Butter

So we forgot the butter at the store, but i had a couple pints of heavy cream. Time to be creative:

Pint of heavy cream, with a dash of salt, blend with blender/nutribullet until develops solids in the milk, then strain out the remains of the cream and refrigerate the solids.  You can save the remaining liquid for other projects as well.

As good as Grandma use to make them!

       Southern Chicken and Dumplings

My grandmother taught me how to make her chicken and dumplings, it was always one of my favorites growing up. I can remember helping her with the dough for the dumplings, rolling it out and cutting them up to add into the pot. This is a fun meal that can involve the family. 

We always started out boiling a whole chicken, keeping the broth it made for the base of the gravy. An alternative to this is to stir fry some chicken breast and add chicken broth later. I find the second option gives the meat more flavor than just boiling it. Once you have some cooked chicken you move on to bring the broth to a boil and adding in the dumplings, we always made them from scratch, and I'll include the dough recipe at the bottom! 

As stated above when I was a kid, my grandma always rolled the dough out then cut it into pieces to drop in, if you want a less messy and faster choice I use the pinch and drop style now. The way my grandma does it is by placing down a large brown paper bag, a harder to come by treasure of the old days when grocery shopping. Using flour to reduce sticking, she plop the dough down and use a rolling pin to flatten it to her desired thickness, then with a pizza cutter she would cut them into small squares. It takes a bit of time doing it this way so I would work on the dough while the chicken cooks. While the broth is at a rolling boil, you drop in the pieces of dough stiring every so often to prevent sticking to the bottom. Allow it to cook for ten to fifteen minutes, bring the gravy to your desired thickness and serve. If you find you are having trouble getting the gravy thicker just add a little flour. 

Dumpling Dough Recipe:

1 cup of all purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

2 tablespoons oil

1/3 cup of cold water

Mix everything in a bowl, I prefer to use my hands to kneed it but you can use a spoon instead. For the oil if you double or triple the recipe you don't have to add extra for it, and flour on your hands will reduce sticking. 

    - May 

 

Pancakes!

I had my daughter mix up these pancakes this morning so they could have pancakes for breakfast. Its fairly quick and easy to make.

1 c all purpose flour
1tbs baking powder
1/4tsp cream of tartar
1tsp sugar
Enough buttermilk to make it similar to cake batter. Mix well, and fry up.

Cookbooks

I thought I'd quickly share one of my favorite cookbooks. If you're interested in cooking in an older way, and want to learn new things about how they did it way back when.


You can find it on Amazon, I'm not entirely sure if it's sold anywhere else, but if you can find it elsewhere grab it.


Virgina Cookery - Past and Present


I'll probably even post pictures of some of the funny captions as time goes on.

Okies miss Mavy, I 'm in :p

Brownies

So I thought we would start out with one of my favorite treats and the edits that's been done to it to make it better or just for a change of pace over the years.


Brownies! These are some of the best I've ever made, and my family is convinced you can stick them to the wall. Now, we've used several different things to make them better, I've added milk to them before if they are too dry when I mix the first part, if I can't get it to cook right.


The best substitution I've made was suggested while I was in Tennessee for a while, Hershey's Dark Cocoa powder and a ghirardelli bar, dark chocolate of course. Made some very rich brownies and came out delicious!

Welcome

Welcome to the blog. Yes, it happens to be another cooking blog, not like we don't have enough of those in the world, but as it happens, I hope you find this one different. I cook for my family and for the enjoyment of knowing I got to create something from basically nothing, and that's what this is about. Some of it's really old school cooking, some of it's newer stuff, but I can promise you one thing, I will never claim credit for a recipe I didn't personally create, and if I can find links to the ones I used to make what I did, I'll post that for you.


I'm also inviting friends to come join me on here to post what they make as well. It's something fun and enjoyable for all of us so I hope you'll try their recipes as well!




That being said, here's a few words of encouragement to those who are just learning or disappointed in what they've made. Don't be. EVERYONE makes mistakes, each one of us have burned something, scorched a bit of milk, and even dropped a carton of eggs. If you say you've never, then you don't cook. Don't ever think you can't do something, just because you get it wrong the first few times you try. Always try again.




So within these posts will be more than just me making a few odds and ends, my kids will be here as they learn to cook, and anyone else who pops into my home to help make a dish or two. As well as some add ins from friends that enjoy the idea as much as I do. I don't use boxes if I can help it, so any cake, brownies, even green bean casserole is all made from separate ingredients, no canned soup, no box of mix and so forth. I hope you all enjoy and I encourage you to post something you made from one of the recipes. Feel free to add to, subtract from, and just all around edit the thing to make you and yours happy, and you can even show and tell us what you've done, we'll be happy to see it!