Another recipe (Chicken Dumpling Soup)

A request was made by Paul last night for me to make Chicken Dumpling soup again :0)
Whew! At least there are SOME meals of mine that he likes!!!!

The soup itself utilizes our own chicken meat that we raise. The breasts are usually reserved for chinese recipes or home-made chicken-strips. The legs/thighs aren't a family favorite, so they are PERFECTLY utilzed in soups!!!!!! (Chicken noodle is another family favorite).

I don't follow a strict recipe for the soup portion; whatever we have on-hand. Carrots, beans, onions, potatoes, celery... Naturally, during harvest time, we have ALL of this on-hand ('cept Celery :0( Too bad, I LOVE celery in soups!!!!) :0) I added about 1-1.5 cups of carrots and potatoes to the soup today; only a handful of cut-up beans from Cassie's plant (that I had FORGOTTEN about!!!!), and a medium onion that has started to flower this past week.

I usually put the legs/thighs (from one chicken) in the crock-pot on high for a few hours with 4-cups of water; to the point the meats falls off the bone (no seasonings yet). I set the meat aside (to cool) and strain the liquid into a soup-pot. I add 8 more cups of water to the pot and then add enough Chicken-boullion to the liquid as prescribed by the package. I'll admit....this boullion is the SELLING POINT of the soup!!!! It adds the PERFECT amount of flavoring! I've tried both the boullion cubes AND the boullion "paste"---I like both equally well.

Anyway----once veggies are chopped up, they get added to the soup and boiling....
While that's cooking (~15 minutes???), I start cutting up (pulling apart) the chicken meat.
Once I add the meat, I start mixing up the Dumpling recipe. THIS is the part that I follow without making any changes since I found this yummy version on Cooks.com :0)
The ingredients:
2 c. flour
1 tsp. salt
4 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. white or black pepper
1 egg, well beaten
2 tbsp. melted butter
2/3 c. milk


On a quilting note: I DID make up 5 labels today!!!!! But then found myself "resting my eyes" at 1:00, and haven't sewn them to the actual quilts yet.......(the LABELS, not my eyes!!!) :0)

Heavenly-Sinful Brownies!!!!!

I absolutely MUST share this recipe with all of you out there who are brownie fans!!!!!!

This is the recipe Paul used for the brownies last night------

Since I couldn't decide on "heavenly" or "sinful" to describe them, I'm going with the oxy-moron "Heavenly-Sinful!"

Easy Homemade Brownie Recipe

Paul added a marshmallow to the top of each "piece" of brownie; {{I think he cut a marshmallow in half and placed it on top.}}

Hopscotch & Tater Tot casserole

Hopscotch (70" x 85")
After picking beans from 7:00 - 8:00 AM, I headed downstairs and decided to try to get some more finishes during my last few days of summer vacation. Nope....no canning today. I'll keep the beans safely waiting in the fridge until the next picking tomorrow or Thursday, so I had the WHOLE day open for quilting.

Around 9:00, I had two lil' girls joining me since I had "Balto" on as my background-noise movie of choice. Yeah....LOL.....not really an adult-female choice, but.....**shrug**....it's just background noise! :0)

By lunch-time, the quilt was taken off the frame and trimmed up. The pantograph used was Snapdragons (petite 4 3/4") and I used 6 bobbins of Aurifil thread. I can't remember the exact name of the color, but it's a taupe-like color that blended well with the various scrappy colors.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle at its fullest with this quilt! The backing was a $3.00 Goodwill bedsheet purchase. It feels SO good...100% cotton; almost a shame NOT to use it as a sheet :0)

The batting used was one of those old blankets.....hmmmm....I think I still have the tag downstairs. I'm kinda curious to know the actual makeup of the material.....but it's providing LOTS of weight to this quilt. I LOVE heavy-feeling quilts.....I don't think I can give this one away. I'm kind of partial to it....I think it's going to be kept for ME!

I haven't been able to get back downstairs since lunch time; had some afternoon errands to run. Binding remains to be done yet; I plan on using some 2.5" scrap strips from the 2.5" strip-bin.

So......Tater Tot casserole for dinner tonight. We haven't had this in a while, and I THINK it's one of Paul's more enjoyed meals that I make. There are so many variations out there......this is how I've adapted them to fit my family:

Tater Tot Casserole
1 lb. ground beef, browned
1 med. onion (optional--I don't always add it).
1 package frozen tater tots
1 can corn (or 1 bag of our frozen corn) :0)
1 can cream/potato (most recipes call for cream/mushroom----YUCK!)
Grated cheese (to your liking)

Brown beef with onion; drain.
Drain corn, reserving juice .
Add soup, corn, and 1 soup can of liquid (1/2 milk and 1/2 corn juice). Mix well.
Pour mixture into 9x13 baking dish.
Spread cheese over mixture (to your liking---I usually cover the mixture lightly) ~1 cup?
Top with frozen tater tots.
Bake at 425 for 30 minutes, or until tater tots are brown and crispy.

**smacking lips**
Just typing up that recipe is making me hungry! 10 more minutes remaining on timer :D

10 minutes later
Looks like Candace is a fan, too :0) Too bad she needs to wait for a bit while it cools down.

Some quilting and cooking going on...

A small hint from DH lead me to making Beer Cheese soup for dinner. I haven't been a Beercheese soup eater for very long. When I was pregnant with Candace I was in the Twin Cities for some math conference or another. When the group went out for lunch, there was a special going on for Wisconsin Beer cheese soup. For whatever reason, it sounded so GOOD! (remember...pregnant...). And sure enough; I was hooked! SOOOoooo creamy and cheesy. YUM! Besides, I found it curious that a cafe in Minnesota was having a special for Wisconsin beer cheese soup :0)
Last year, I was browsing through a cookbook that was put together by an area church and County Fair team of my MIL. And there it was....Beercheese soup!

Beer cheese soup recipe
4 chicken bouillon cubes
3 cups water
1 can beer
1 cup each, diced celery, onion, carrots
2.5 cups cubed potatoes
2 cans cream chicken (or potato) soup
1.5 lb. Velveeta cheese, cut into cubes (original recipe asks for 1 lb)

Directions
Cook: water, beer, bouillon cubes, vegetables until vegetables are tender.
Stir in the cream of chicken soup and Velveeta cubes. Heat until cheese has melted.

I've been playing around a bit with this recipe because the first time I made it exactly as the recipe stated, I didn't care for the proportion of cheese used. :0( The next time I made it, I added more cheese; much more to my taste!

And then I thought....this can work both ways....so...
A small hint from me lead DH to making homemade chicken strips for dinner. He tried out a new recipe from Food Network that had him using a wet batter and then a dry batter. The batter was definitely thicker than normal, but lovely crunchy!




I baked up a batch of Rhubarb Crunch too. (Recipe here)

Now that dinner is over; except dessert--haven't had the Rhubarb yet simply because my tummy is STUFFED. I am definitely not in the mood to tackle anymore quilting.

I didn't quite get to the half-way point in the BRB quilting. I only quilted for another hour once lunch was over and lost interest. I don't think I had the needed energy today to stand for hours with the quilting frame.

I pieced all the blocks for Maltese Star mystery listed in step #6 and began piecing them into rows. I stopped after piecing three rows, no longer interested.....((yikes?? some major quilter's A.D.D. today)....

The startitis quilter in me needed something new. Afterall, that WIP list on my sidebar is simply too small!!! Therefore, I pulled out some pieces left over from some FQs used last year; I hadn't cut them down to strips yet. So, I cut them into 1.5" strips and made 14 mini-nine-patches from each set. Pictured here are 28; I have another 14 almost finished, but that was the point I needed to leave them at so I could start dinner preparations. I have no plans for them yet.

I've done a decent amount of sewing this week, but all of the fabric had already been recorded in my previous Stash Reports. The only "new" fabric was for the mini-nines today, so I'll just wait until next week to make an official Stash Report.

Happy Sunday!

Casserole time-out

Since I'm sitting and waiting for the ground beef to fry up, I figured I'd check in and share a VERY EASY casserole recipe. This is a recipe using ingredients we usually always have on-hand; my family simply calls it Casserole and the girls enjoy it.

Ingredients:
- 1.5 cups uncooked elbow macaroni
- 1 lb. ground beef or other similar meat. We've made this with pork/venison equal parts; we've used straight venison; I even tried ground elk once.
- 2 cans condensed Tomato soup
- 1 can corn. I use corn that we've frozen from our garden; 1-1.5 cups
- 1 can peas (OPTIONAL-OPTIONAL!!!) My mother always put in a can of peas (yuck!) Since I'm not a pea lover, I no longer include this ingredient (my children also concur)

Directions
Preheat oven to 350.
Cook the elbow mac.
Brown the ground beef. Season with salt/pepper and/or other beloved seasonings.
Mix all ingredients together in casserole dish.
Bake in 350 degree oven for 45-60 minutes. I've also been known to up the temp to 375 in order to have casserole ready in 30 minutes.


I started quilting Blue Ridge Beauty just before coming up to prepare lunch. I also pieced together most of step #6 of Maltese Star. Pictures to come later tonight.