuce salad with this meal as well - and this dressing makes a wonderful accompaniment - ENJOY!

It's not easy being green!

Remember this monochromatic meal???

Well, what better day for another monochrome meal than St. Patrick's Day!??! And while the leprechauns did not turn our milk green, we did have a 'green' meal! And, it's made from things you've read about here!

First came the main dish - usually this is Spinach & Mushroom Ravioli - but today it was Whole Wheat Cheese Tortellini (store was out of ravioli....and since Druggy and I are on weight watchers, the whole wheat pasta was a better route anyway!)

And there are a plethora of green vegetables we could have eaten in our green meal...green beans, asparagus, broccoli...all are family favorites...but the most famous is the artichoke...so that's what we had!

and finally...we top it off with a salad...green, but also very colorful!

A great way to celebrate the holiday through food...speaking of which...we did that on Valentine's day, though um...the coloring wasn't quite as sucessful...

Orange (rather than pink eggs)...

Heart shaped cinnamon rolls...

and the kids' favorite....pink grits.

No choking here!

One of the kids new favorite dinnertime vegetables - artichokes!

Hard to imagine, but some nicely sauteed and steamed artichokes, dipped in some garlic butter, are now one of their favorite things!

So here's how I make them:

Cut the tops of the chokes and snip off any remaining 'pokies' on the leaves.


Now cut them in half and scoop out the 'fur' - this is relatively easy, but also not entirely necessary. I do it to avoid any unnecessary fur consumption later.

Melt some butter in a pan and add some fresh garlic. Heat enough to get the garlic infused into the butter and add the artichokes.

Saute for about 5 minutes on each side.

Add some water and cover and steam until artichokes are tender (15 - 20 minutes).

Melt some additional butter with garlic for dipping.

To eat, simply peel leaves off one by one and scrap out the small amount of 'meat' at the base of the leaf - this portion of the leaf can be dipped into the garlic butter (or mayo or a mustard sauce) before 'scrapping'.

The kids love these, and even the youngest, at only 2 years old, knows how to scrape out the 'meat' without eating the rest of the leaf.

Here's the stack of discarded leaves from just my two older yahoos!

Enjoy!

Sweetest Day

Just so you know, I'm not always looking for the easiest, most processed way to cook dinner for my family. On Sweetest Day, I ventured to my favorite website for recipes in search of one for salmon. This is another one of those meals that we had a 'kid dinner' and then an adult dinner after they were in bed - in celebration of Sweetest Day (and the 13th anniversary of our first date!) The kids DO eat salmon, but they missed out on this meal.

I love this site because it is composed of recipes submitted by individuals, but also with a great system for reviews and ratings.

I selected a salmon and creamy dill sauce recipe. I'm not a huge fan of dill, but there were many recipes on the site that paired salmon and dill, so i figured they must know something I didn't.

So I followed the recipe (for the most part!) by putting the salmon fillet on a sheet of aluminum foil and sprinkling it with lemon pepper and garlic salt. Then I topped it with some thin slices of onion, lemon and some pats of butter and closed it all up for baking.

While it baked, I mixed up the creamy dill sauce - comprised of mayo, sour cream, dill, finely chopped onions, garlic salt, and a tad bit of horseradish.


After initial baking, the salmon was broiled for a bit to finish it off.

I served it with wild rice and green beans and it was INCREDIBLE. Hurray for another successful recipe search on the web!

Everybody loves pie!

And Shepherd's Pie is no different! This fantastic all-in-one meal is SO easy, it's crazy - and very tasty to the hubby and the yahoos. It hearkens us back to England and our pub-fare days (though we would typically order the bangers and mash or fish and chips, the shepherd's pie is good, too!)

So here's how i make it...

Many of the above pictured ingredients COULD be made from scratch - nice, creamy, homemade mashed potatoes...gravy leftover from last night's pot roast...and for that matter, last night's pot roast. I, however, VERY rarely cook like that. This meal is much more processed (and I'm sure high in sodium), but it's easy and it's not fast food.


So - a box (or two) of steak-um like meat things. Cook these up in a frying pan. I have made this with ground beef before, but we prefer the steak-ums.

This becomes layer Number One in your baking dish.

Layer Number Two is your frozen vegetables. I've used the carrot/pea/corn/green bean mixture, which is the most popular, or just corn and green beans. There's some out there with lima beans in them (which i despise) but I'm sure would be enjoyable to some of you.

Layer Number Three is the gravy. I have been known to add TOO much gravy, and then it ends up boiling over. Really one and a half of these jars would be perfect.

Make up the mashed potatoes according to the directions on the box. Sometimes I've gotten fancy with how I put Layer Number Four on there - with my Pampered Chef Accent Decorator, making pretty little swirls. Sometimes I just spread (and I use that term loosely) the potatoes on the top - it's not easy, I don't recommend that method. On this night, I used a scoop, which worked beautifully.

Now it's ready to hit the 425 degree oven for about half an hour, til it looks like this.

And because it's got your meat, veggie and starch all in one, you can serve with just a salad, or a breadstick and feel good about yourself. So that's what I did.

yellow

Sometimes it's fun to plan a meal that centers all around one color. My middle school home ec teacher, Mrs. Johnson, would disagree strongly with me, as part of our grade included whether we had a good variety of colors on our plate. But for meals with young children, it's fun to make them all one color sometimes, too!

So I present to you, our 'yellow' meal:

Our 'ingredients' - fresh pineapple spears, direct from Hawaii. Even Lilly, who doesn't eat a lot of fruit, and really doesn't like pineapple, ate several of these. Most of you reading this blog will probably have to settle for the Meijer version of this fruit...shameful.

Pork tenderloin - I make many of these, in a variety of ways. This particular one was a Meijer marinated version that I baked. The kids enjoy pork quite a bit, regardless of the flavor (though Jason's favorite by far is slow-cooked with saurkraut).

Our side dish tonight was "Cheesy Rice". I typically use Minute Rice because even though rice isn't hard to cook, Minute Rice takes just minutes...duh. For this recipe I mixed in several slices of processed cheese...you can use small cubes of Velveeta, too. Then I sprinkled it with parsley to make it look like I'm a fancy cook. A fancy cook that makes Minute Rice.

And finally, for our vegetable this evening, I present the ever popular corn.

What color will your meal tonight be??