Grandma's Chicken and Dumplings

Here are the end of the year and winter is still amiss. Tonight after weeks and weeks of waiting for blistery cold days to appear, Old Fashion Chicken and Dumplings were served. Let me tell you the wait was highly rewarded....

Modifications Made:

With most recipes, chicken shortcuts are omitted for a whole, fresh chicken boiled with accompanying seasonings to enhance recipe flavorings. This trend to use pre-cooked chicken, just breasts, or left over rotisserie is not something I understand. Especially on a recipe where the broth is KEY ingredient. Tonight however, I am using the 1 quart bag of leftover chicken and veggies filling from the Barely There Chicken Stew meaning I do not have homemade broth and have to settle for five Knorr chicken cubes to create 40 oz of broth.

According to the recipe, the dumplings were to be rolled into 1/4" thickness and then cooked in the broth. On the initial test run of dumpling tasting, 1/4"dumplings were too thick and not like Grandma's dumplings so another test was done at 1/8" thickness. Finding this thinness of dumpling to be reminiscent of Grandma's, the rest of the dumplings were cooked till they floated. The bag of chicken and veggies which had been resting on the counter during the entire dumpling process to remove the chill of the refrigerator was added to the cooked dumpling broth and quickly brought up to edible temperature in just a few quick turns of the spoon.

Scaled for Likability: Great

Grandma's recipe seems, like so many other things, lost to time. Grandma knows she used some variant of Betty Crocker's chicken and dumpling or the local township 100 year recipe collection simply because those were the ONLY two cookbooks she owned. For weeks grandma and I searched the internet but to no avail nothing seemed exactly right. This version was close but it was missing the handwritten notes on special tricks....

While I do know Grandma's recipe did follow more closely to the Old Fashion version with no carrots and celery, the addition was not bad. No, this recipe was not Grandma's family heirloom version but it was good. When made again I would absolutely make it without carrots and celery and it would still be good. I would just add celery, carrots, onion, and garlic to the chicken as it was boiled. You know, essence and all that.

Better Than Campbell's Old Fashion Vegetable Soup

Went to the store with the hopes of gathering fresh produce for soup. With more than 45 people in line for two packages of any meat product and the produce section containing only avocado, orange, and most randomly, strawberries, I settled upon canned soup. Well not canned soup since that section was still void of food, too. Instead soup made from canned goods as the canned vegetable section had been mostly restocked. Soups like this 15 Minute Vegetable Soup are ideal in dire food situations such as current times. Modifications Made: Plain petite diced tomatoes for flavored tomatoes, frozen carrots instead of canned, green beans and corn undrained, peas omitted (gross, nasty little pods), one can tomato sauce, two low sodium chicken and two pollo de tomate bouillon cubes, six cups water. Once onions were softened, carrots, juice of green beans and corn, sauce, bouillon cubes, water were added and allowed to simmer until carrots almost tender. Green beans and corn tossed in, heat t

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Oh my word how does a space as small a pantry becomes so disorganized? And in such a short time, nonetheless? While reorganizing the four 2x4 pantry shelves yesterday a golden back of the box recipe was discovered. Milk Brownies. Replacing yogurt for milk or applesauce for oil, these are commonplace alternatives. Milk for water in a box brownie, this had to be tried. Stat. Modifications Made: Per the box, 1/3 cup milk replaced 1/3 water. Half cup of chopped walnuts were added along with two tablespoons of Hershey chocolate syrup. Because why not. Scaled for Likability: No, Thank You The milk was fine, the extra chocolate was fine. Walnuts could have been doubled. The problem was the brownies themselves. I accidently made cake brownies with two eggs instead of fudge brownies with just one brownie. So sad. These were given to the neighbor who prefers cake brownies. If the neighbor liked fudge brownies (they are the best kind) these would have gone to the chickens. They have no

Papas a La Mexicana (Ranchera)

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