Chicken’n'Dumplings

Jessica Simpson’s Chicken and Dumplings

Ingredients

• 3 rolls of reduced-fat croissant rolls, divided (recommended brand Pillsbury)
• 1 small rotisserie chicken, skin discarded and meat removed from bones
• 1 can of low-sodium, reduced-fat cream of chicken soup
• 1 can of low-sodium, reduced-fat cream of mushroom soup
• 1 cup low-sodium chicken broth
• Salt and ground black pepper

Yields: 4 servings

Indoor Activities (not calling it “crafts”) for Christmas!

I think the fact that I start counting down to Christmas in July is part of my DNA. By August of every year my Mom’s phone calls regularly end with “You know there’s only [this many] days left until Christmas! I don’t have a list from you yet!!”.  Last year’s Christmas was a little crazy. T & I were only *just* married and were gone the first week of December on our honeymoon in Mexico. Warm, lazy, relaxing, oh yes please I’d like another tequila Mexico. Then we were home, unpacking and then off to High Point to attempt to have our first ever holiday with our “in-laws” which is, surprisingly, much more difficult when both of them live in the same town.

This year we were blessed with a new home to celebrate in, and we just got moved the first week of Christmas. So last year when we were drinking pina colada’s at 10 am, we were now unloading all of our furniture in from the rain and cold. Most of the move-in went smoothly. There was the pesky little issue of our enormous 1980s couch that had to be air-lifted pulled up onto the front balcony w/ ropes and then heaved over the railing into the room in which it will live, on the second floor.  It made a valiant attempt at coming up the stairs but the only thing we had to show for that was some weird scratch/rubs on the paint in the staircase. But that is a story for a different post.

So here we are,  just 4 days from Christmas. CHRISTMAS. And whoa I’ve sort of freaked myself out with (a) the amount of crafting that I’ve decided I must do and (b) the amount I’ve actually gotten done. I made a wreath y’all. A WREATH? Yes. Why? I’m not sure but I saw it on MarthaStewart.com (OMG really did I just say that?) and I had this gut reaction that I HAVE to make this peppermint wreath.

A discovery! Also: HALLOWEEN!

I can ride in a car and sew. No really, that is a HUGE discovery for me. I can’t read in a car, I can’t play a video game but for a few minutes (and you better believe that I DO have a Nintendo DS and I play it as long as my throbbing head will allow) and, well Internet, you better believe I am not a very good car-rider.  I’m impatient. I don’t like the music you listen to. I’m always tired, and I consume mass quantities of junk food while enroute to our destination.

So I was reading my Twitter a few days previous to Halloween and I saw that @whoorl posted about a really, really awesome owl mask that she bought off of Etsy. Or atleast she bought the kit from this Etsy user (I think?). I was inspired. Buthad very little money and even less time (2 hours in a car) to spend on this project.  A quick trip to the fabric store and digging out my old sewing kit and hit the jump to see the photos…

Cans for Comments!

Please visit my gorgeous friend Melissa Williamson’s photography blog here: www.mwphotoblog.com and leave a comment on ANY post! She’s donating a can of food to her local (Athens, GA) food drive for each comment left.

She’s also an awesome photographer and all-around the coolest chick that I know. So she’s got that going for her too. She captured some moments at my own wedding (that she was a bridesmaid in) that were really beautiful – quiet moments and details that the photographer and his 2nd shooter missed & I am forever grateful for that!

Home Sweet (in a few weeks) Home

Well T & I finally took the plunge. “What plunge? I didn’t know there was anything to plunge into!” you say…and I respond with…

How to make Pandora & your Mac best friends

I was getting SO TIRED of opening Pandora (the most amazing customizable Internet-radio ever) in one browser on the iMac and then desperately hating a song and wanting to thumbs-down it, or getting tired of a station and wanting to choose a new one and FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THINGS HOLY not being able to find it . With this new-age world of Firefox, Opera, Safari, IE, and the zillions of other browsers that T & I apparently use on a rotating basis, along with tabs which I enjoy using liberally – Oh and don’t even make me talk about SPACES (we have 9, yes, count ‘em, 9 because we constantly get annoyed with each others stuff in the way & I just require more room than the standard 4 allowed for).

So I devised a solution to keeping Pandora easy to access & free of the chance of being accidentally closed, thus killing the party mood. I might be the last person to think of this, but I was so, so happy when I did.

World Beer Fest: A raving review

So Saturday, T & I spent a much, much antcipated day doing one of our favorite combined activities: drinking weird beers.

We purchased a pair of evening tickets to the WBF (World Beer Festival) because we were told it was the most fun of the two sessions. Clarification: the early session runs from 12-4 pm, at which time they shut everything down…drag all the stragglers out from under the acorn trees, and wind everything back up for the evening session, which runs from 6-10 pm. But at the very last minute (no, really…like, the night before) with some advice that the later session was a little on the crazy side and with my slowly onsetting anxiety attack over being squeezed into claustrophobic tents at night. In the dark. And I can’t find my husband. & I’ve had alot of beer. – Well…I hopped on Craigslist and offered to trade my tickets. I got a quick response and everything worked beautifully!

And OH MY what a beautiful day to spend out in Moore Square in downtown Raleigh! The sun was shining (although the weather had fore casted rain & thunderstorms all week) and there was a cool breeze and everyone was in such a good mood  – not just T & I! It really felt like the whole crowd was just happy to be there. I don’t think we were the only ones who had been looking forward to WBF.

Beer-Braised Beef & Onions

This recipe is my answer to many issues:
1. I had a chuck roast I impulsively purchased at Whole Foods. I recognized the cut as one that is used in SO many slow-cooker recipes.
2. I dislike potroast. Every time I looked over a recipe that mentioned carrots or turnips or something similarly unpleasing I just had to keep moving. So what ELSE do you do with A POT ROAST, because that is essentially what I purchased.
3. Slow cooker recipes typically cook for 6-8 hours on low…right? Well…I leave my house around 7:00 am – and I don’t get home until 4:30 – so even with the crock-pot turning to it’s “warming” mode with the little timer and everything, that means that whatever poor meal that was trapped in the slowcooker will get 9.5 hours of heat. So…yeah can someone find me a slow cooker recipe that cooks for like 10 or 11 hrs? kthx.

Browsing my iPhone at lunch today I noiced an application for Epicurious (“There’s an app for that”) so I promptly downloaded it & searched “chuck roast”. I eventually happened upon this Beer-Braised Beef & Onions and there is little in this world that I love more than onions. In any shape, fashion, or form. Fried, caramelized, grilled, raw. Love ‘em. Also, it only cooks for 3~ hours…

Click the link I posted in the last paragraph for the recipe in it’s full form. Below is what I made (substitutions, etc).

Caramalized Black Pepper Chicken

I found this recipe from following @nicoleritchie on Twitter. Crazy, I know…but for this recipe alone I justify my obsession with celebrity & comedian Twitterers. The original recipe (via Food & Wine) calls for using 2 Thai chilis, but I don’t know what those are & I don’t feel like figuring it out & making a special trip to the grocery store.  So I throw a little palmful of red pepper flakes in the mix instead. It also calls for cilantro. Which I hate. So it’s not in there.

Other than the obscure chilis, I have everything on hand. I realize that ginger is not something that everyone keeps on hand, but both T & I enjoy the flavor so much that I’ve taken to purchasing a nice hand or two of ginger when I find a good deal on it, then in one big event, I peel it all and cut it into “coins”, then put it in some tupperware and freeze it. Alton Brown suggested this as a method of storing ginger and it’s worked so well for me. Note: when you toss the tupperware in the freezer, try to remember to reach in there and give it a serious shake every 30 minutes or so until it really hardens up…otherwise you’ll end up with a giant fozen solid piece of ginger in the shape of your tupperware.

The longer you cook the chicken/sauce the thicker it will become – eventually turning into a sort of syrup – which I adore. It’s all very sticky and tangy and sweet and salty. Delicious.

Employed again!

I never thought that after a month of unemployment I’d turn around and get a great opportunity to work in an industry that I’ve always admired. But it’s true. Due to my constant complaining about applying for jobs and unemployment, an anonymous Tweet-er spoke up and offered to scan the job availabilities in his firm. I applied, I interviewed…and just like it happened two years ago when I was fresh out of college – the first job I applied to I got. Amazing.

So now I’m working again. 8 until 4, Monday through Friday… giving me JUST enough time to hit up any shopping (grocery or otherwise) and get home to see T come in from work. Many more options come along with leaving work at 4:00 pm – namely, the option of missing all of the traffic coming out of RTP at 5:00. That is so nice to not experience.

For instance, though…I picked up a nice little chuck roast from Whole Foods last night and so tonight for dinner we’re having the Caramalized Blackened Chicken, and I’m doing a potroast for tomorrow night! MAN I feel like a multitasker!

Now I just need to figure out how to post my recipes separately. WordPress: how do I do this? I guess I’m expected to just flood my blog with posts of seperate recipes, and then link back to them when they’re relevant? I guess that works. Somehow I felt that if I wasn’t posting just one recipe in a post…I wouldn’t get sued by the originator of the recipe…I guess we’ll have to wait and see…and possibly call our lawyer. Either way, I was getting tired of trying to reference my own records and having to wade through 3 or 4 posts to figure out which one held the recipe I wanted.