Posole Verde - Ancient Comfort Food

Days are getting colder, and I kind of love that, because it means more baking and casseroles and soups and stews and...well, let's just say that I love warming up in my kitchen.

Lately, I've been on an intense flavor kick.  A little bit is not enough.  Spices, herbs, acidity...I'm craving it all.  And that doesn't always translate for the younger members of the household, but lately they've been troopers about trying new dishes and flavors that they might not be used to.

A couple of weeks ago, inspired by some tomatillos that my friend Amy of Amy's Organic's gave us when we picked up our apple CSA haul, I decided to pull out a dish that I had made a long time ago.  One that was all right, but needed tweaking, and I had just never gotten back to it. Posole Verde.  

Spring (Grilled) Chicken

Sometimes, fate works in mysterious ways.

And sometimes, fate does its work in unusual places, like, say, at Binny's Beverage Depot.

Maybe I should explain.  Give a little background.  You see, the hubs and I have had a lot of fun visiting local distilleries, but obviously, we can't buy everything at every distillery.  Sometimes there are gems that we leave there for another visit.  And sometimes, the flavors of some of those spirits left behind stick in my head.  Haunt me, if you will, in a good way.  This is the story of one of those.

One of the distilleries that we have recently visited is Journeyman Distillery in Three Oaks, Michigan.  They make some fantastic whiskeys, gins, rums, and other spirits.  We walked out with a bottle of their Ravenswood Rye Whiskey, which my husband really enjoyed.  But the drink that stuck in my head was their Humdinger Jalapeno Spirit.  It had really surprised me!  I'm usually pretty sensitive to spicy, and tend to prefer things on the mild side, which jalapeno is usually not.  The Humdinger had all the clean, fresh flavor of a jalapeno, but somehow avoided the burn that I usually dread.  It sounds cheesy, but after that day, I continued to play back the flavor in my head, imagining the possibilities.

Sticky Chicken

I confess, I'm pretty lucky when it comes to feeding times at my house.  My kids are pretty open to trying new things (with the obvious exception of Mr. Picky), and they generally enjoy my cooking.  But it's not often that a new recipe gets a reaction like it did tonight.  My girls were practically fighting each other for more chicken...it was the Hunger Games From Scratch style!

Am I glad they enjoyed a good healthy dinner?  Absolutely.  But I'm even more thrilled because it happens to be a super-easy dinner to make.  Just takes a little planning ahead, and a little under an hour in the oven, and boom: dinner.  I've had this recipe for Sticky Bourbon Chicken with Rice on my Pinterest for a couple of weeks, and I was really looking forward to trying it.  I changed it up a little, cutting back on the soy sauce and upping the ginger, but it's a keeper for sure!

Artichoke Chicken

What's that you say?  You're disappointed that I didn't have a snazzy name for this blog entry?  Listen...if you only knew the week I've had...

So, Artichoke Chicken it is.  And delicious it is.  And also, easy it is.  Make or make not, there is no try.

There's a Leek in my Stroganoff!

So, you know how much I like to share quick, easy, yummy dinners that my family enjoys, right?  I kind of look at this blog as a small part of my legacy...a sort of recipe memoir online that my kids will be able to reference when they're grown up and on their own and craving a taste of home.

On that note, this recipe is one that pops up for dinner probably every other week.  It takes less than a half hour, and if I set my rice cooker and have a teeny bit of prep work done, I can cut that down to under 20!  And it's the kind of dinner that wraps you up like a warm, comforting blanket of creamy deliciousness and soothes all that ails you.

I'm just going to jump right into the recipe.  The original recipe is from Jamie Oliver, which is just icing on the cake for me, since I have a minor chef crush on him.

Homemade Chicken Pot Pie

One of the most frustrating thing about being a good home cook is that I try so many recipes that a lot of times, even if my family completely loves a dish, they forget about it.  That's why, when there's a dish that they request, or that they get excited when I mention, you know it's a winner.  My homemade chicken pot pie is one of those dishes.  I'm pretty sure it is on the list of reasons that my husband asked me to marry him.  It's just that good.

The story behind the origins of this recipe are funny.  Both haha funny and odd funny.  You see, in high school, I worked at JC Penney...in the housewares department.  Most teens would prefer to be surrounded with trendy clothes, but I was in my happy place seeing all the new kitchen gadgets, designing displays matching dishes with table linens, and restocking small appliances.  But, to be honest, it was slow a lot of the time, and there's only so much cleaning, restocking, and straightening that can be done.  So, if I had finished all that and was still bored, I would flip through the cookbooks.  That's where I found the original chicken pot pie recipe...in one of those cookbooks.  And I copied it down on a piece of spiral paper that traveled with me to college and to my first house with my husband, adding notes and tweaks along the way.  Of course, that was many years ago, and all I remember about the cookbook now is that it had something to do with farms.  I changed the recipe quite a bit too, with all my "tweaks", but the method stayed the same.

Cook it Once, Cook it Twice, Cooking Chicken Soup...

Okay, so, if you read the last post, you now have a pretty good recipe for a roasted chicken.  If your house is anything like mine, when you're done with it, you might not have much left except for the bones.  You could throw them away, or you could use them to make even more yumminess by making some chicken stock.

My apologies in advance, but I don't have pictures for the stock part.  It's something that I generally throw together without even really thinking about it, much less about taking pictures to blog.  I'll have photos of the good stuff, I promise.  You'll have to use your imagination on the stock for now.

Really quick, for those of you wondering about the difference between stock and broth, from what I understand, broth is made with scraps and meat as well as bones, whereas stock is usually more just the bones.  This means broth is usually a little richer and deeper in flavor.  Lesson of the day.

Just-Like-Rotisserie Chicken

Roast chicken is one of those things that just screams "home cooking" to me.  And it's not hard to make well.  But it's also really easy to grab a rotisserie chicken at the store for a few bucks.  Which is a lot quicker and easier.  Very tempting.  Especially when you can grab one for, what, like five bucks?

Until you start to do a little research about those chickens.  Turns out, some of them are there because they were the rejects of the meat counter to begin with.  A nice way of not wasting the meat coming close to it's "sell by' date.  Others are specifically designed to be rotisserie birds, injected with a solution so that they can stand those hours under the heat lamps waiting to be bought without losing that extreme juiciness of the meat.  And the list of ingredients on most rotisserie birds is long and full of scientific names.  Sodium tripolyphosphate, anyone?  Starts to get a little creepy to realize that it's more of a Frankenchicken than Grandmama's delicious dinner's relative.

Paprika and Pierogi: Hungarian Chicken Stew

Baby, it's cold outside.  Really, really cold.  Which makes it stew weather.

Stews are great.  They are warm and filling, like a cozy blanket for your insides.  I love curling up with a bowl of savory goodness and watching the snow fall from the comfort of my warm kitchen.

This chicken stew is one of the favorites around my house, as far as stews go.  Probably because of the pierogi.  I mean, you can't go wrong with a good pierogi.  They're potatoes wrapped in pasta...I could practically live in them and die of carb happiness.  I'm not going to lie to you here, homemade pierogi are amazing.  I used to work as a teacher in an area in the city that had a large concentration of Polish immigrants, and I have tasted some fantastic pierogi.  Thank goodness for cultures that like to feed the people who teach their children!  However, also from personal experience, making homemade pierogi is not the easiest process.  And, as much as I like spending all day in the kitchen, I also like meals that you can get on the table in a decent amount of time on busy days.  Fortunately, there are a lot of good natural brands of pierogi in the freezers of grocery stores these days.  Not quite as good as homemade, but still pretty darn delicious.  Peter and Pat's pierogi are the ones I've been using lately, after discovering them at a Sam's Club exhibit thing.  For this recipe, I would go with either onion or cheddar pierogi.

Okay, I got a bit ahead of myself there.  Let's get to the stew.

Homesteading in the Suburbs - A Guest Blog

I am fortunate to be blessed with very talented friends with a wide variety of life experience in many different areas.  One of my friends is passionate about the homesteading arts, and I really admire her persistence, her knowledge, and her skills.  I'm becoming more and more obsessed lately with making the most of our yard, planting edibles and incorporating them into the landscaping, and I often turn to this friend for her opinions and advice.  Urban and suburban chicken coops are becoming kind of a hot topic around here lately, and I know this friend has plenty to say about it, so I asked her to write a guest blog about homesteading in the suburbs, especially raising chickens.  I hope that it will inspire you like she inspires me!

Homesteading in the Suburbs

If you are fortunate enough to own a home in the suburbs, you have a plot of land. Some get acres, some get a fraction of a single acre.  Most are fully covered in sod.  Sod or grass requires mowing. Some homeowners, like myself, choose to edge, spread fertilizer, and treat for weeds to make it look nice.  All of us are given a great opportunity: a plot of land.  A plot of land used to mean opportunity.  Now, to the average homeowner, it means (yard) work.

Spring CSA Week 1

I've had a grin on my face all day.  Because...

Today was the first day of the year for our veggie CSA!

We got a newsletter beforehand telling us what to expect, and since I saw bok choy and harukei turnips on there, I decided to set the rice cooker before we went to pick up, because I could throw together a mean stir-fry with those field-fresh veggies.  After doing that, the kids and I headed to the farm...which happens to be about 5 minutes away, smack dab in the middle of the Chicago suburbs.

Here's what we got:

Jammy Chicken

Some days, you just need a delicious but low-maintenance dinner.  A dinner that it's really hard to screw up. A dinner that doesn't need chopping or stirring or babysitting.  A dinner that's ready for the table in 30 minutes.  A dinner that you can make with what you already have.

Here's a dinner like that for you:

You'll need salt, pepper, some jelly or jam, some balsamic vinegar (Okay, that's probably optional...any liquid that goes well with the jelly flavor is fine.  Or even water.), pepper, and some boneless chicken breasts.  Oh, and a little oil or cooking spray to grease the dish.  That's not pictured.

So, a funny thing happened on Facebook the other day...

The following is a true story.  I'm the suspicious blonde character.  My friend lives a zillion miles away, in Arizona.  She is amazing, and has 2 sets of twins and a baby and still manages to keep a fantastic sense of humor and be awesome in every way that matters.  I just love her.  This went down, and she told me I should blog it.  So I am.  I took out the names and the pictures of others to protect the innocent, but other than that, the best way I can explain this is to just copy the "conversation".  Enjoy!