Comfort Food

For some reason I am having more and more difficulty in getting hubby to eat chicken at home. He says he has it for lunch so often that he gets tired of it. But - there's one sure fire way to make him lick his lips for a chicken meal, and that's my own tweaked, very easy Chicken Pot Pie recipe. Without further ado, here it is:

Chicken Pot Pie, my final easy style version

Simmer covered in a dutch oven about 25 minutes: 4 bone-in, skin on chicken breasts
2 tablespoons instant chicken bouillon
3 tablespoons dehydrated onion flakes
Water to cover
The bouillon takes the place of salt and intensifies the flavor. If you're using left over chicken, use 2 - 3 cups.

Then add to the above from larger bags: 1 cup frozen green peas
1 cup frozen carrots

Return to a boil and simmer for about 15 more minutes.

Remove the chicken from the broth and add i can of small potatoes, drained and cubed so that they can heat. If you don't want to use canned, add one peeled medium cubed white potato when you are adding the peas and carrots above

Let the chicken cool slightly before skinning, boning and cutting it into bite sized pieces. Place the chicken evenly over the bottom of a 2 quart (13" x 9") Pyrex baking dish.

Preheat the oven to 350°.

Make a thick white sauce in a sauce pan: 6 tablespoons of butter
1/2 cup of plain flour
3 cups of milk
3/4 teaspoon of salt
pepper to taste

Melt butter, add flour,salt, and pepper and blend till smooth. Cook until bubbly and then add the milk and return to a slow boil. Simmer till thickened, stirring frequently to keep from sticking.

Drain the chicken/veggie broth and save it for another purpose. Arrange the veggies on top of the chicken. Pour the white sauce evenly over all.

Make the topping: Blend one stick of melted butter and
1 cup self-rising flour. Mixture will be very stiff.
Whisk in 1 cup of milk.

Pour the topping evenly over the ingredients already in the baking dish. Bake 50 - 60 minutes.

Note: You can use caned evaporated milk in the white sauce and use equal parts of the broth to reconstitute it (12 oz. of each).

Now it's time for me to get started on mine for tonight.

Not keeping up here

I do admire those who make entries on a regular, dependable basis. I can see that keeping up a steady pace is going to be a problem for me. I have to decide if I'm writing for myself or for possible readers. I remember the very first time I heard of blogs years ago, I thought they were a terrible idea. Why would someone put their "business" out there for anyone to see? Having made that judgement, I as surprised that I am doing this now, even if it is only to share recipes.

First I want to share the recipe for Ham Delights that my daughter will need if she decides to make them for the Super Bowl Party.

This version is from Cooks.com with a few tweaks from me.

2 sticks of butter
3 tablespoons of poppy seeds (the seeds may cause someone to test positive on certain drug tests, and I usually reduce the amount to 2 tablespoons)
1 medium onion, very finely chopped
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
3 tablespoons of prepared yellow mustard
1 lb. boiled ham, chopped
1/2 lb. Swiss cheese, cut into small squares
3 packages of Pepperidge Farms party rolls (These are the rolls that are about the diameter of a quarter. I use rolls the size of the dinner rolls that White Castle burgers are made on - 2 dozen. I have even used Sub rolls before when not preparing them for a party.)

Blend the first five ingredients together and spread on both sides of the cut surfaces of the rolls. Try to keep the sheets of rolls attached because it will be easier to spread the butter mixture that way. Divide the ham and cheese evenly between all the rolls. and and if they came in aluminum foil trays, cover tightly with foil. If the rolls came in a plastic bag, completely wrap the assembled delights into two or three foil packages. At this point you can freeze them for later use or to use at different times. When ready to serve, preheat oven to 400° and heat still in the foil 10 minutes or until very warm. If you froze them, increase heating time and lower the oven temperature to 350° so that they will thaw inside before drying out or burning on the outside.

Teriyaki Wings

1/3 cup lemon juice

1/4 cup catsup

1/4 cup soy sauce

1/4 cup vegetable oil

2 tablespoons brown sugar

1/4 teaspoon garlic powder

1/4 teaspoon pepper

3 lbs. chicken drumettes

Combine in a large bowl or ziplock bag all ingredients except chicken and mix well. (If I have time, I look over the wings and trim off any large pieces of fat I can see and even some of the ridge of skin that runs down the side of the "flats," as my girls call them.) Add the chicken and stir so that the marinade cover all. If using a bowl, cover it or close the bag and put in a bowl or on a tray so that if it leaks, it won't mess up your whole refrigerator. Refrigerate overnight or at least 6 hours. Turn it the bag or stir the bowl occasionally. When ready to cook, preheat oven to 375° and cover a shallow pan with aluminum foil (I use heavy duty foil because this gets really messy). Arrange the wings in a single layer. Bake 40 to 45 minutes (longer if your wings were really large). Baste occasionally with the marinade. I turn mine about halfway through the cooking time. Some people bake theirs on a rack, but I find that the marinade will thicken up and coat the wings if they cook directly in it.

Well, that's it for today. I'll try to get back here tomorrow.

It's a soup day!

Today I put together a vegetable beef soup. You might wonder at the wording of that, but there's a reason I expressed it that way. I can't say I made "Homemade Vegetable Soup" because all I did was open some cans and rip open a plastic bag or two. However, it was still very warm and appetizing, and hubby and I pretend that it was from scratch. Here's the recipe:

Vegetable Beef Soup

1 lb. of ground beef, browned drained and returned to the Dutch Oven

1 26 oz. can of diced tomatoes with liquid

1 26 oz. can diced potatoes, with liquid

3/4 package of frozen peas and carrots - just eyeball it

2 tablespoons dehydrated chopped onion

2 cans Campbell's beef gravy (10 oz. size)

1 can Campbell's beef consommé

Bring to a boil and reduce heat. Simmer covered for around 1 hour and serve with cornbread.

Makes about 4 quarts. If you don't want to eat leftovers for days, freeze the soup you don't eat.

Be sure that you label and date it. You don't want a mystery meal at some later date. I use a sharpie because it doesn't run or smear off.

Now for a small amount of cornbread. I halve my regular recipe with a few slight adjustments. We always have about half leftover if I don't cut the recipe.

I use Tenda Bake Cornmeal mix and the recipe on the back of the bag if I'm making the full size.

Tonight here's what I did.

1/2 cup whole milk

3 Tablespoons vegetable oil

1 extra large egg (they were on sale)

1 cup of cornmeal mix

Preheat oven to 425°. Grease a 4" X 8" loaf pan very generously. Put first 3 ingredients in a medium mixing bowl and beat with a wire whip. (Recipes always warn you not to over mix, but when you just have your liquid ingredients, you can't damage the finished product. Still, you just want to get it fluffy.) Add the cornmeal mix and I still use the whip, but I just use it gently, like a spoon. This is where you can over mix. Stir slowly and gently till you don't have any large lumps. Small ones are OK. Turn into your greased pan and use a rubber spatula to scrape out all the goody. Put into the preheated oven and turn it down to 400° and set the timer for 20 minutes. If it has pulled away from the sides by then and it's nice and golden on top, remove it from the oven. Hubby likes a rather dark golden top, so I turn the broiler on high for 2 minutes. You can rub a piece of butter over the top if you want it to look especially pretty, but I don't bother to do that. I turn it out onto a wire cooling rack so that the bottom doesn't get soggy. This makes 3 to 4 pieces of cornbread to crumble up in you soup.

Hint: If you didn't grease you pan well enough and the cornbread wants to stick, wet a dish towel and fold it so that it is slightly larger than the pan. Set the pan on it for several minutes, and the cornbread will turn out without tearing up. This works for anything cooked in a metal pan.

That's all for tonight.

If you wondered why I preheated to 425° and reduced to 400°, it's because an oven can lose up to 100 degrees when the door is opened. I just get mine a little hotter than I need it, and then reduce to the setting recommended in the recipe.

Slow day in the kitchen

Today I didn't cook a meal because hubby had to leave for the upstate to do an inspection and training session. I don't usually cook just for myself - I'm too lazy. For breakfast, I had made a batch of double chocolate muffins with a mix I doctored up a little. Yum, yum. Daughter number two and I ordered Domino's pizza and ate half for lunch and half for supper.


We talked a good bit about what she would prepare for her friend's Super Bowl Party. She loves my teriyaki wings and they are easy to prepare. Everybody enjoys our "Open House Meatballs," so she's going to make those too. She pulls for the Boston Patriots and will make a Boston Cream Pie in their honor. Salsa and tortilla chips will be easy. If she's inclined, she'll make the seven layer dip for the tortilla chips. She's thinking of making Ham Delights, but when we are serving them to men, we use those dinner rolls that are the size of White Castle burgers instead of the tiny Pepperidge Farms party rolls. She'll include a bowl of salted peanuts too.


Over the next few days I'll include the recipes for the above dishes. Tonight I'll share the one for Open House Meatballs:


I'm going to give you the easy version.


Buy frozen meatballs which are usually already cooked. Each batch requires 1 lb. of meatballs. Combine 14 oz. of Heinz catsup (the amount in the small bottle) and 12 oz. of beer OR Coca cola in a large skillet (at least a 10" straight sided one). Bring it to a boil and add the meatballs and bring back to a boil. Simmer them, stirring occasionally, until heated all the way through - about 20 minutes should do it. Cover them to keep the splattering to a minimum, but if there's no vent, tilt it so the steam can escape. You can remove the meatballs with a slotted spoon and cook another batch in the same catsup/beer or cola mixture. After that, too much grease will probably have cooked out of the meatballs, but if you can't see it a lot, you can cook another batch in that same liquid. I have used a huge skillet and doubled the cooking liquid and meatballs and made one huge batch of meatballs. When I've cooked the amount I want, I transfer them to my small crock pot (which the Down Home Diva, daughter #1, has made off with). I include some of the cooking liquid to keep them moist.


I've had this recipe for about 35 years - I got it when hubby was in graduate school and back then you couldn't buy frozen meatballs. My original recipe gives ingredients to make your own, and says to freeze them not touching each other on a cookie sheet before bagging in 1 lb. batches. Then you can pull them out and prepare just as I've described above. You DO NOT have to brown them or thaw them first. They will cook in just a little more time than it takes to heat up the frozen, cooked ones.



My nieces and nephews are now in their mid forties and still love them as much as they did as kids. They were thrilled to be eating "beer meatballs." That's why I experimented with the Coke and found that it also worked well.

Well, that's it for tonight. I'll have to get myself organized to include the rest of the items in the next few days.

Odds and ends

Today we're having hamburgers and french fries for supper.

By the way, that brings up an interesting topic - what do you call the meals at your house? We say breakfast, lunch and supper. "Dinner" just doesn't enter into it except we might say "Sunday dinner" or "Christmas dinner" for those special occasion type meals.

Hubby loves hamburgers and could eat them 7 days a week I think. I only have a few hamburger hints, and you're going to think I'm OCD when I share them with you.

I keep my kitchen scales out and always measure out my lumps of ground beef so that they are equal. I do this so that they will cook in the same amount of time and because I have found that the size of the buns determines the weight of the pattie for us. I actually prefer what we call fatty ground beef, the 73% fat, for juicy hamburger patties, but today I have some Angus ground chuck, 80% fat to use.

I usually cover either a bread and butter plate or a salad plate with plastic wrap and use the depression in the dish to shape the patties. The weather here is pretty rotten today so I'll be cooking the burgers inside. If we're going to cook outside on the grill (hubby's domain), I will make the patties about an hour ahead and put them in the freezer to firm up so that the risk of them coming apart and falling through the grill is reduced.

Where ever the patties will be cooked, if they are large in diameter or more than 1/2 inch thick, I use my index finger and make a hole in the middle of the pattie. The hole will disappear as the burger cooks, but it helps the middle of the pattie cook faster and more evenly. I believe I got this hint from someone on Allrecipes.com, one of my favorite sites.

I'll be glad when the new George Foreman grill comes in so that I can toast the cut surfaces of the hamburger buns on the flat grill plates. Until then, we'll continue to run them under the broiler for a light browning.

Hubby picked up three tomatoes (beefsteak variety) at the grocery store yesterday and they cost $5.85. I am horrified, but it's not a hamburger to him if there aren't tomato slices on them. I am sooo longing for sun ripened summer tomatoes.

I'd better get busy. I have nine pounds of the ground chuck to deal with - some for tonight's burgers, and the rest to be frozen in 1/2 lb. and 1 lb. packages in freezer ziplock bags and flattened to stack on a cookie sheet I keep in the freezer so that things will freeze flat for stackability.

I'll talk to you again tomorrow. That's all for now.

This is fun!

Well, I survived my entry into the world of blogging and was amazed to find some comments. Thank you, ladies, so much.

Some days I may not give a recipe, but instead give a few shortcuts or tips to make things quicker, easier, tastier, or more economical. I hope you will not feel that I am insulting you. After all my years in the kitchen, I still look for new ways to do things. Sometimes they work for me and sometimes not.

Tonight I'm not cooking anything special because hubby had a large lunch when his office went out to celebrate someone's birthday. I'm planning on grilled ham and cheese sandwiches which have been a mainstay for us from our earliest married days. I do have a few tips I have gleaned along the way, so I'll share those with you tonight.

1. This is a good way to use up bread that isn't the very freshest.
2. I used to melt the butter in the skillet, but now I actually spread a very thin layer of mayo on
the outside of each slice of bread.
3. I have the heat on medium low so that the insides will have time to warm up by the time the
outside has turned golden brown.
4. Watch them closely. They can go from golden to black in a jiffy.
5. One or two each of thin ham slices and cheese are enough. If you put too much cheese, it will
ooze out while you're eating the sandwich.

If you want to gild the lily, so to speak, you can lightly beat an egg or two with a tablespoon of water per egg and dip the sandwich in that before you put it into the skillet. If you do this, you will need to melt some butter in the skillet.

If you want to really go overboard, you can dip the sandwich in dried bread crumbs before putting the sandwiches in the skillet.

Now it's actually Saturday. I lost this post last night, but after trying several things, I seem to have gotten it back.

Last night Hubby wanted the sandwiches prepared in a little sandwich grill he bought for $2. about a month ago at Goodwill. This purchase was soooo out of character for him that I am still amazed. His best work friend is very careful with his money and they go there sometimes on their lunch hour. His friend has one of these and likes it. Our sandwiches keep sticking. I have a rain check from Dillard's department store right now for the new George Foreman Grill that comes with multiple plates that can go in the dishwasher. The ad said the regular price was $149.99, but they were selling it the week before Christmas for $89. and then you could mail in a form for a $10. rebate. They were out when I went for mine, but they did give me the rain check and said they would send me a postcard when the new shipment came in. I call every week just so I can get a jump on them, but they haven't come in yet. They may be on the truck Tuesday or Wednesday. I certainly hope so because I have so many things I want to try. I'll keep you posted. If you have any experience with these grills and want to share, I'm very interested.

Oh, so self-conscious

I suppose I should begin my first post by introducing myself, and so here it goes:


Daughter Downhome Diva has set this up for me, and I hope I'll have fun with it. I'm a 59 year old married, retired school teacher. I suppose I've been in the kitchen all my life, but one of my earliest memories is of insisting on helping my mama wash dishes by standing on a kitchen chair. I still have my 5 year old birthday present from my mama , a very simple cookbook for boys and girls and my 8 year old present from her, Betty Crocker's Cooking for Boys and Girls. I must have had around 200 cookbooks at my highest count, but I've weeded out so that I'm down to around 100 now.

I've lived all my life in the South and most of it within a 70 mile radius of my present home on Lake Murray in Chapin, SC. I have two grown daughters, the Diva , who is married whom I mentioned above and a younger daughter who has moved back into the nest to save money to go back to college and change her occupation. She is now a dental assistant and aspires to be an optometrist. The Diva is a paralegal for her mother-in-law, a family attorney, and frequent guardian at litem.

I've just finished reading Sandra Lee's biography, Made from Scratch, and found it very inspiring. So, now I want one of her cookbooks, but I want it at a very good price. That's my other passion - getting a bargain on everything I buy. Men go out in the woods to hunt game and I scour the stores, newspapers, and Internet for bargains. What's the difference? I used to adore garage sales, but I am disabled by arthritis now and getting in and out of the car is too painful for me to enjoy it any longer.


One reason I wanted a blog was to help me keep up with my favorite recipes. As I make each one, I'll try to add it here. Tonight I made Hamburger Gravy, which was inspired by philocrates at Allrecipes.com (Nana's Favorite Hamburger Gravy #139492). I have changed it so much that I now consider it mine. Here's my version:

Hamburger Gravy

1.5 lbs. of ground beef

1/2 cup very finely chopped onion

1 teaspoon salt

freshly ground black pepper

6 tablespoons of water

6 tablespoons of all-purpose flour

3 cups of milk (I use whole milk)

Kitchen bouquet browning sauce, optional (Hubby likes it without)

Toast to serve it over

Put the ground beef and onion in a large skillet and cook on medium heat until the meat is no longer red and the onion is transparent. Stir frequently. While that is cooking, put all the other ingredients in a quart jar with a tight fitting lid and shake or stir to blend well. When the meat is done, drain the fat and add the other ingredients and stir until thickened and smooth. It will take about ten minutes, still on medium heat. I bring it to a slow boil. Serve over slices of toast or split biscuits. Makes 6 to 8 servings.

That's it for tonight.