Tag Archives: chicken

Chicken Vegetable Soup

By

It got down in the low 30°s yesterday. A perfect day for chicken vegetable soup. A soup cooked in a slow cooker all day long. A warm welcome when one enters the door, cold and tired, at the end of a long day.
I don’t have a recipe for my slow cooker chicken soup. I boil the chicken on the stove first. I put the chicken and it’s broth in the slow cooker. I add whatever vegetables I have on hand: frozen, fresh or canned. I turn it on and go on about my day.

*I feel obligated to note that I rinse the canned vegetables to hopefully help reduce the salt even though we by low salt or no salt canned goods.
I put the frozen onions and bell peppers in a colander and ran hot water of them for a minute, to help thaw them, before adding them to the slow cooker.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t make any corn bread to go along with the soup because for the first time in my 4 decades of married life, I don’t have a solitary egg in the house. My husband cooked up the last of the eggs for our breakfast Monday and we haven’t had a chance to go to the grocery store this week.
All was not lost, we have oyster crackers and they’re mighty tasty in the soup.

What’s you favorite recipe for winter days?

I wish you all a warm and pleasant weekend.

.

Chicken Cordon Bleu

By

The other day, I was watching an old black and white movie and a woman in the movie said that she had made ‘Chicken Cordon Bleu’.
I’d heard of cordon bleu entrées several times over the years, but usually in reference to a restaurant menu. I don’t know why it never occurred to me that it could be made at home. I wondered just how hard it would be to make.
I went surfing around and came upon a really good recipe and decided to give it a go. I’m surprised at how easy the ‘Homemade Chicken Cordon Bleu’ recipe is to make.

This is one of the few recipes that I made real close to the published recipe.
I used:
Panko bread crumbs
Deli Black Forest Ham
Swiss Cheese slices
I didn’t use toothpicks, the chicken stayed rolled up quite nicely without them.
I checked the internal temperature of the chicken and made sure it was over 165°. I’m real careful about that.

I served the Chicken Cordon Bleu with baked squash and a baked yukon gold potato.
It was a hearty meal and very tasty. My husband sure enjoyed it too.I condsider my attempt at making Chicken Cordon Bleu a success. I’m always happy to add another tasty recipe to our menu.

Have you tried any recipes that were inspired by a mention on a movie or tv show?
Was it a success?

Wishing you a successful rest of the week.

 

 

recipe can be found at:
Taste of Home – Homemade Chicken Cordon Bleu

 

.

Chicken slow cooker pot pie and Muffin Flats

By

Recently I discovered a new soup on the shelf in our local grocery store.
‘Cream of Chicken with Herbs’
Most of my cooking is experimental at best, so I decided to give this new soup a try.

I mixed a the can of soup with a 3/4 can of water and a 1/2 tsp of lite salt and poured it in my slow cooker.
I cut up a couple chicken breasts  in to hearty size pieces and put them in the slow cooker and stirred them around to cover them in the soup.
I cooked them on high for a few hours.
When the chicken was fully cooked, I added fresh carrots and sweet peas.
I let it cook for another hour. Fresh carrots take a long time to cook in the slow cooker. I should have pre-cooked them in the microwave.
After the carrots were finally cooked, I added a cup of minute rice to the slow cooker.
I let it cook for about a half an hour more

I served it in a bowl with a side of muffin flats made with Jiffy muffin mix. Muffin flats is what I call the way I make my muffins now. I cook them in a whoopie pie pan. Muffin flats seem much better for us grown-ups than cupcake shaped muffins.
Yes, I realize that some folks would call them muffin tops instead of muffin flats. However, since it’s my whoopie pie pan and my oven I bake them in, in my kitchen with a batter mixed by my own hand, I can call them anything I want. 😉

The chicken slow cooker pot pie tastes quite a bit like a regular chicken pot pie without the crust.
The sweet muffin flats pair well with it.
This falls into my favorite food group of ‘comfort food’.
It’s pleasantly filling and would be great on a cold winter day.

My journey into experimental cooking with the ‘Cream of Chicken with Herbs’ soup and creating ‘Chicken slow cooker pot pie’ was a mighty tasty success.

Wishing you all success in your cooking and crafting experiments.

~*~
Post inspired by:
2017 WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge – Experimental
“Show us your interpretation of today’s theme, “Experimental.”

 

.

Pillsbury Chicken Lo Mein

By

Earlier in the Summer, I got a bit of a craving for Chicken Lo Mein. Usually we go to a local restaurant for Lo Mein and other tasty foods, but it was too late in the evening for going much of anywhere. It occurred to me that most everything can be made at home now-a-days. Perhaps there was a simple recipe for lo mein on the internet that I might be able to make. It became quite an obsession with me over the next few days. I finally decided on a recipe on the Pillsbury website ‘Chicken Lo Mein’.

I’ve made this recipe a few times this Summer. I’ve adjusted ingredients for us and it turns out quite well. It’s filling and We really like it.

Here’s my adjustments:
– I leave out the water chestnuts. We tried them with the first batch, but it really didn’t add anything to the meal.
– I use fresh garlic and fresh ginger.
– I’ve used frozen vegetables only once. There wasn’t hardly enough in the bag for 2 servings, so I had to add some other veggies with them. Since that first time, I use fresh vegetables only. It takes a bit longer for prep time, but it’s so worth it.
– The recipe doesn’t call for cauliflower, but it had cauliflower in the pretty photo on the recipe page, so I added it to it. Cauliflower tastes great in this lo mein.
– We use a ‘less sodium’ soy sauce.
– I use linguini noodles. I cook them almost done before adding them in with the ingredients in the pan.
We prefer linguini noodles over the angel hair pasta for this recipe. To us, angel hair pasta is more for spaghetti or alfredo and the like.

~*~
Wishing you all success in finding new to recipes to enjoy!

 

.

WildLife Wednesday – Mystery Egg

By

The other day, My husband was trimming some bushes and trees at the edge of the woods. He called me outside to see something odd he found in the woods.
I never know what to expect when he calls me outside to see a new discovery. I make sure to grab my camera as I head out of the door.  
I was surprised to see a pretty white egg. It’s the size of a regular chicken egg. How strange. It’s just sitting there as if a hen was passing by and laid her egg next to the rain lily. We figure it could have happened that way.2-12-2017-bNot really wildlife, but I’m betting a critter had something to do with this mystery egg appearing in our woods.2-12-2017-a

Wishing you all a whimsical Wednesday!

.

Crocheted Chicken Dishcloth

By

10-22-2016-chknpthldr0Recently I saw a crocheted chicken potholder. It was such a nostalgic looking piece that I wanted to try my hand at making it.
There’s a youtube video of the pattern. I’m not patient enough to sit through a video tutorial, so I purchased a pdf pattern. I printed it off because it’s easier for me to use a paper copy. The directions were easy to follow.

I’m glad the seller listed this pattern ‘For Decoration Purpose Only’ because it’s absolutely ‘Not Safe’ for use as a potholder.
However, it’s about 8×8 inches and that’s a good size for a dishcloth. I intend to use mine as a dishcloth.
The crocheted chicken would make a charming wall decor if a person wanted to use a stiffener and block it.

My chicken dishcloth turned out so well that I adjusted the pattern and made one facing in the opposite direction. For the second chicken, I used a size ‘G’ crochet hook and it came out being almost as big as the first chicken made with an ‘I’ crochet hook. I was a bit surprised for it to turn out that size.chknpthldr

Happy Crocheting!

.

Homemade Chicken Pot Pie & chicken broth

By

IMG_7486
The other day I saw a photo of  Bisquick chicken pot pit and of course that made me want to make one. I’d never made it before. Thankfully the recipe isn’t too complicated and I had all the ingredients on hand. It turned out really pretty and mighty tasty.

Here’s a link to the recipe: Bisquick Chicken Pot Pie

Here’s my adjustments and changes to the recipe:
I used Pict Sweet frozen vegetables
I used 1% milk
I used Egg Makers (liquid eggs)
1/8 tsp black pepper
1/8 tsp thyme
I baked my chicken pot pie in a deep baking dish (about 8-inch x 2-inch deep). I didn’t think any of the pie plates or pans I have would have worked very well.
IMG_7481

The recipe calls for cooked chicken. It didn’t specify how to cook it. I needed to make some broth anyhow so I took care of 2 food stuffs at once and boiled the chicken with some herbs, onions & sweet peppers. The chicken turned out beautiful and tasted really good. It worked great for the pot-pie. I was going to make chicken salad with part of it, but my husband and Shelibean decided that it was the perfect snack to nibble on in front of the tv. lol

Even though I used skinless boneless chicken breasts, I still strained the broth 3 times through 8 layers of cheesecloth.
(Then the next day it occurred to me that I should have used a coffee filter to strain it through. It would have been less work. I hope I can remember the coffee filter the next time I make broth.)

I let the broth cool and pour one cup portions into square plastic containers then freeze them. I take the frozen broth ice cube out of the plastic container and put them in vacuum pack bags, date them and put them in the freezer for future use.
I love the way these look.
(Does that make me odd? lol)
IMG_7516
We use alot of broth in recipes and since salt is a problem in the processed foods, salt-free homemade broth is a welcomed staple to have on hand.

The sun is shining and the temps are warming up. It’s 57°, if the wind would stay calm, it would be a lovely day to go for a walk and look for signs of green.

I’m so happy to finally dare-to-hope that maybe Spring-like weather might be here soon.

Hope you all have a lovely day!
🙂

spcr1