Oliver Files: The Family Room

Or maybe I should say his play room?  This is what the floor looked like before I went to sleep last night, in fact the rubber chicken is still stuck to the chair, where he left it!  You'd never know that the day started out with the floor clean and all of his toys in the bucket.  Angel doesn't seem to be bothered by much of this so I guess all is good.

A close up of the rubber chicken stuck to the chair.  Oliver loves shredding paper, so we've learned.

Chicken and Broccoli Fettuccine in Alfredo Sauce

I'll post the recipe later, John helped me make this tonight and it was by far the best I've ever tasted!

Dinner 072712

Another hybrid dish somewhere between ragu and colache!

Horseradish and mustard encrusted baked chicken served with quinoa. I've taken some notes on tonights dishes for future changes for instance there wasn't near enough mustard on the chicken!  Oh and don't forget to salt the chicken next time.  I'm still getting used to quinoa, it's wonderful but my brain keeps telling my tongue that it's cream of wheat when in fact it is not.  Next time I'll add some fresh herbs to the quinoa at the very end.

Dinner

Pasties or Hot Pockets

I used the left over veggie and chicken mixture, and pie crust, to make two hot pockets tonight or if your Welsh then pasties.  This is my first attempt EVER at making hot pockets.  It took about 30 minutes for them to bake, the bottoms are not burnt though the sides are rather brown.

Home Made Chicken Pot Pie

Made chicken pot pie for John tonight, he was in heaven!

1 pint chicken - dark meat
1 pound frozen mixed veggies thawed
4 medium sized potatoes peeled and cubed
celery salt
salt
black pepper ground
garlic powder

Mix the meat and veggies in a sauce pan if the meat isn't juicey add about a half cup of water.  Heat to a boil and boil about three minutes, put a lid on the pan to keep the steam in.  Season, to taste, with the spices a pinch of each will do.

If the mixture is super runny add a bit of corn or potato starch to a couple of tablespoons of water stir until well blended and then add to the veggie meat mix.  Heat until it thickens.

To make the crust brown I coat it with some milk before baking using a pastry brush.

Put into your prepared pie crust cover the mixture with a pie crust round, crimp the sides.  Bake at 375F for about 45 minutes or until bubbling.

Chicken Paea

I have no idea if I spelled the name right or not it's a spanish recipe and it was delicious! I love simple one pot cooking meals!!! ;-)

Sweet Potato, Sausage, and Kale Soup

This is what we had for dinner and it was delcious. I substituted out Italian flavored Pork Sausage for the turkey sausage and yams for the sweet potatoes which were outrageously over priced ($4.97 a pound~!) The Kale was exceptional in this recipe, it reminds me of a soup I've eaten before down south.

You can find the recipe here http://ourkitchensink.wordpress.com/2009/02/04/on-mirrored-elevators-and-hearty-lunches/

Oven Fried Chicken

Here they are after backing, ignore the white part on the one chicken thigh John said he ran out of flour and I'm STILL NOT CERTAIN what happened!

Coated with corn flakes, flour and spices and ready to be baked in a 375F oven. Below chicken parts awaiting a coating of goodies.

Well it all started on Thursday night, after a very harried day of bookwork etc., and dh's coming home late I decided at the last minute to go to HyVee and buy some chicken already fried up from the deli. And it was really good and we got to talking about it during dinner and the point that it was a dollar per piece of chicken did not go unnoticed!

Soooo John and I decided that it would benefit us more if we made up some chicken this weekend and froze it for those evenings when I"m really tired and REALLY don't feel like cooking but still want something super tasty to eat. We picked up 10 pounds of chicken hind quarters and John made oven fried chicken for us! It's all cooked, they are out in the garage freezing as I write and tomorrow they will go into the freezer. There's several meals worth here!

More Chicken

I canned up some more chicken last night - this makes the most excellent chicken salad sandwiches! I'm really getting into canning my own convience foods I haven't been able to really eat any for years now due to food allergies - apparently after dozens of allergy tests I'm allergic to the vitamins that most foods are fortified with, so here's to a tasty sandwich!!!

Layered Chicken Vegetable Soup

1 Cup Chopped Potato - we used Russets

Fresh Chicken Broth made from cooking the chicken hind quarters.

1/4 Cup Cooked Chicken

1 Cup chopped Carrot.

2/3 Cup. Corn

2 T. Chopped Roma Tomatoes

2/3 Cup Chopped Green Beans

A tablespoon of chopped onion is added to each jar. Dh wanted to know where the garlic was???

Each jar gets half chicken bullion cube which is placed in the jar first on the bottom.

We experimented with the layering trying to find one that was visually pleasing.

In the AA and ready to be pressure canned - 90 minutes at 10 pounds of pressure.

Layered Chicken Vegetable Soup Recipe

Wow this is very popular so here is the recipe and the next post will be pics of what we did.

The potatos, carrots, tomatoes, and onions were raw (I soaked the cubed potatoes for four hours with a bit of vinegar) The corn and green beans were frozen.

Amounts are approximations for a quart jar:

1c cubed potatoes
1c sliced/cubed carrot (depended on the diameter of the carrot most ended up cubed)
2/3c corn
2/3c green beans
1/4c cooked chicken meat
T Onion
2T chopped fresh roma tomatoes
1/2 Chicken bullion Cube

Cover with the broth you made when you cooked the chicken meat. PC 90 minutes.

I arranged it in layers so that it would be pretty!Potato, carrot, green bean, chicken, corn, tomato, onion.

Chicken Vegetable Soup

We put up some chicken vegetable soup today, in addition to the meatloaf. Last night all I got done was the chunky applesauce I still have chili and apple pie filling to get canned, along with more chunky apple sauce. I'm hping to have spiced apple rings canned up by next weekend and that will be all for apples this year!

Penny Pinching Dinners

Tonights dinner special was ramen noodles with chicken and mixed vegetables, total cost $2.81 for two people! Not bad. Now had we chosen to not add the canned chicken and the veggies and eaten just the noodles total cost would have been $0.36 I used two noodle packets but used only one of the seasoning packs - saved the other for some other day. I rinsed the vegetables three times to get rid of that salty canned flavor they always have the end result was quite tasty.

Chicken Pot Pie

Plated up, no parsley for garnish but that's ok the fiestaware is pretty enough on its own don't you think!

The grand reveal! The biscuits were perfectly crisp.

Chicken Pot Pie

Fresh out of the oven, the sauce was coming up around the edges of the biscuits.

Before the bisquits were added I made the rue added the broth to make the sauce and then added the vegetables and cooked for about 10 minutes, the time it took dh to make the biscuit topping.

I used potatoes instead of boiled eggs in the recipe AND I added chopped onion, a half cups worth.

This seemed to be the right time to try our newly canned chicken and chicken broth. Let me tell you it was INCREDIBLE! Instead of using several dishes to make the pie I used my cast iron dutch oven.

Well it sorta started out that way anyway. I found the recipe this morning at Self-Reliant Yuppies but decided to wait until dh got home from work to start the pie, and I'm glad I did! Lets just say his idea of gourmet is NOT cheddar cheese filled pie crust, and he agreed with me the hard boiled eggs seemed a bit over the top so I used potato instead.

Got Chicken???

Mirromatic

Mom's old mirromatic was pressed into service so we could get 'er done before midnight. I'm not sure why John chose to include two unlidded jars of water with the two quarts of chicken broth.