Quick n easy turkey n dumplings

I have a confession to make. A big, shameful secret. I will deny it like crazy in mixed company, or in San Francisco. Ready? Here it is. As much as I love whole foods and hippie food, and local organic food, and greens from the garden, and brown rice and brown bread,  I love processed food nearly as much. Oreos, Cheeze-its, hot dogs, mac n cheese from a box, McDonald's... it must be the msg that makes me go crazy sometimes. (I remember learning in 7th grade home ec. that MSG is a psychoactive white powder, just like cocaine, only you can buy MSG in the spice aisle. So don't blame me! The Twinkies made me do it!)

 This is the best thing you can make with food from packages, and it tastes especially good on a day when you're under the weather. The magic ingredients are: cream of chicken soup, a rotisserie chicken, frozen peas and carrots, and a roll of refrigerated biscuit dough. Dump it all in a pot, walk away and watch an episode of Gossip Girl, (affiliate link) and when you come back, voila! lots of delicious, creamy, doughy, salty, tender chicken and dumplings. Or, if it happens to be 3 days after Thanksgiving, turkey and dumplings.

After all the busyness and excitement of the last 2 weeks or so, my honey and I are both fighting off bugs. He sent me to the market for supplies and a powerful urge hit for some yummy, processed comfort food. This is a good way to use up some of that leftover turkey in the fridge, anyway, and this was an awesome meal for our budget since the soup was on sale for $.99, the veggies for $1.50, and the biscuits for $1.50. Makes 4 hearty servings.

Quick and Easy Turkey and Dumplings
1/2 onion, chopped fine
1 rib celery, chopped fine
1 can cream of chicken soup
1 can whole milk
1 can water
1/2 bag frozen peas and carrots
2 cups cooked turkey meat, chopped
1/2 a roll refrigerated biscuit dough
salt and black pepper

If you have an onion and some leftover celery like I did, and are not too under the weather, go ahead and chop them up and soften in some butter in your favorite sauce pan or dutch oven. Or you may omit this step.

Pour in the can of cream of chicken soup, fill the can with milk and add to the pan, fill the can with water and add. Stir to combine and bring to a simmer. Add half the bag of frozen veggies and the turkey meat. Allow to heat through. Taste and adjust for salt and pepper.

Drop dumpling-size pieces of biscuit dough on top of the soup, cover, reduce heat to low and let simmer until the dumplings are cooked through, 20-30 minutes. Taste and adjust for salt and pepper again. I think this dish needs quite a bit of fresh black pepper and a hot toddy to wash it down.

I hope you feel better soon.

Thanksgiving notes

We got really busy getting ready for Thanksgiving and I totally bombed Nablopowrimo! Oh well, there's always next year.

We had a whole big Thanksgiving to-do over here, and for the most part it went pretty darn well. We used several recipes from our new indispensable cookbook, The Science of Cooking, and our roast turkey was pretty awesome. I wish I had pictures, but the person I delegated photography to was probably busy playing with the baby.

Things got tense in the kitchen a few times. Here are some things I learned for next year:
Keeping the mashed potatoes warm in the crock pot will work, just be sure to get them in there hot!
Wash and set aside enough place settings beforehand
Start the dinner rolls and the turkey 2 days before the big day
Learn to carve the turkey

And the most important thing: Relax! As long as there's enough wine, good cheer, and good gravy, no one cares if the turkey is dry or the mashed potatoes are gluey.

The best chocolate chip cookie EVAR

I know chocolate chip cookies. I've made many times my share of chocolate chip cookies. In high school, my brother and I liked to make them in the middle of the night. Then when I went off to college, on visits home my brother and his friends begged for chocolate chip cookies. The recipe is in my head like a chant: sugar, brown sugar, butter, eggs, vanilla. The start of so many wonderful things.

The cookies we made last night were seriously the best cookies EVAR. I was teaching my honey how to make them, and he must've taken more care than I do anymore. These cookies are dense, chewy with a sugary, crispy edge, chocolaty, salty, delicious. 

This is exactly what we did.

The Best Chocolate Chip Cookie EVAR

1 cup unsalted butter at room temperature
1 1/2 cups packed brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
2 eggs at room temperature
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
3 cups white flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
2 cups chocolate chips
extra salt

In a stand mixer, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. This takes a few minutes.
Add the eggs, one at a time, and beat until smooth. Add the vanilla and mix.
In a separate bowl, stir together the flour, baking soda, and salt.
Slowly add the flour to the butter mixture in 3 parts. Do not beat the dough too hard.
Stir in the chocolate chips.
Drop cookies by teaspoonfuls on a cookie sheet. Sprinkle with kosher salt.
Bake at 350F for 12 minutes, until golden.
Cool on the baking sheet for a few minutes before removing to wire racks.

learning to cook

People say "if you can read, you can cook," which is true if you just want to reproduce someone else's recipe. But where's the fun in that? Cooking is like writing, or anything else really. It takes a lot of practice and a lot of experience to develop your own style. I like to read about cooking and food. I like Saveur magazine because the writing tells a story about food, culture, family, travel. It's so much more than a recipe mag. I like Elizabeth David; she has such a sense of propriety and such humor! and a deep appreciation of local, seasonal, simple food done well.

But I have learned the most about basic techniques that work from Cook's Illustrated magazine. I heard an interview on NPR with some folks from the test kitchen about their new book, The Science of Cooking, and in an effort to get me to cook more, my honey immediately ordered a copy. This book is essential! I'm really looking forward to picking up new tips and tricks--which aren't even tricks, just Science! --and sharing them here.

Things I'd like to understand better: pastry, roast chicken, fish & shellfish, fussy sauces, characteristics of different wines, fat content of dairy and what it means for cooking. 

Super naughty garlic bread

Do you ever have one of those days where you wake up and you're in the mood to cook some Italian-American food? Something like baked rigatoni, with a heavy sauce and lots of cheese? And if you're going to all that trouble, you might as well go all out, right? So you pop a bottle of red, put some silly Italian music from Dean Martin on, and get out the sauce pan.

Don't forget the garlic bread. You should make it before you make the salad. You will be very popular with your friends. And it's such a simple secret.

Super Naughty Garlic Bread

1 loaf good bread
1 stick unsalted butter, softened
several cloves minced garlic
1-2 tablespoons honey
salt generously

Preheat oven to 400F.
Slice the bread, but don't cut all the way through.
Mix the butter, garlic, honey, and salt in a small bowl. Adjust seasonings to taste. I like it quite sweet and garlicky.
Tuck the butter mixture into the sliced loaf. Be generous.
Wrap in tinfoil and place in the oven at the same time you put your pasta in the water. When it's time to eat the garlic bread will be crusty on the outside, soft and buttery on the inside, and the garlic will have lost its raw bite.

Whole foods for baby

As much as it pains me, I'm getting ready to give up breastfeeding.

I really wanted to nurse as much and as long as we both wanted to. I guess that time has come sooner than I anticipated, and that saddens me. I worked so hard to maintain my supply through our multiple hospitalizations and weeks of tube-feeding, hoping we would resume our breastfeeding relationship as before. It was such simple, sweet thing. The babe prefers the bottle now. He got two teeth in the time he was tube-fed, and then he was biting me and I was back at work, so we transitioned to the bottle. We nurse a bit in the morning now, and sometimes in the evening, and he's mostly stopped biting me. But he's gotten lazy and if he's hungry he gets frustrated at the breast. I don't really have time to pump at work and my supply is causing worry again.

Babe is 7 months old now, and we have just begun to introduce solid foods. I still intend to pump/nurse for as long as we can, but if we need to supplement with something, I want to supplement with homemade "breastmilk" --I really don't want to call it formula. There are many reasons I don't want to give him grocery store formula: he doesn't like it, I have health concerns about it, and I don't want to financially support these companies and their (I think) questionable business practices.

So I'm researching making my own supplemental baby milk. Have you tried this? There seems to be some information out there, but not a lot and I am surprised that there aren't more parents doing this. I want the best nutrition for my baby and I want to make healthy food choices in general, for my family, community, and planet. 

the art of nursing

I love this photo. It shows the essence of nursing so well. This nurse is doing the best thing, just by being there with an open heart. The best nurses are fearless; they confront illness or birth with each patient, over and over again. They are not closed off or defensive; to truly advocate for the patient they need to listen and understand with compassion. No veil. They are bodhisattvas.

I know I am a more compassionate nurse now. One thing this terrible/wonderful year has given me is greater compassion. Feeling blessed.