Chicken and Noodles

I had never cooked a whole chicken before. Now I know why. The plan was to make a pot of delicious homemade chicken and noodles. First, I put the chicken in the pot of water. Well, what I immediately learned (this being my first experience and all) was that, unlike other meats that I've cooked, the chicken needed to be cleaned. I thought the point of cleaning a chicken in the first place was to clean it! I'm just saying that when I've cleaned chickens, I made sure the feathers were gone, and those birds were clean!

Imagine my frustration when I had to pluck the rest of the feathers off of my chicken. Much grumbling was heard coming from the kitchen, and my lack of patience caused me to to just grab a knife. Instead of plucking each feather, I just skinned the rest of the chicken.

Finally I got my cleaned chicken into the pot of water, and let it start cooking. I had to get those noodles going. I love the simplicity of making egg noodles. I used 4-6 eggs, and then put as much milk into the mixture as I do eggs. If I use 4 eggs, I put 4 egg fulls of milk into the mixture. The only other thing to add is flour. I added enough to make it doughy.

The fun part came next as I rolled out the dough nice and flat. The problem starting rising again, though. See, I do not have counter space. It's just non-existent in my kitchen. My only option was to roll out the dough on my table.
Well, let's just say that it took many more mistakes before I finally got the dough to do what it needed to do. When it was flat, I rolled it up and sliced the noodles up.I spread the noodles out to dry, and left them there all night.
After the chicken was finished cooking, I put it in the fridge. On Sunday I put the pot of chicken back on the stove. I added some chicken bouillon cubes, salt, and pepper for more flavor. Then I added the noodles and cooked it until the noodles were limp. It smelled delicious. Now, for the faults...(In case you were starting to believe that I was a cooking genius!)

The noodles, were still a little doughy, needing to have dried some more. I rather like my noodles a little doughy, but not everyone does. Also, the whole meal was a little bland. Even though I had put in the bouillon cubes and seasonings, it was still a little plain. Adding some more seasoning would have probably helped. All in all, I think the experiment was ok, although, I will never choose to cook with a whole chicken again.

I wish that every day were Saturday...

My great intentions for last Saturday had been to spend the day cooking. Instead, I wrote and wrote. Finally, at seven in the evening, I started cooking. This is not the time of evening to start cooking, especially when you have to get up the next morning. However, my wonderful husband helped me so much.

After fighting with a chicken, suffering from the lack of counter space, and a limited amount of time, I was able to complete the three recipes that had been on the agenda. I'll share more later, but today we are enjoying the homemade chicken potpie.

To enjoy this amazingly delicious recipe,

This recipe makes two potpies, one to cook and one to freeze!

Use the store bought frozen pie crust. There are lots of kinds to buy, but I choose the kind that is already in the pan. The pie crust often comes in twos, but make sure to buy two. One crust will be the bottom, and the other will be the top of the potpie.

While the pie crusts are frozen, take two of the crusts out of the pie pan. When the crusts are thawed, it will be too difficult to try to take it out of the pan. The pie crusts that are out of the pan will be the top of the pie. Let all of the crusts thaw.

Cook a bag of frozen mixed vegetables. While that is cooking chop into chunks and cook, two to three pieces of the boneless, skinless chicken breast. (I cooked mine in the microwave.)

When the vegetables and chicken are cooked, mix together with two cans of cream of chicken soup. Add a bit of sage and mix.
Cook the bottom part of the pie crust until it begins to turn golden brown. Then divide the mixture between the two pans.
Add the second crust to the top, and poke some holes in the top. There will probably be a little extra dough from the top crust, which we used for a fun design.
Place the pie on a cookie sheet, in case it bubbles over, and place in the oven at around 400 degrees. Cook until the top crust is brown and a little crisp. We cooked one pie that night, and then covered and stuck the other one in the freezer for later. It was delicious!

Cook and Freeze

I am a big proponent of cooking things and then freezing them. That way, when you have to have a meal, and you're too tired and lazy to cook, there's already something thrown together. I think Saturdays are a good day to do this. This last Saturday, I did exactly that, much to the chagrin of my laundry which is still sitting in the baskets waiting to be washed.

Part of the reason I decided to cook so much was because my family was coming to visit. So, I set out, with a few speed bumps to come. First I made chicken casserole, which is incredibly easy. It's even easier if you get one of those day old rotisserie chickens from Wal-Mart on sale, and use it. Then you don't even have to cook the chicken. However, this does leave you with a lack of chicken broth, which was my first speed bump. I didn't have any thing to even make chicken broth, no bullion cubes, nothing.

Next I decided to make meatloaf. This was a wonderful idea, except, I've never made meatloaf, and I didn't have a recipe for it. So, I put in what seemed like it should go into meatloaf. I have no idea how it tastes, but this is what it looked like uncooked.If it's any good, I'll share the "recipe" later.

Lastly, I made lasagna. For the wedding, I got an amazing lasagna dish. The problem with it is that it makes the most ginormous lasagna in the world. One box of lasagna noodles is not enough to fill this pan. So, again, we shall see how it turns out.
Here is a picture of the process. Look how crazy big that pan is! It took seven noodles to barely cover each layer! The other problem with making the lasagna was that I do not have a large pot to cook the noodles in. I used two sauce pans and kept emptying them out and adding more noodles.

Then, in my cooking crazed state, I realized that tomorrow was Sunday, and that meant we would want lunch soon after church. Sundays are my days to rest and take naps. The last thing that I want to do is cook. So, I made a chicken and rice casserole and put it in the fridge.
I love having a "full" freezer. Right now I have a casserole, meatloaf, and lasagna in there. Yummy!

Just Call Me Julia (or Paula Works too)...

"I am a combination of Paula Dean and Julia Child!" These are the words that I found leaving my mouth as I talked with a friend last night. Perhaps I have set my expectations for myself a little too high. I blame commercialism, though.

First Paula Dean signed a contract with Wal-Mart, and now her beautiful kitchen utensils flood the aisles. At first, when she started with her speckled pots and pans, I shuddered at the Paula Dean emblem. Maybe the woman could cook, but her taste in colors was atrocious. Then, this woman, or I suppose a team of highly trained designers and such, completely changed my ideas and opinions of one Paul Dean. I'm enthralled with her wonderful new collection. The rolling pin caught my eye first. It was a French one, which meant that there weren't handles on it, like the typical rolling pin. It was made of beautiful wood, and I could imagine rolling out table tops full of homemade noodles, pastas, and cookies. I HAD to have it, but I didn't need a rolling pin, at least this is what others said. I had already received one from my grandmother. This was not one of those cheap new ones either. Grandma gave me an old, tried and true, not going to fall apart in your hand, rolling pin. Still, I had birthday money, and I am now the proud owner of a Paula Dean rolling pin. Soon, I hope to be a proud owner of the Paula Dean stoneware. The only thing stopping me is the knowledge that I have NO room in my cabinets for such things.

Then there I was sitting innocently on my couch one day, when a movie trailer came on television. The movie was called "Julie and Julia," and it told the story of how a woman named Julie cooked the Julia Child's cookbook, "Mastering the Art of French Cooking," in a year. I knew that I had to see it. It was a cooking movie, and I love to cook. It was just perfect for me. I found out that there was a book with the same title as the movie, the book that inspired the movie, none the less. This I soon acquired, and began reading. Now, I'm still in the middle of the said book, and while it's not the greatest piece of fiction, actually, Julie Powell, the author, is not that great of a writer, but I will not go into a literary critique at this point. What the book and the commercialism surrounding it and the movie have done, is instilled in me the desire to become the next Julia Child.

Again maybe my expectations are too high. This, however, can be discussed at another point. Right now I have to get the tv dinner out and put it in the microwave.