Port In A Storm

White Chicken Chili

We cleaned out the refrigerator at the lake last weekend and I brought home one package of chicken breasts from the freezer there. Then I couldn't think of a thing to do with it. I haven't cooked much in several weeks. And I hate to admit, it's been nice not cooking.

Our wonderful anniversary trip to the mountains with fabulous meals was followed by a weekend at the lake and lakeside dining. Then the lobster roll truck came to town this week. A rare treat for a small town in the deep South. Another night off in the kitchen for me.

But the chicken had thawed and had to be used. Then a snippet of a recipe popped up on Instagram. Not a real recipe, but a "this is what I toss in the slow cooker" with a photo. She said she eyeballed all the seasonings. You know me. I wrote down how I did this, complete with measurements, so that next time—and there will be a next time—I won't be guessing about how much oregano or chili powder to use.

The chili went in to the refrigerator until the family arrived. They were at the beach for fall break and left yesterday ahead of the storm. It was much, much less severe on the east coast, but still good they got out of the way. Fall break was relocated to our farm.

  

Instead of playing on the beach or in the ocean, or rescuing stranded starfish, these girls learned to latch hook today. I've saved these craft kits for a long, long time. This was the perfect day to pull them out. 

 

There are many ways to make white chicken chili. I've made more than one version—spicy, creamy, you name it. This is hands-down the most uncomplicated recipe ever. Fewer seasonings to measure. Nothing to sauté. Keep it in mind when you don't feel like cooking, but the family still expects to eat supper.

This is a really tame version of white chicken chili. Because of some dietary needs in my family I kept the seasonings very much on the mild side. You can use 2 cans of green chilies, up the chili powder, add some cayenne and make it as spicy as you like it. I was surprised that I liked this very simple version as much as I did. Comfort food to the max. 

WHITE CHICKEN CHILI

2 boneless skinless chicken breasts, about 2 lb

1 onion, chopped

2 (15-oz) cans great northern beans, drained & rinsed

1 can shoepeg (white) corn kernels, drained

1 or 2 cans chopped green chilies (I used 1)

32 oz. low-sodium chicken broth

1 teaspoon oregano

Scant teaspoon chili powder

Cayenne to taste, optional (I left this out)

Salt & pepper to taste 

1 cup half & half

Add all ingredients to slow cooker. Cook on LOW for 7 to 8 hours. Or HIGH for 3 to 4 hours.

Remove chicken to a shallow pan and used two forks to shred. Put shredded chicken back into slow cooker. Add half & half to mixture.

I put about half of this in the freezer for another cold, windy, rainy day. And I see it the next time topped with shredded colby-jack cheese with warm cornbread on the side. Yum!

It's Been A While

Thanks to readers who checked to see if we are okay since I have been absent here. 

We are. But after weeks and weeks of "not so okay" 

we were able to sneak in a little get away in the mountains.

It was also a celebration of our anniversary. 

More than 40 years together and we still delight in each others company.

We came home and dumped the laundry and repacked.

We missed so much lake time this summer.

But this weekend was absolutely perfect for coffee on the porch.

For maybe our last boat ride.

And now we are home. Looking forward to fall.

 

Doing Nothing? Hardly

Do Nothing Cake 

My blog breaks keep getting longer and longer, don't they? What can I say. I'm getting older and older. We have had a strange month here but things are getting back to normal. So I was back in the kitchen today. It's my turn to take dessert to book club. 

Easy Skillet Apple Pie

I planned to take somthing easy--like the Easy Skillet Apple Pie. It's always a winner. And it's a little bit of a show off recipe when you walk in with a cast iron pan. Easy to make, but I needed a trip to the store for apples and pie crust and ice cream.  Then my day didn't start like I thought it would. 

Brownie Pudding

Not to worry. I decided I would make a Brownie Pudding like the granddaughters baked this summer. Even easier to make than the apple pie. We have never had it at book club and I had all the ingredients here. It's so good. But it's so much better with ice cream. That still meant a trip to the grocery store. Time to change gears one more time.

Do Nothing Cake

Do Nothing Cake!!! Even the name suited my situation. A quick check in the pantry yielded both cans of crushed pineapple–a 15-oz can for the cake and an 8-oz can for the frosting. The only other ingredients are self-rising flour*, sugar, eggs and vanilla. It is a rare day when I don't have those basics on hand. Best of all...I didn't need ice cream! NO shopping needed today.

If you google "do nothing cake" the traditional recipes have a coconut-pecan topping. Life is better for Daddy-O when he avoids nuts so when I saw this recipe in our rural electric co-op magazine years ago, I knew we needed to switch it up. I found this pineapple topping online and it worked so well that I can't imagine this cake any other way now.

It has been 10 years since this recipe has been here on the blog. It is definitely time to re-introduce it. 

DO NOTHING CAKE

2 cups self-rising flour
2 cups granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 large can (15-oz.) crushed pineapple

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Blend all ingredients together with a spoon. Pour into a greased and floured 9x13-inch baking pan. Bake for 25-35 minutes, or until golden brown and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

Icing:
1/2 stick butter
1-1/2 cups powdered sugar
1 cup crushed pineapple, drained

Combine ingredients in a bowl. Blend well. Pour over hot cake.

PS...the cake was even better the next day. More moist.

All of the desserts linked above are delicious. All are pretty simple to make. But this cake is hands down the easiest to make and the easiest to take. One dish. No ice cream to keep frozen on someone else's kitchen. And it is every bit as delicious as the others. This is a moist, tender cake that we have loved for years.

*If you do not keep self-rising flour on hand, you can also google "do nothing cake" and find recipes that use plain flour, baking powder and salt. 

Not The Week We Were Expecting

Greek Pasta Salad

Daddy-O is under the weather. I am mostly staying out of his way, letting him snooze. Lack of appetite is one of his symptoms. But then his medicine says "Take after breakfast and dinner." As on a full stomach. 

This recipe popped up on my computer yesterday and I had all the ingredients here. I thought it would make a nice light dinner. I mixed it up while he napped. I'm happy to say he ate this for dinner.

This recipe is the only greek recipe I've ever seen that didn't include olives. I don't like olives. I wonder if the recipe developer doesn't like them either. The only good thing I can say about olives is that it's easy to leave them out—or in this case, add them in. 

Because it doesn't have a lot of other vegetables that would need to be peeled and chopped, this salad is very simple to make. The star of this recipe is the dressing––it's really good and really easy, so keep it in mind if you want homemade greek dressing for a green salad later. 

GREEK PASTA SALAD

1 (16-oz) box penne pasta (or other short cut variety such as rotini or bowtie)

2/3 cup olive oil

juice of 1 lemon, about 1/4 cup

1/2 cup mayonnaise

3 tablespoons Cavendar's seasoning, or other greek seasoning

1 (6-oz) container of crumbled feta cheese

1 cup grape tomatoes, halved

1/4 cup fresh basil slivers

Cook pasta. While it's cooking whisk together olive oil, lemon juice, mayonnaise and greek seasoning. When pasta is cooked, drain, rinse with cold water and pour into large bowl. Add dressing mixture, cheese, tomatoes and basil. Mix until combined. Cover and refrigerate overnight.  Will keep in refrigerator for 4-5 days.

When the mood strikes—or you have vegetables you need to use up– you can change this up by adding other vegetables. Red onion, artichoke hearts, red peppers, green peppers, cucumbers are all candidates. 

Or toss in some leftover cooked chicken  and make this a main dish. 

Note: Daddy-O got up this morning and made the coffee. That's a good sign!

 

Mimi Camp Has Come And Gone

Mimi Camp this year started as soon as we got home from the lake. And unlike all the other years it started without a plan because we had been busy with the family at the lake and with the lake renovations before that. But because we had skipped two Covid years we were determined to do something. This is just a peek at a few of the things we did. And we had two recipes worth sharing. 

I crawled into bed the first night home from the lake after tucking the girls into their beds and I laid there wondering what on earth we could do in the morning. And what was I going to put in ''the box." I was hoping they wouldn't remember that we usually start our camp day by opening the official Mimi Camp box to see the clues for the day's activity. (They remembered.) I couldn't even find the actual box but thankfully had an empty box with a lid that hadn't made it to the trash dump yet. 

Early that first morning I filled it with an assortment of fruits and vegetables from the fridge. Some were wilted and about to be tossed anyway. But they were a great for creating food art. They added herbs from the garden. The girls worked all afternoon making food paintings. We talked about different ways to see ordinary things.

I can't even begin to put the rest of the week in order, but there was fishing at the pond behind the house. And a picnic. On a blanket. On the ground. 

According to Baby Girl that's the definition of a real picnic. It has to be on a blanket on the ground. We came home with no fish but it was all great fun.

Another morning they found my gallon jar of buttons in the box along with an old flannel shirt that Daddy-O sacrificed to the cause. We cut off the sleeves and cut off the cuff button and learned to sew that button back on. I wanted them to be able to button it back up. Button sewing turned out to be the sleeper hit of the week. They kept sewing buttons. Both girls agreed the hardest part was tying the knot in the thread.

I thought we would have fun going through an old cookbook of mine that has a chapter of recipes for each decade from the 1930s to the 1970s. The plan was to find a recipe from each decade. We started off with a bang and made ice cream from the 1930s the first night. This is the 1930s recipe. 

PEPPERMINT ICE CREAM

2/3 cup sweetened condensed milk

1/2 cup water

1/2 teaspoon peppermint extract

3 drops red food coloring (I was out of red, so we used green)

1 cup whipping cream

Combine the condensed milk, water, extract and food coloring. Whip cream until thick and custard like and fold into the peppermint mixture. Pour mixture into a 3-cup refrigerator tray. Freeze until partially frozen. Break mixture into chunks into a chilled mixer bowl. Beat until smooth. Return to cold refrigerator tray. Freeze until firm. Makes 3 cups.

Since our ice cream had to be green, Baby Girl said, "Isn't it supposed to have chocolate chips in it?" So we added those. And Little Sister asked, "Why can't we use your little churn?"  I explained about refrigerator freezer desserts from way back. (My mother made a great frozen lemon dessert in a metal ice cube tray.) But then thought she might be on to something. So we skipped the "beat the cream" part and mixed it all together and poured into my countertop churn. 1930s meets 2022. Worked like a charm.

When the girls got up another morning, they found a five pound bag of flour in the box. And each girl separately made a loaf of no-knead bread. The only thing I did was move the heavy Dutch oven in and out of the hot oven. If Mimi Camp had badges, both of them would have earned the bread baking badge.

The next night Little Sister made caprese skewers for a late afternoon snack on our patio and we added some bread wedges to our tray.

And Daddy-O used the very last of the bread for French toast on Saturday morning. We didn't want to waste a crumb of their delicious bread.

Our "foods from the decades" exploration had one more success when they made brownie pudding from the 1940s. After that, they looked at the 1950s recipes and decided to abandon this project when they saw shrimp in jello. EVERYTHING was in jello in the fifties! 

BROWNIE PUDDING

1 cup all-purpose flour

3/4 cup granulated sugar

2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup milk

2 tablespoons cooking oil

1 teaspoon vanilla

3/4 cups packed brown sugar

1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1-3/4 cup hot water

Stir together flour, sugar, 2 tbsp cocoa, baking powder and salt. Mix in milk, oil and vanilla. Pour into greases 8x8-inch baking pan. Combine brown sugar, 1/4 cup cocoa and hot water; pour over batter. Bake at 350º for about 40 minutes. Serves 6 to 8. 

The chocolate sauce layer on the bottom gets thicker as it cools. We liked ours warm, not hot.

So much more happened. But this hits the highlights. If I'm a smart Mimi I'll start collecting ideas for another camp right now. Baby Girl informed me that she planned to come to Mim Camp until she finished high school. Maybe college. "By then I'll have learned all that Mimi knows." 

Lake Week with Family

 

We just got home from a week at the lake. The week started with a family gathering on the Fourth of July. After missing two Covid years we were back in full force. There had been two weddings since our last gathering so had new faces this time. 

There were 29 assorted cousins from multiple generations. it was so good to see faces that we had not seen in a couple of years. And of course, the food is always good. The fellowship is even better.

For the remainder of the week it was our immediate family. This time it included a 5-month old baby and a toddler who, as she proudly told everyone, turned 2-1/2 on July 4th. So it was crazy busy times for the entire week. We raced to keep everyone fed and to keep the littlest ones in dry diapers. I had forgotten how hard young mamas work.

Lucky for us, Little Sister and Baby Girl (who have really outgrown their blog names--but they like them!) are willing and able helpers. They kept babies entertained, helped out in the kitchen and ran back and forth between our old cabin and the new cottage. Saved us a million steps.

Little Sister volunteered to make an appetizer one night. We have basil growing by the back door so caprese skewers were quick and easy to make. Alternate grape tomatoes, mozzarella pearls and folded fresh basil leaves on small skewers. Drizzle with olive oil, season with salt and pepper and drizzle with a balsamic glaze. They were gobbled up before I got a good photo!

We had one meal at the beginning of the week that was good enough for a repeat at the end of the week. Mommy makes a Baby Kale & Chicken Caesar Salad at her house on her regular rotation. She uses the recipe from Real Simple. It's super healthy with lots of fresh dark green kale and shredded Brussel sprouts and uses a homemade Caesar dressing. It's delicious.

But at the lake we took the Real Simple recipe and made it REALLY simple. This time we used more preprepped ingredients so that it was only a matter of quick assembly. We did keep the homemade croutons. The second time we had it at the lake, we added fresh corn and cantaloup from Daddy-O's garden. It was a perfect summer supper.

Here is how we did it.

CHICKEN CAESAR SALAD

1 bag hearts of romaine

1 bag butter lettuce

1 bottle Panera Caesar salad dressing (look in the refrigerated section)

1 rotisserie chicken from the deli

1/3-1/2 cup grated fresh parmesan cheese

1 loaf sourdough bread (we used a round loaf from 

Publix bakery)

shaved fresh parmesan for topping

Cut or tear bread into cubes and place in single layer on a lined baking sheet. Drizzle with olive oil and toss with hands to coat. Season with salt and pepper. Bake in preheated 425º oven for about 10 minutes, or until golden brown. Set aside to cool.

Pull chicken from the bones into bite size pieces. In a large bowl, mix lettuces and chicken. Sprinkle with grated cheese. Pour dressing over and toss to coat. Transfer to a large serving platter. Sprinkle croutons over and top with shaved parmesan.

The homemade dressing was very good. But the bottled Caesar was a pleasant surprise. The Panera brand was a cut above the other bottled brands I've had. I bought a couple of extra bottles to have on hand.

Mimi Camp starts today, so I'll be away from the computer for at least a week. Maybe I'll have something to share from our camp week at a later date.

You Need No Knead!

Crusty No Knead Artisan Bread

Yesterday morning I decided that maybe I needed to add something to the main dish salad that I was taking to book club last night. It was my turn to bring supper. Homemade bread is always a good addition to...well, anything.

This recipe has been all over the internet for years. It's appeared here more than once. But after a few of the "book ladies" asked some questions last night, I'm posting it again and hope I've answered their questions. I've listed my tips for this recipe and tweaked the recipe itself to make it clearer. I hope.

Let's get the tips out of the way...

• I use King Arthur all-purpose flour because of it's higher protein count. My other "go to" all-purpose flour is White Lily, a soft wheat flour that just doesn't work here. Or in the yummy cinnamon roll recipe we love. Or the dinner rolls I've made several times. If you live somewhere outside of the Deep South, I'm sure there are other brands of "hard wheat" all-purpose flours in your store, but I'm sticking with what I know works. 

• Measure the flour by scooping it up and leveling it. I don't use my typical "spoon and level" method here.

• I discovered that the Fleischmann's bread machine yeast in a jar is instant yeast. You need to use instant yeast. The bread machine (no, I don't own a bread machine) yeast in a jar sits right beside the little packets of yeast in your grocery store. There are other brands but make sure you use instant.

• We have wonderful tap water here that comes from a watershed in the mountains of the county just to our north. So I use hot water straight from our tap. If your water tastes like it comes from a chemical plant you probably don't want to use that. Use whatever water you drink and heat it to 118-120º. I just tested the actual temperature of my hot tap water. It's right at 120º. Much hotter than that and you'll kill the yeast.

• I no longer preheat the Dutch oven, like most recipes do, before plopping the bread dough into it. I've done it both ways. Both ways work. But there are no burned fingers using the cold pan method.

• If you don't have a Dutch oven, any large 4-6 qt. pot with a lid works as long as it can go into a very hot oven. 

• Once you've mixed the ingredients—I stir together the dry ingredients with a whisk, then use a heavy spoon to mix in the water—cover your mixing bowl with plastic wrap and let it rise. The "cover with a damp towel" doesn't work here.

• My perfect rising spot is on top of my cold toaster oven right under the under-counter lights. I did not always have under-counter lights, so that's surely not a requirement. Back in the dark ages, I'd set the bowl on top of the  warm TV. That's not an option any more. Just avoid the air condition vents. If your spot isn't as warm as mine, the dough might take a little longer to rise which is okay.

• The rising time is a huge range. Yesterday mine rose about 7 hours. It can sit up to 24 hours. I really thought it hadn't risen much but it was time to bake if I was taking it to book club, so I went ahead with the next step and crossed my fingers.

• This truly is a no-knead bread. I scrape the sticky dough out of the bowl with a spatula onto a floured piece of wax paper. Then I flip the blob of dough over and pick it up, dust off the excess flour and round it into a ball, tucking the ends under as I work so that the top is smooth.

• Place the ball of dough onto a piece of parchment paper and use the paper to place it into the Dutch oven. I like the precut baking sheets. Yes, the paper will stick out of the pot when you place the lid on. The paper will get dark as it bakes, but it won't catch on fire. The paper is also useful at the end to lift the bread out of the hot pot.

Don't be afraid. It's only flour, water and yeast. Give it a try. 

CRUSTY NO-KNEAD ARTISAN BREAD

3 cups all-purpose flour, (I use King Arthur—scoop & measure)
1/2 teaspoon yeast (I use Fleishmann's BreadMachine Instant yeast from a jar)
1-1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1 tsp to 1 tbsp herbs or seasoning, optional (I used Herbs de Provence—no herbs is also good) 
1-1/2 cups hot water (I use hot tap water)

Put flour into a large mixing bowl. Sprinkle yeast, salt and herbs over flour and stir to blend. Stir in water until it's all moist. Lightly spray top with cooking spray to keep dough from drying out. Cover with plastic wrap and let sit for 4-24 hours.

Dump dough (which is very sticky) onto a well-floured counter or mat. Form into a round or oblong loaf. (Whatever fits into your pot.)  Tuck the dough under as you shape it, so that the top is smooth.

Place dough onto a piece of parchment paper and use the edges of the paper to set the dough down into a Dutch oven

Bake, covered, at 425 degrees for 30 minutes. Remove lid and bake for another 10-15 minutes until golden brown. Carefully remove from hot pan and let cool for 10 minute or so before slicing. (The crust is nearly rock hard straight out of the oven, but it will soften and be easier to slice as it cools.)

Best NEW TIP...to cut a circular load of bread, cut the loaf in half. Place the cut side down on your cutting board and then slice it from one end to the other. I wish I had a photo of the sliced bread to show you. But I had not intended to post this recipe until we talked about it last night and several questions came up.