heavy on the butter and sugar...
Sometimes I find that I need an extra set of hands around the kitchen. In the case of filling a decorating bag with frosting I like to get out a large cup — and cuff the bag over the edges of the cup so that I can drop the frosting into the bag easily. In this photo I am using a really large decorating bag so I had to scrounge around for a very tall cup. In fact the bag is so large I can’t quite cuff it over the top, but you get the idea….
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My name is Shanon and over the years I’ve collected a lot of nicknames. The nickname Shanny got stuck to this recipe and try as I might to remove it for the sake of this post, the family’s opinion to keep it there swayed me in the end.
It wouldn’t be fair to think of this dish as a soup. To call it a chowder actually makes me cringe. Nothing against soups and chowders, I love them both, but I file this recipe in Main Dishes, and for the sake of this site – chicken. It’s hearty, it’s tasty, but above all it just seems to comfort the soul. Recently I have spent a large amount of time with my father. We work on birthday cards and bills and we talk about family, gardening, and growing old. He takes great care of himself and is currently tipping the age scale at 92, though recent months have thrown health challenges at him one after the other. A few weeks ago when I was getting ready to head out to see him I had a great idea. I grabbed a bag and tossed in two frozen chicken breasts, a couple of carrots, a quart of cream and bounded out the door. I was confident he would have the other ingredients I would need. Knowing he was having a “down” day after finding out his cancer had returned, I thought that cooking together might cheer him up a bit, and there is not a dish in the world that says “I love you to your very soul” as much as this one. And I wanted him to know how much I loved him. He sat in the kitchen with me as I sliced and diced, sauteed and stirred, and when the food was all cooked we sat down in his kitchen together and offered a prayer before digging in. The smile on his face when he tasted it was worth more than words can express. I didn’t even mind when he picked up the Creole seasoning and shook it on the top. He is a bit sassy that way. Serve this with Momma’s Bread and we kick the whole supper over the top.
It’s easy, easy. Take this recipe and make it your own by adding things you love. In the photo above you don’t see the peas that we added at the end when daddy and I made it. The time before that I added spears of asparagus during the last few minutes. It’s a beautifully comforting dish. Let’s get going on this one shall we?
This recipe will serve about four depending on how hungry everyone is. Gather 2 chicken breasts, 3 chicken bouillon cubes, 1 quart of cream, a small bag of baby carrots or carrots to quarter, an onion, a couple of potatoes or a handful of red potatoes, parsley and a cube of butter. Yes… cream and butter. And now you know how it gets to your soul.
I know, I know, no one wants to see raw meat on a blog–but look how polite our chicken is being all contained in those little bags.
In a large pan or Dutch oven, (I love my heavy cast iron skillet), melt one cube of butter over low heat on your stove top. Increase heat to medium and add one onion, quartered and saute until it starts to brown and soften. Add 1/4 teaspoon black pepper. This is where the house starts to smell delicious. While the onion is cooking, cut the chicken breast into bite size pieces. I like to do this while the chicken breasts are still partially frozen as it is much easier to cut through.
Remove the onions and set aside. Add the chicken pieces and brown them nicely on all sides. While the chicken is browning, peel and quarter your potatoes. If I am using small red potatoes I just cut them in half. They look so pretty in this dish.
This is where it starts to get fun for me. Return the onion to the pan and add the quartered potatoes and the baby/quartered carrots along with 3 bouillon cubes. Add 1/2 cup water and stir the ingredients to pick up all that flavor from the bottom of the pan. Sprinkle 1/2 teaspoon of salt over the mixture and cover it with a lid. I had to scrounge to find one to fit my skillet… Cook over medium heat for approximately 30 minutes until the vegetables are tender. Stir occasionally to prevent sticking and add small amounts of water as necessary.
Once the vegetables are tender, remove the lid and pour one quart of cream over the mixture and give everything a good stir. Reduce heat and simmer uncovered for about 15 minutes, or until the mixture has thickened. Stir this often as the potatoes will settle and scorch if you leave it unattended too long. This is also a good time to toss on asparagus or add peas or corn. Top with fresh parsley.
I like serving this right from the skillet, so set the table and call the family. This is such a great meal to take to a new mother or a sick friend. I can also suggest taking the ingredients to your aging father’s house and making it just for him. He will be so happy to see you.
After adding the cream, if desired, add peas, corn or asparagus for the last 15 minutes.
Ingredients
Instructions
One of my earliest memories as a very small child was going with my dad up to “Old Man Tristy’s” apple cider press. To put this little jaunt into perspective, we lived next to my grandmother about 2 miles from town and my grandmother lived next to my Aunt Ellen. My memory puts Old Man Tristy in a trailer out in a vacant field of sagebrush somewhere a bit north of Aunt Ellen. There were only a smattering of other houses near us at the base of the foothills where I grew up, and most of the families were related to us.
I don’t exactly know what arrangement my father had with Mr. Christensen (Old Man Tristy), but I know it involved us getting to take home several jugs of fresh apple cider. I still recall the sound of the conveyor belt as the apples bobbed along and the way Tristy would pluck certain apples off the belt and toss them aside. The lighting was dim in the old building that housed the press and it seemed that the low lamp glow added to the magic of turning the apples into the most delicious drink I had ever tasted. To this day apples hold more than flavor for me; they hold memories.
This recipe is a new one for me, made from a jug of apple cider ( not juice), boiled down until it’s reduction yields a sweet, yet tangy, intense apple syrup. Once I have reduced the cider into syrup I put it in the fridge and use it on everything from pancakes to pork chops. It’s great in a glaze or drizzled over muffins. Your imagination with this unique syrup is your only limitation. Tristy is gone–so I picked my cider up at Walmart.
Get a jug of apple cider (not apple juice).
The amount of syrup you want to make is totally up to you. I like to start out with about 8-10 cups of cider in a pot (this leaves a bit of cider for the kids). I end up with around 2 cups of cider syrup.
Bring the cider to a boil and then reduce your heat to just a simmer. This pot is going to simmer on that very low heat for about 8 hours and your home is going to smell delicious. Everyone who stopped by my house the day I made mine made about the same comment, “Wow! It smells soooo good in here”! And it did. My syrup ended up looking like this:
a deep, golden brown. Isn’t it beautiful? After you are done licking your fingers and the spoon, store it in an airtight container in your refrigerator and start the long list of uses you will have for it over the next few weeks…apple muffin glaze, ice cream sundae topping, a base for barbecue sauce, pork chop glazing, pancake syrup….
Ingredients
Instructions
Keep an eye on the syrup during the last few hours. As the syrup thickens it can settle and scorch. Periodic stirring may be necessary.
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I have to admit that I am a bit of a late comer to pumpkin cookies. In fact I hadn’t even tasted so much as a morsel of a pumpkin cookie until 11 years ago. I still remember the occasion; my youngest son was graduating from preschool in full black garbage bag regalia. I know, I am still trying to consider the wisdom of having a group of preschoolers working with plastic that will eventually be draped over their heads. Gasp… shudder. At any rate he marched proudly in his black garbage bag cap and gown across the deck and down the stairs while Pomp and Circumstance played on the small boom box plugged in near the base of the wooden stairs. He looked adorable. I was hungry. There were pumpkin cookies. I scoffed at first and considered staying hungry (pumpkin is not usually a favorite) but eventually the hunger pains won out and I tried one. Eureka! I tried two and then three and then I sent my little garbage bag graduate to get one for the road. What had I been missing all these years? The long and short of is that I couldn’t get enough these new found treats and it was spring as in… it wasn’t even fall! To date I have not met a pumpkin cookies I didn’t like but making them from scratch is my favorite and I have never found the need to discriminate the season. They are equally delicious spring, summer, winter or fall.
One note; don’t get pumpkin pie filling when the recipe asks for pumpkin.Get 100% pumpkin. Or better yet–when you are feeling all domestic prepare your own pumpkin. Let’s make some cookies! This batch makes about 3 dozen medium size cookies. Gather the following ingredients: butter, brown sugar, white sugar, pumpkin, egg, vanilla, flour, pumpkin pie spice, baking powder, baking soda, salt and chocolate chips.
Preheat your oven to 375° Combine 2 cups flour, 1 1/2 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice, 1 teaspoon baking powder, 1 teaspoon baking soda and 1/4 teaspoon salt in a bowl and whisk together.
In a separate bowl, or in the bowl of your stand mixer, combine 1 cup butter at room temperature (this recipe works well with 1/2 cup margarine and 1/2 cup butter for those of us on a budget), 2/3 cup brown packed brown sugar and 1/3 cup white sugar (aka granulated sugar) .
Beat together and then scrape down the sides of the bowl. Add 1 cup pumpkin**, one egg and 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract and beat together.
Scrape down the bowl again and then add the dry ingredients, beating together until thoroughly combined.
Stir in 1 cup chocolate chips ( I like milk chocolate) and drop the dough onto a prepared baking sheet. I like using a large cookie scoop for this because the cookies stay nicely uniform.
Bake on the middle oven rack in your preheated oven until your cookies edges are lightly browned. As you are checking on your cookies you will notice the color denseness disappear as the cookies bake. Watch for the denseness in the center to close in, but don’t over bake the cookies. Plan on about 12 minutes depending on your oven and the size of your cookies. I usually do a test run on a couple of cookies to make sure that when they bake I like the way they look when they are done. I like this cookie to be a bit “puffy” so if I need to add a bit more flour to the dough, I do.
Remove them from the oven and cool the cookies on the pan for 2 minutes before transferring them to a cooling rack to completely cool.
**Any pumpkin not used should be removed from the can and refrigerated or frozen. If I put mine in the refrigerator I like to use it within 5 days max. If I don’t think I will bake pumpkiny things within that time frame I put it in a freezer bag ( because I can get most of the air out) and pop it in the freezer, labeled. I like to use my frozen pumpkin within 6 months.
By now the cookies should be cooled…eat up! No garbage bag required.
Ingredients
Instructions
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This Christmas Eve, as our family gathered around the table, we felt the all too familiar absence of one of our brothers. Over the past eight years they’ve been scattered from California to Ukraine serving two year LDS missions. While a two year absence is never easy, it becomes especially poignant around holidays, birthdays and other events like championship baseball or football games. This Christmas marked the first of two Christmases without Danny who is serving in Mexico City.
He called us via Skype from a small internet café and we got to see his face for the first time since we sent him off in June. He looked handsome and happy, and it was fun to hear more details about the stories we’ve read in his emails. So in honor of Danny we switched up one of our traditions this year. Instead our of usual Christmas Eve dinner we went with a Feliz Navidad theme. We made bean dip, guacamole, rice, delicious taco chicken, and topped it all off with our favorite fresh salsa.
This salsa is a weekly staple. It can be altered a bit depending on your tastes. Sometimes we’re feeling super spicy, other days we’re a little more mild. Whatever your preference this recipe delivers delicious {and beautiful} results every single time.
In this recipe we use a combination of canned and fresh tomatoes. In this batch we ended up with some gorgeous heirloom grape tomatoes that added beautiful color to the salsa. However we’ve used everything from romas to beefsteaks and its delicious every time.
In a food processor blend the fresh tomatoes with 1/2 of sweet onion and 1/4 of a purple onion and jalapeno pepper. To make our salsa more salsa-ish and less like pico de gallo, we blend the drained, stewed tomatoes in the blender before adding it to the fresh tomato/onion mix.
Next add cilantro, salt, pepper, garlic, and cumin. You can squeeze in some fresh lime juice here if you’d like. Try and resist opening a bag of tortilla chips for about 20 minutes to let the flavors blend. Pour into your favorite fiesta bowl and enjoy!
