The Homestead

Hef's dad has been on a business trip for the past two and a half weeks, so to keep myself entertained I bought the complete set of Dr, Quinn, Medicine Woman. Man, it's a great show! Let me tell you I am one for a theme, which led to a big pot of hearty chicken and dumplings! 

For the life of me I can't dice an onion, so when I spotted the already chopped on sale I took the easy way out.

Step 1: Brown both sides of chicken thighs in oil, crispy yummy chicken skin! The skins are then discarded, but the pups and I had some as a little snack, just like peeling off the thanksgiving turkey! Reserve the chicken fat for the dumplings!Then sautee the  veggies until they start to soften.

Add some stock and  milk and simmer until the chicken is falling off the bone.

Shred the chicken and keep it simmering.

 Now I am not one for doughs or pasteries, so I was very pleased these turned out. I didn't give measurements before because when it comes to veggies or meat a little more or a little less won't hurt in my eye, but I fear the dough! So here is the exact if you try them, 2 cups flour, 1 tablespoon baking powder, and 1 teaspoon salt, mix that together. Then warm 1 cup milk with 3 tablespoons of reserved fat. and stir that into the flour mix.

Drop them into the pot, it was so easy! Let them simmer, covered, about 15 minutes until they are fluffed up nice!

I DID IT!

Dipping our toes back into blogging

Oh, it has been a long time since I have blogged. It has been tough, and even the other day I considered adopting a bunny and couldn't bring myself to do it. Hef remains the be all end all bunny in my heart. I still think of that bedroom as Hef's room. "I think that's up in Hef's room..." and I still think of my hoppin kitchen as The Bunny Lounge. I had created another blog, but never posted, it wasn't the same. So I am taking a break from my marathon of cooking today (mainly because my dishwasher is full and I really need to get a third set of measuring spoons and cups...) to try blogging again.
I woke up today and wanted to cook, man I wanted to cook. If your a cook you know that's how it is sometimes, you just get the calling. I knew I wanted a creamy chicken stew,  beef broccoli, and teryaki jerky.After perused my favorite cookbook to grab another recipe since I was heading to the store, I was making my list and saw that the Daytona 500 started a lot sooner then I realized and made a crazy dash to the store to get back in time. So far I have made Chicken and Dumplings, along with Skillet Lasagna, it remains to be seen if I get to beef broccoli or not, the teryaki jerky is about halfway done and I'm about to rotate my racks. For today let's cover Skillet Lasagna, because you might just have everything in your pantry to make this tonight!

Kitchen Helper Bandit
Main job: eating food bits that fall on the floor, she has a great "leave it" in case raw meat or other dog unfriendly foods get dropped.

Once I was watching The French Chef, and Julia Child was making chocolate almond cake. She starts off getting all her ingredients together because, "Otherwise you may have to run to the supermarket in the middle of your cake and that simply won't doooooooo!"

Shadow doesn't help as much, she just tastes what she gets.

Shepherd Oven

So the lasagna is in the back, one medium onion has been browned and 1lb ground beef is  browning now.

10 lasagna noodles cracked into approx. 2 inch pieces, this is really fun to do and makes a great cracking sound.

Pour on one 28oz can of diced tomatoes with juices and 8oz tomato sauce (which I forgot to add until the last five minutes of cooking, but oh well) and cover for about 15 minutes until noodles are soft, then plop on some ricotta and remove from heat. Cover about 5 minutes, so ricotta is warmed through.

DIG IN!