Cake!

I just finished decorating Melody's birthday cake for tomorrow. I admit -- I cheated and bought an iced layer cake from the grocery store. However, I doctored it with a beautiful bouquet of flowers and I really love the results.



You can do it too! Just take scissors and trim the stems down to 2-3 inches, and push the flowers into the cake from the center out. I added the feathery parts last, pushing them in here and there as I saw fit. I also tried to choose a cake with colors that fit the bouquet I had picked out, but if you're making the cake yourself, the possibilities are endless. I would like this with a lavender or green base and basket-weave on the outside, if I was doing it myself. Pretty pretty! Kinda expensive, though -- definitely not as cheap as baking and decorating from scratch, or even from a mix and canned frosting. Definitely answers in the pretty and the time-saving department, though.

Pregnancy + bedrest != able to do scratch cakes :P

Today's Lunch

Today's lunch has no title, because it was one of those fantastic at-the-stove improvisations.

Swirled light olive oil around a warm skillet and snipped fresh oregano in. Let that get all nice and fragrant while I cut some beef stew meat into quite small pieces (think smaller than dice). Lightly sauteed the beef on a medium-low heat. When it was mostly brown, I added about half a cup of water to make broth. I seasoned this with salt, a bit of Tony Chachere's (creole seasoning), a splash of red wine, a splash of soy sauce, and about an eight teaspoon each of ginger paste and wasabe. I thickened the broth with a bit of cornstarch.

When it was nice and bubbly, I stirred in some fresh steamed white rice and served this to my children for lunch.

MMM!

Amazing Chicken Noodle Soup

The family is yucky with allergies so I decided to make up a batch of chicken noodle soup. However, my broth usually feels "empty" when I don't roast the chicken first, so in my experimenting I found a perfectly acceptable flavor helper. Cooking sherry. How exciting!

For your enjoyment:

Amazing Chicken Noodle Soup

Skin a whole chicken and remove as much visible fat as you can be bothered with. I've been using organic chickens as of late. Put this into a cold soup pot and cover with water. Lid this and put it on the stove to boil. Skim the scummy yuck off the top and lower the heat to medium low. Leave this for a few hours to get fall apart goodness going on.

Remove, with difficulty, the chicken from the pot. Strain the broth so there aren't any of those teeny renegade bones in it and return it to the pot. I cheat and use two pots for this. Put all the chicken mass onto a plate and allow it to cool.

While the chicken is cooling, continue to heat the broth over a low heat. Season this with salt, fresh cracked pepper, and crumbled sage from last year's garden. Okay okay, you can probably use the store stuff. But mine's better :D Use lots. :P When the chicken is cool enough to handle, sit at the stove and put chunks of chicken straight from the bone into the broth. Avoid cartilage, fat, bone, and any non-muscle tissue. Ew. Anyways.

After you've used most of your chicken (I say most because my children hover whenever I piece out chicken. "Mommy? Chicken? Please?"), pour in about a cup of sherry and a cup or two of penne pasta. Bring to a light simmer and then lower the heat to lowish. Don't bother to cover it -- it's alright for this to condense.

I use penne because it's the fattest and holds up well to long cooking times without getting all... gooey. Also, penne was what was in the pantry :D

You could probably do the cooking the chicken part in the crock pot and then make the soup in the evening. The house sure smells good today.

Next to the chicken soup on the stove is my first batch of homemade chocolate syrup. I'll let you know how that turns out.

Cheesy Grits

Mmmmmm!

Heat in a skillet over medium low heat:

a tablespoon or two of bacon grease (or substitute pure butter)

When this is melted, stir in enough uncooked grits to soak up the grease. Toast this for a few minutes, then add water, a little at a time. Start out with half a cup of water and then as the grits simmer and thicken, thin them a bit at a time. Season with salt and fresh cracked pepper.

When the grits are thick and soft and slightly creamy, turn off the heat and stir in a bit of cheddar cheese. The latent heat in the pan will be plenty to melt the cheese adequately.

Serve warm.


MMMMMMM

Chicken Shitake in Lemon Wine Sauce

This isn't -quite- chicken tetrazzini, since it contains neither almonds nor cheese, but it IS a fantastic chicken pasta dish.

Chicken Shitake in Lemon Wine Sauce

leftover roast chicken or other chopped, cooked chicken pieces
fresh shitake or other mushrooms, sliced thinly
one-half of a small lemon, sliced (including rind)
sherry or other light-colored cooking wine
milk or cream
salt
freshly ground pepper
basil, preferably fresh
chicken stock or water
cornstarch

Okay, first things first -- the reason there aren't any measurements for this recipe is because I didn't measure when I made it. It was one of those "this'n'that" sort of things that I decided to write down. So you'll have to be brave and follow your tastes on this.

Into a nice big cast iron skillet, I pieced out the roast chicken from the night before, allowing it to heat slowly. I poured a bit of whole milk in over the chicken to keep it from drying out, and to start absorbing some of the yummy chicken-ness. By a bit, I'm talking less than half a cup here. Just a bit. Anyhow, I poured over that approximately an equal amount of sherry, stirring until everything was just combined.

I then sliced the mushrooms, plopping them indiscriminately into the "broth" that was forming as I sliced. Stirring to make sure everything was well coated, I sliced into this about half of a small lemon and stirred again.

Not having any chicken stock on hand, I added water mixed with cornstarch to the sauce -- I would have preferred stock, as the water left it a little flat. I seasoned this with kosher salt, fresh cracked black pepper and a liberal sprinkling of dried basil. I must admit, though, not having stock to bulk the sauce out with left it flat enough that I added a couple tablespoons of pure butter to flesh out the taste.

Total elapsed cooking time was between twenty and thirty minutes. Once the sauce was thickened from the cornstarch, I lowered the temperature to low and kept the concoction heated while setting the table, etc. We served this over boiled linguine pasta alongside a fresh green salad. We agreed that this is definitely a repeat dish, but next time I'll make a good strong stock from the carcass first or add a tiny amount of chicken bouillon, and it wanted a bit more of the fresh pepper to accent the lemony-wine goodness.

Excellent way to use up "leftover" chicken, which I don't count as leftover since this hardly counts as using up leftovers -- rather that it was a much yummier way of cooking the chicken pieces rather than sauteeing them in the pan.