Happy Birthday Mom and Mema

My mom turned 50 on March 13th and my Mema turns 75 today.

Saturday we celebrated their birthdays with dinner at P.F. Changs and then dessert at Mema's. I made the cake of course.

 

The pan was a Wilton Topsy Turvy cake pan, super cute, and so many options for decorating.

Mema got a new tiny little netbook.

My mom got a mp3 player and a digital camera and she also got signed up with a facebook account. I guess it was time she got caught up with the times. She still used the little disposable cameras from Walmart. :-D so 2000.

It was a good day. Even if I did miss free rita's day.

Chicken and Dumplings

I love chicken and dumplings. My dad really loves chicken and dumplings, but no one in my family has learned how to make them for him. (I think he tried to learn once when we lived in GA)
Now, one day, I will learn how to make them from scratch, but until then this recipe will do. It is really very good.
So good in fact that I made it on a Tuesday, and Matt ate all the leftovers that week and requested I make it again for dinner on Monday. Which I did ( I did manage to get some leftover this time)
I have been torturing my dad with texts and taunts of this yummy yum, I am making them on Friday so I can take him his own big bowl of CnD. :-D Best daughter ever.
This recipe is adapted from Kevin and Amanda's Recipes
[Printable Recipe]
Ingredients:
1lb of chicken breasts (I used about 3 breasts)
10 bouillon cubes
2 qts water
2 c. bisquick
2/3 c. milk
2 tbsp butter
4 eggs
2 stalks of celery
1 small onion
20-25 baby carrots
Directions:
Put 10 bouillon cubes, chicken and water in a large pot and bring to a boil.

Then reduce the heat to medium and simmer until the chicken is cooked through.
While chicken is cooking boil the eggs. I do this by placing the eggs in a pot, covering with cold water and bringing to a boil. I boil for 1 min and then cover the pot and remove from heat. I let sit in the hot water for 17 mins then immediately place into a bowl of ice water and let cool completely.
When chicken is cooked, removed from pot.
In a small bowl mix together the bisquick and milk until a dough forms.
Drop spoonfuls of dough into the chicken stock.

Simmer over low heat for 10 minutes covered, then uncover and cook for another 10 mins.

While dough is cooking, cut veggies and sauté in a pan with the butter on a low heat. Let the veggies slowly become tender. Season with  a little pepper (avoid salt because the bouillon cubes add a lot of salt)


Cut the chicken into small pieces.

Add to the veggies and season with a little pepper.
Stir everything to combine.

Add the chicken and veggies to the stock.
Shell the eggs, and remove the yolks.

Chop the egg whites and add to the soup.

Stir everything to combine.

This takes about an hour start to finish but is totally worth the time. The original recipe didn’t call for onion and carrot, but I figured why not sneak in more veggies. I really like it with the added flavors.

When you go to reheat – sometimes you need to add a little water to thin it. I reheated mine in the microwave, 30 seconds at a time stirring in between. Matt reheated his on the stove. Both worked fine.  This is a must make!

Suggestions needed

I wrote a post on my other blog today asking for suggestions for when I go to NYC.

Check out the post and let me know if you have an idea for me.


Welcome Friday Followers! Take a look around, there are some pretty yummy recipes to be found. Also, an amazing chicken and dumplings recipe coming this weekend. (so good that I made it twice in 8 days because Matt loved it so much!)



and New Friend Friday

Chipotle Rice

Ok – I love a good Chipotle burrito. But what I really love about it is the rice.

I love rice in general (I could NEVER do the no carb diets. Nope, I love me some carbs)

Anyway, Matt and I figured out how to make chipotle rice in college, and perfected it. Then I moved home, and we only cooked together a couple times a month. So I forgot about it.

Well I decided it needed to make a come back.

So tonight I made it, and it was so good. A great side dish for chicken. I only had white rice, but I would suggest using basmati

It honestly isn’t any harder than making regular white rice.

[Printable Recipe]

Ingredients:

1 tbsp butter

2/3 c. basmati rice

2 tbsp lime juice

1 c. water

1/2 tsp salt

2 tsp fresh cilantro

 

Directions:

Melt butter on medium heat.

Add rice and lime juice.

Stir for 1 min.

Add water and salt.

Bring to a boil.

Cover and turn heat to low.

Let simmer for 20-25 mins, until all the water cooks out.

While simmering, chop cilantro

When rice is finished add cilantro and fluff with a fork.

 

SO GOOD.

I will say that Rachel Ray and everyone on tv makes chopping fresh herbs look so easy. They barley lift their knifes and the herbs are chopped nice and small. Me, not so much. Granted, my knifes do not cost hundreds of dollars. But still, there should be an easier way.

OK, OK. I just need good knifes. Maybe one day.

My Blog Turned 1!!!

and like any good mother would do, I forgot.

Photo Credit

OK - I didn't forget, I knew that Sunday was the 1 year anniversary of my first blog post, but I didn't get around to writing a post.

Last weekend was a whirl wind of fun. I was celebrating a birthday, but not my blog's birthday. My honey, Matt, turned 25 last Friday. After lots of lying, deceit, sneaky behavior careful planning Matt's mom, dad and sister flew up from Florida to surprise him. Imagine the shock of expecting me to come home from work on Thursday and bam there is your family. It was great. Then on Friday we had a surprise party for him with all of our friends. It was a very good time. Lots of surprises, it completely stressed me out, but it was totally worth it!

Saturday we went to The White House for a tour of the west wing. We didn't get to see the oval office because The President was in there, but the Chief of Staff came out and walked over to us (it helped that we had two adorable twins with us) and shook our hands, and led us into the cabinet room too take our picture with the girls sitting in his chair. Pretty cool.

Saturday night we went to The Kennedy Center. I gave Matt tickets to Jerry Seinfeld for this birthday. So we were there until late. It was a lot of fun! Very funny.

Sunday we got up and went to breakfast, then took everyone to the airport. I came home and passed out on the couch watching hockey, for basically the whole gold medal game. I was so tired, I went to bed at my normal time and didn't really have trouble going to sleep.

This week was just busy, it flew by. Next thing I knew it was Friday and I still had not acknowledged my baby's birthday. Sad.

Well last night I sat for a few hours and created printable recipes for all of the posts on my blog. Every recipe has a link to a page with the recipe. The recipe page is pretty simple, with only one picture of the finished product. I hope everyone likes these. I know I love when there is a print recipe button on the recipe I want. It saves me time since I don't have to copy and paste it into word, then remove the pictures.

I also created a page on my blog for the printable recipes. There is a link to every single recipe on there. It is organized by newest to oldest. If you know the name of it, you can go and hit Ctrl - F and type the name in the find box. That will take you right to it.

I also added tags to every post, now if you are looking for a peanut butter recipe. Click on the right the word peanut butter and it will take you to all the posts with that tag. Now hopefully I have made my blog a little bit easier for you to get the recipes, because if I put them on here it is because they are good. I have made quite a few things that haven't made it to the blog because they were not so good.

Photo Credit

Anyway, I have loved blogging over the last year. I never really thought I would enjoy it as much as I do. Thanks for following my blog and leaving comments. I love getting ideas, and thoughts on the recipes. I hope I can do this for many more years!