chicken and dumplings

‘Chicken and Noodles’ is something Andrew and I came to dread when we lived in Ohio. It was goopy, tasteless, colorless and just blah. Granted, it was usually cooked in massive amounts to feed a herd of hungry, less-than-picky Midwesterners. It’s not like I was expecting gourmet, but still.

Anyway, so when I found a recipe for Chicken and Dumplings from Cooking Light’s newest book, ‘Lighten Up, America!’ I don’t have the book, but the recipe was featured in a recent issue of the magazine. In that same vein, I don’t get the magazine anymore, either. (Not enough time to read it with school!) So, all I have is my magazine cut-out.

ANYWAY. I decided to give dumplings a try. Why not?

Glad I did–Andrew loved it and I enjoyed making it.

Basically, it’s a recipe that takes you from making your own chicken stock as the base (with extra for the freezer!) to plopping little flour-and-buttermilk dumplings into the simmering stock.

I loved that for basically the cost of a 4-lb chicken and some basics (onion, celery, carrot), I got 16 cups of stock and three or four meals out of it, two of which are bagged and labeled in the freezer for a busy night once school starts. You simply boil the chicken with celery and onion, then strain it all out and shred the chicken.

I also thought this was an excellent way to make chicken noodle soup by omitting the dumplings and adding egg noodles, or whatever noodle you like.

we did African again

One week after we went to Africa, we did it again.

(Not really, but it’s cute to say it that way.)

Anyway, I made another African Stew–this one with winter squash and chickpeas.

In short, Andrew and I both preferred the first one (with the sweet potatoes and red beans), although Andrew said he’d rather have chickpeas than red beans. I can make that swap, I suppose…

I also tried out a recipe for wheat pita bread. It definitely puffed, just like it said it would, although the top layer was paper-thin. Not sure how to make it more half and half… Served with dates.

And citrus salad with mint.

hung

It’s been a veritable picture-hanging spree around here, lately! With every piece that goes up on a wall, I feel a bit more moved-in 🙂

This baby was moved from the laundry room to the pantry, where we both think it looks much better:

This Roycroft mirror was a birthday gift from the Layers last year, and we just never got around to figuring out the best spot for it until recently. It’s in the little hallway that leads to the 4th bedroom, and I like that you can see it as soon as you round the corner at the top of the stairs.

Check out the details! And I love that you can see the Penn State photos in its’ reflection.

This is that craft project I made with a friend a week or so ago:

We attached chicken wire to empty frames, then spray-painted them and decoupaged little clothespins. It’s hanging in the downstairs half-bath.

Finished look with cards:

I even found another white-framed cork board for my upstairs office nook:

Since I’ve been in school, I’ve resorted to creating scotch-taped ‘clusters’ of papers on the walls near my desk. First, it was the kitchen in our hotel room at the Staybridge, then the paneled room in the rental house, and then (what is now the 4th bedroom) here before I created this nook. High time to get another cork board, huh?! It’s currently displaying the cycling and aerobics class schedules for the YMCA, my hand-written workout schedule and some directions to log into the new co-op blog website. And my periodic table of elements–it’s more sentimental than necessary now, but it still makes me smile.

Most of those items were finished in one evening; why can’t all the other projects we do be so brief yet bring so much relief?!