Four Foods For Friday: ohmygoshdidimissitagain?!
hee hee. oopsie. The time period between January 20 and today had just totally SPED by. What happened? Wasn’t Christmas just a few weeks ago?! Have we entered some kind of Twilight Zoney, souped-up hypo medical travel? Time FLIES, people. It doesn’t help that I am hopping like crazy. There’s so much to do. I have a new online job and… the money is good… but it involves a lot of learning and right now it’s consuming a lot of time.
Well, enough of that, You didn’t come here to hear me whine! Here are the FFFF posts that I missed, I want to do them both because they are fun. And brief. 
FFFF #103
Name four things you ate today.
Well, seeing as it is 8:30am, I haven’t eaten anything today. I rarely ever eat breakfast. It seems my stomach isn’t ready to kick in until at least 12pm or so. All I’ve had is one cup of coffee. So….
1. Coffee
2. Cream
3. Sugar
Now, what *will* I be eating? See the next paragraph.
FFFF #104
One question again this week.
Name four things you are planning on eating this weekend.
1. I have a roast chicken (just a 4 pounder) thawing in my fridge; I hope to serve that on Sunday…
2. There is a bag of edamame and kielbasa calling my name….
3. I think I want to try one of those Temptations treats. Yeah, the cat food treats. My cat goes totally BONKERS over them! I wonder what’s in them that makes her want them so much? I’m tempted to try one. Could they possibly be that yummy?!
4. Pumpkin seeds and chopped dates. They are in a can by my desk. Yum. I’m out of cashews though, bummer.
Buying Yeast in Bulk
Just got my online order of yeast. Yay! I tried a new online outlet, Mulberry Lane Farms, and am impressed! The price of bulk yeast is very good. Shipping was a little pricey but I think the yeast is high-quality, and I like supporting family farm ventures like this.
I buy yeast in bulk. It saves me a ton of money (I make a lot of flax seed bread with all our Italian dishes). I cannot understand HOW grocery stores can charge $5 for a tiny little jar of yeast when I can pay $5 for a bulk 1 pound bag that contains ten times as much. Crazy! This month I needed yeast and I needed to buy cell phones minutes… but I couldn’t pay for both, not with store prices. I’m happy to report that I was able to get both! And now I have a year’s worth of yeast in my pantry.
I’m looking into buying nuts and seeds in bulk, too. I haven’t found a BIG savings in online versus retail stores yet. If anyone has any suggestions, feel free to leave them. I prefer the smaller, farming, family-friendly places instead of the “CAFO” of bulk foods. It’s been tough trying to find nuts and seeds online for good prices.
Like Grandma’s Chicken Dumplings?
A recipe titled “Like Grandma’s Chicken Dumplings” is a loaded one, for me. My grandmother never cooked (not that I remember; she was always busy shifting through mounds of paperwork, perhaps life insurance rates and retirement benefits?). But seemed to always serve Campbell’s tomato soup and tuna fish sandwiches. It was fine with me, because I loved tomato soup and disliked Chicken Dumplings. Yuk.
Buuuut…. I couldn’t let my kids grow up without once trying Chicken Dumplings, now could I? What kind of mother would I be?! So I found a recipe that made it easy. I can’t say it’s very tasty… they liked it OK, but I didn’t care for it. It is certainly palatable, but I don’t like cream sauces… and this had more sauce then chicken. The original recipe is at Disney Family Food (a new recipe website I’ve discovered). I altered it a little. Here’s what I did.
Like Grandma’s Chicken and Dumplings
Ingredients
2 cups cooked chicken
1 can (10 3/4 ounces) condensed cream of mushroom soup, undiluted
1 can (10 3/4 ounces) condensed cream of chicken soup, undiluted
2 soup cans water
4 teaspoons all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons chicken bouillon granules
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1 can refrigerated buttermilk biscuits (8 biscuits)Directions
1. Mix all ingredients, except biscuits, in 4 1/2-quart CROCK-POT® slow cooker.
2. Cut biscuits into quarters and gently stir into mixture. Cover; cook on LOW 4 to 6 hours.Tip
Don’t add water to the CROCK-POT® slow cooker, unless the recipe specifically says to do so. Foods don’t lose as much moisture during slow cooking as they can during conventional cooking, so follow the recipe guidelines for best results.
OK, I doubled the recipe. The “2 cans” soup water made for a LOT of water. I did it anyway….
Looks… interesting….
It was just too watery. So I added potatoes. And carrots. All the Chicken and Dumpling recipes I ever saw had potatoes and carrots. This was turning more into a Chicken Stew…. but I wasn’t going to eat canned cream of chicken soup and chicken cubes! It just didn’t seem enough. Adding the potatoes probably diluted a little of the saltiness from the “bouillon” granules (I used Ramen packets). So more salt is necessary.
End result?
Not TOO bad. I skipped the refrigerated biscuits and served fresh rolls instead. The kids liked dipping the rolls into the soup. And the chicken was marvelously tender and moist. But the overall taste….. eh. OK. It’s always the creamy sauce stuff that I don’t care for.
So this was an OK recipe. I don’t intend to make it again, unless the kids beg me. And they probably won’t. The WILL beg me for Tortellini with Edamame and Kielbasa, which I am going to make again.
