Green bean casserole made right!

Take 3 pounds of fresh green beans, snip and string them and break them in half, placing them in a colander. When all are snipped and strung, rinse them with cool water and set one third of your beans in the bottom of a crockpot, then layer on 1/2 -1 can of roasted garlic cream of mushroom soup, then top that with 1/2 C of shredded 4 Cheese blend, some chopped fine onion (or french fried onion if you prefer) add the next 1/3 of beans and repeat layers, ending with soup and cheese on top. This can be made a day ahead and stored in the crockpot insert in the refrigerator. If cooking the same day turn slow cooker up to low and cook 8 hours or on high for 4-6 hours. When you are ready to serve I garnish with french fried onions and freshly sauteed quartered Baby Bella mushrooms.

Delicious, and by making it in a slow cooker you save yourself valuable oven space during Holiday cooking.

Cheese Enchiladas

This is how we make enchiladas in my family.

Corn Tortillas
Chili Powder
Water
Vegetable Oil
Shredded Cheese
Diced Onion
1 can of chili (your choice)

Take slightly stale corn tortillas and dip them briefly in a mixture of chili powder and water, the amounts are at your discretion but the water should have turned red from chili powder. Meanwhile pour an inch or two of oil into a small frying pan (just greater than the diameter of your corn tortillas. Set the oil on medium high heat. Make sure you "shake off" the tortillas a bit before you dip them in the oil and submerge them until the tortilla is fried and slightly crispy. Place the tortilla in a 9 x 13 pan and fill with cheese and onions, roll up and place seam side down in the pan. Keep adding tortillas until the pan is full. Take your canned chili (or an equal amount of homemade) and mix it with the leftover chili water and pour it over all of the enchiladas and then top that with cheese and bake at 350 degrees until it is all bubbly and hot. What works really well here (and I am not even kidding) is a small can of that cheap hot dog chili that is merely texturized vegetable protein and beef fat mixed together ("it's a beef process"). But you can ladle over some homemade chili or a can of vegetarian chili whatever you have on hand.

We generally serve this with some rice, a green salad, and some sauteed zucchini.

Chicken Sausage in Red Sauce over Penne Pasta

Tonight's recipe is from my friend K, a super easy week night meal full of flavor and vegetables.

Chicken sausage
1 TB olive oil
1 green bell pepper
1/2 large onion
1-2 cloves garlic, minced
1 can of tomatoes (or tomato sauce)
Italian herbs
1 box of penne pasta

Saute the vegetables in the olive oil, add the chicken sausage (removed from casing). When those items are browned add the can of tomatoes or sauce and about 1 tsp of Italian herbs. Let the sauce simmer. Meanwhile, make the pasta according to package directions. When pasta is done you can add it to the sauce directly and mix together. Can be topped with a bit of grated parmesan cheese. K's tips are to only make 1/2 of a 1 pound box of pasta so that you have equal amounts of sauce and pasta, a little less carby that way and a nice balance of sauce to pasta, and to always add salt to your pasta boiling water.

This can be a one dish meal or you can make a green salad or a nice side of steamed and seasoned zucchini.

Italian Wedding Soup

Maybe inspired by my friend's brilliant testimony about her marriage, tonight I made Italian Wedding Soup. The recipe is mostly Ina Garten's and you can find it here. I used pre-made and frozen meatballs, and I used ABC pasta instead of stars. Also my broth was a combination of mushroom water, plain water and beef stock to suit the beef meatballs. I was also out of spinach so I used chopped, slender French green beans instead.

The soup was a good choice for tonight because after bravely shepherding me and my younger daughter through our various illnesses over the last week and a half, my poor husband came down with a cold today. He came home from work early which he never does, so some nice fragrant hot soup is always a good choice to cut through the funk in your head.

I hope your family, all families, stay well and happy tonight. Thanks for coming by!

Chicken and Dumplings

Do you ever have a day where you need some comfort food? I have days where I could use a comfort drink and then some comfort chocolate and then maybe a nap... wait, where was I? Ah yes. Comfort food, specifically chicken and dumplings.

My great-grandmother made wonderful chicken and dumplings, I remember them fondly. She made the flat thin noodles with a lovely herby chicken broth and pieces of nearly shredded chicken. She was a terrific southern cook, and had learned the skill as a child. She learned to cook on a wood-stove with no dials or temperature markers. The downside of her years of long practie and skill was she didn't really follow a recipe. With some of her best recipes not written down or written down many many years later there are gaps in my knowledge of her techniques. Much to my chagrin I have never been able to replicate her banana bread and I have her recipe! I am sure that there must have been something she forgot to write down or tell me, or maybe I just lack her innate skill. That at least gives me the comfort that maybe in 60 years or so I can make as wonderful a banana bread as she could.

I beg of you if there is something your family loves to eat, please write it down, show your kids, show your friends. Recipes are a tangible piece of history, a way of preserving culture and memories. When I miss my gramma sometimes I make food that I know she would have liked, even if she made it differently.

My chicken and dumplings today were a cross between recipes from Paula Deen and Alton Brown. I chopped some carrots, onion, celery and garlic and seasoned them with 1 tsp. of house blend. I sauteed them in olive oil in a heavy bottomed sauce pan over medium heat. I chopped 1 pound of chicken tenderloins into chunks and started to brown them with the veggies. After the chicken and veggies had gotten nice and fragrant I added some more house blend, a bay leaf and 5 cups of water. I let that simmer on low while I made the dumpling dough. These make puffy dumplings. I basically just used Alton's dumpling technique. I scooped a half C of broth from the pot and used it to make the dumpling dough.

You put the dough into a ziploc bag with a corner snipped and squeezed them out over the simmering broth (brought back up to medium) and you cut them off in one inch chunks. Then you just put the lid back on the pot and let it all steam and simmer for about 10 minutes.

I must not have been the only one who needed comfort today. There was literally not a drop left after dinner.