Chicken and Cookies Challenge - Week 6

Sick... again. I seriously think there is some condition which makes me develop which ever kind of cold/flue/disease that's going around. Agenta Rush (Grandma) decided to pick up a cold from somewhere and I decided to join her... except I had to one up her and go for a sinus infection. The problem with me and coughing is that astma can quickly lead whatever normal cold I have into bronchitis... which could send me to the hospital... again.

Chicken this week? Soup... homemade chicken noodle soup in the crock pot. Mostly because I really wanted to give Rush's new crock pot a try.

 My mother purchased this crock pot for Rush from Sam's Club. It has so much more space than mine (which is older than me) and it is super easy to clean as the inner bowl comes out. This is wonderful as it lets you take it out to clean it or set it on the table. There are only two things I can complain about: the outer shell gets super hot (scalding hot) and there's no real feature to just have it on high or low (it has to be set for a time at high or low).

Ingredients:
1 package thin sliced chicken
1 package egg noodles
3 boxes chicken broth
1 bunch celery
5-6 carrots
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 bags frozen onions

I set it on the longest setting available on high cook. In reality it doesn't really matter to me how long it cooks for, you know when soup is done. After setting the cooker on high, go ahead and get the broth in to get it to boil. In a sauce pan go ahead and cook up the onions. If yours are like mine, you forgot about them in the freezer for awhile and they got a bit freezer burned, and now they're a chunk of onion scented ice. Chop up the chicken and throw it into the broth. Add the garlic. While the onion ice is melting/cooking, peel and chop the carrots, clean and chop the celery. Throw in the leafy celery bits into the soup as well. Once the ice becomes onions throw them into the pot as well. Wait for a few hours, stirring occasionally. Before enjoying the soup boil some water and cook up the egg noodles. Your soup is now complete. To make the soup last longer (stretch a buck) put 2/3 of the soup into 2 large Tupperware containers with 2/3 of the noodles. Add enough broth (extras from the pantry) to fill to 1 inch under the brim. Freeze! Then place the inner section of the crock pot on the table, add the noodles, and then add more broth if its needed.

The cookies? My throat is sore this week so I made peach jello I found in the cabinet. I do not like to be normal so I had to add in diet ginger ale instead of cold water.

Now after you've mixed the soda into the hot liquid pour it into a container that has a lid and press some saran wrap right onto the surface of the liquid jello. This will keep it from making that nasty homemade jello film on top.

Follow with Zicam, antibiotics, and Tussin (the off brand kind)

~Emme

Things About Me

Things I like to do:
(1) Quilt
(2) Organize
(3) Cook
(4) Sew
(5) Travel
(6) Tour wineries
(7) Clean artifacts
(8) Data Entry
(9) Routine



Things I'm good at
(1) Coming up with creative solutions
(2) Organizing
(3) Making people smile
(4) Making tomato sauce
(5) Sorting
(6) Following patterns
(7) Baking
(8) Traveling
(9) Shopping

Things I'm not good at
(1) Blogging... er...
(2) Taking pictures of things to sell at my Etsy shop
(3) Patience
(4) Sleeping
(5) Following recipes
(6) Math
(7) Packing light
(8) Handwriting
(9) Spelling

Chicken and Cookies Challenge - Week 5

Mr. Wonderful had to work late on Friday and early on Saturday morning. Chicken and cookies had to get pushed back, which turned out to be good... as I was sick on Friday and drained on Saturday from being sick all night on Friday.

Chicken: Bojangles chicken biscuits for breakfast followed by Cracker Barrel fried chicken for dinner (Agenta Great Grandmother's birthday dinner choice)

Cookies: A family friend brought over these cannoli like cookies that tasted like fortune cookies and of course birthday cake.

~Emme

Chicken and Cookies Challenge - Week 4

I was totally excited to try Rachael Ray's Paella Burgers this weekend... then I looked at the instructions and it included crustaceans... though I am usually really excited about partaking in cooked crustaceans prepared by a restaurant or by someone I know has experience making them, I am NOT excited about giving it a try... for I am a germ-a-phobe. I see these bottom feeders for what they really are and if they are not prepared right it could end really badly... REALLY BADLY. Perhaps one day some benevolent soul will teach me how to clean and cook them, but until then... it's not likely to happen.

So in exchange for the Paella Burgers I went to try and make a spicier, heartier burger. I went with turkey sausage, ground chicken and portobello mushrooms. The flavor was there, but the texture was like meatloaf... and I hate the texture of meatloaf. On Saturday I remixed it. I took the leftover uncooked meat mix and slow cooked a beautiful tomato sauce all day. It was incredible sauce.

The cookie: scones. The scones I make are pretty much butter and flour... and chocolate chips. They taste amazing, but the fat content is a bit high and never sits well with me. Everyone else loves them immensely so I had to make another two batches over the weekend and they were gone by Tuesday.

~Emme

Chicken and Cookies Challenge - Week 3

This week was an easy week for me (challenge wise). While going through my Google Reader's backlog of goodies I found out about this great website called No Take Out. Of course I jumped right in and I found Jamie Oliver's Perfect Roast Chicken. Which is supposed to look like this:










 

Of course if you know me I will look at the ingredient list... ignore the things that I know my family will not be too keen on and switch things around to make them more... Emme... dangerous, probably wrong, but super fun in the long run. Also there were 8 people to feed not 4... so this needed some work for us.

Feel free to follow Jamie Oliver's Recipe... it looks pretty good. Of course you could always go for my rendition:

(Mind you... I have no food photographers and used the Droid's camera.)

Ingredients:

• 5 lbs bag of red skinned potatoes (Sam's Club buy)
• 1 bag carrots (or you can realize when it is too late to run to the store that you only have half of a bag and then substitute the missing half with half a bag of baby carrots...)
• 4 onions
• 1 stalk of celery
• 1 bunch mint
• Rosemary, thyme, sage (from spice cabinet)
• 2 lemons
• 2 (4 1/2-5 lb) chickens
• Black pepper and salt (from spice cabinet)
• EVOO
• 1 tablespoon minced garlic from fridge
• I Can't Believe It's Not Butter (spread)

Preparation

1. Realize you have no idea how to roast chicken.
2. Tell everyone you are making roasted chicken so that you don't bail out.
3. Find the largest roasting pan you can... you're going to need it.
4. Preheat the oven to 475F.
5. Convince dog the meal is not for them.
6. Wish you had bought some wine.
7. Fill a large pot 2/3 full with water, add salt and put it over a high heat.
8. Scrub and carrots, celery, and onions (well... just peel the onions).
   
9. Chop vegetables and throw them into the big roasting pan. It's not rocket science just throw them in. Save the greens of the celery for step #12.
   
10. Sprinkle garlic on top.
11.  Have Agent Papa clean the chicken (you're still peeling and chopping). Save the necks and livers and shove them back into the chickens after removing the plastic bags food lion put them into. 
12. Shove in the greens part of the celery you saved.
13. Stab the lemons all over with a fork or a knife and shove them in to plug the holes.
14. Drizzle veggies with EVOO.
15. Place chicken on top of veggies.
16. Drizzle with some more EVOO.
17. Realize you did not put the spices into the chicken... *whoops*
18. Sprinkle sage, rosemary, and thyme on top of chicken.
19. Wonder what you're supposed to do with the mint and why you have a pot of boiling water...
20. Place some mint springs on top of the chicken... make sure everyone notices how you used the mint.
21. Have Mr. Wonderful put the roasting pan into the oven... it's dangerous and heavy... 
22. Take care of burns.
23. Turn heat of oven down to 400F immediately after putting it in because Jamie Oliver said to.
24. He says it's going to be 1 hour and 20 minutes... get ready for at least 4 hours.
25. Realize the water is for the potatoes... turn off the heat.
26. Clean potatoes and cut into small chunks for quicker cooking... you have the time... but... meh... place the potatoes off to the side in a bowl of cold water.
27. Remember you have a huge bunch of mint and no wine... make mint tea.
28. About 2 hours in check the chicken. Notice how it is still not done but the veggies are starting to stick to the bottom... picky eaters don't like burned in this house so I threw in a can of chicken stock. Put chicken back in oven.
29. Set table.
30. Boil the potatoes, drain when tender and place butter on top followed by pepper and salt.
31. Realize the mint was supposed to go on the potatoes.
32. Try to figure out why you would want mint on potatoes.
33. Take chicken out and check to see if it is done. If it is... it might just fall off of the bones (see picture):
34. Make a simple pan gravy with drippings, flour and water. Blend with the immersion blender. Add the livers if you would like to the gravy for some extra flavor and vitamins.

The cookies are from one of my favorite blogs: Cupcake Rehab


BISCOTTI DI NATALE AL CIOCCOLATO (Chocolate biscotti)

Feel free to go check out her website for the instructions. I followed them about perfectly... but I did double the recipe and add 1 1/2 cups of crushed almonds (omega 3's).

They came out wonderful... but they needed a little something something to make them Mr. Wonderful approved:

Mr. Wonderful loves chocolate pudding and he loves cookies. His favorite kind of cookies are the kinds that can be made into bunnies... Here is Cupcake Rehab's Biscotti as a bunny!

~Emme