Hurry Up Chicken Pot Pie!

Well HELLO y'all. Blablabla butter EVERYWHERE OH MY GOD BUTTER WHEEE

Okay that was my Paula Deen impression. Was it close? Don't answer that. All kidding aside, Paula Deen is a sweet woman and while sometimes her recipes scare me with their insane amounts of butter, they also look delicious. So don't fear the butter, everyone. It makes you happy. And if your arteries are going to go out, I'm sure they'd want to go out happy.

I got a rotisserie chicken on sunday because I was starving while shopping for groceries and I couldn't think of something I could IMMEDIATELY upon getting home. After lunch, I went and picked that sucker clean and wound up with a whole mess of chicken meat. And since I've been kind of sick lately and not feeling well, I wasn't exactly feeling very creative, so I took a trip to the internet for ideas. Voila.

This isn't a pot pie so much as it is.. a chicken cobbler? I don't know. It was pretty good, almost like chicken and dumplings but less soupy.

The recipe is simple, you will need: Chicken

1/2 cup each of peas and sliced carrots. I diced mine up. I also read some people's carrots weren't properly cooked so to thaw my peas, I stuck them and the carrots in the microwave for about 3 minutes and they were just a little softened for when they went in the oven. Turned out perfectly.

A can of cream of chicken soup, a cup of chicken broth.

And some milk and some biscuit mix. Don't talk smack about my mutant milk. I'll cut you. Lactaid milk is so creamy and delicious, I can't believe it has no dairy in it. I am a believer. Also, Sean is lactose intolerant.

So you put your chopped up chicken in a 2 and a half quart baking dish, then pour your peas and carrots over top.

Mix together your soup and broth, add salt and pepper if you think it's needed. Mine definitely needed no salt. But I added a little black and cayenne pepper. I couldn't really taste the cayenne in the end.

Pour it over your chicken, carrots and peas. I stirred around the stuff underneath juuust a little bit to make sure all the sauce got to the bottom. I also didn't measure my half cup, I just poured half the can so it might've been a little thinner than it should have been.

Then you stir together your milk and biscuit mix and pour it over the top of your filling. Slowly. It won't be perfect, it'll kind of sink a bit, just spread it as best you can without stirring it together. Now, the recipe called for a whole stick of melted butter to be poured on top (yikes) and I wasn't going to do this step but I found a little bit of a stick of butter in the fridge so I melted that and poured it on. It still seemed like a lot. Oh and I was so excited to put it in the oven I forgot to take pictures. You can kind of see it, right?!

Bake at 350 degrees for 30-40 minutes. Some people said they had to put theirs on for longer, mine wound up being something like 50 minutes before my biscuit crust was acceptably brown in the center.

It was very tasty. And so easy! The filling seemed a liiiittle liquidy in the first few scoops but it settled down after that. So good.

Mmmm.

Hurry Up Chicken Pot Pie (original recipe by Paula Deen)

• 2 cups of chopped cooked chicken
• 1/2 cup frozen peas
• 1/2 cup carrots, sliced thin or diced
• 1 (10 3/4-ounce) can cream of chicken soup
• 1 cup chicken broth
• salt and pepper if desired
• 1 1/2 cups biscuit mix
• 1 cup milk
• Up to a stick of melted butter (if you're crazy)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
In a greased 2-quart casserole dish, layer the chicken, carrots, and peas. Mix the soup, chicken broth, and season with salt and pepper, if desired. Pour over the layers. Stir together the biscuit mix and milk, and pour this over the casserole. Drizzle butter over the topping. Bake until the topping is golden brown, 30 to 40 minutes.

Sloppy Joes #1 and Garlic Potato Wedges

And skittles vodka! Oh snap, I went there. Okay, so maybe that isn't food and maybe it's bad for you. But our friend Garret mentionned it and I had been eyeing it online for sometime. Skittles vodka, basically, is take plain vodka, pouring it into 5 different bottles, taking a big bag of skittles and adding each seperate flavor to the bottles. The candies dissolve overnight and then you filter out all the gross white solid crap that gets left behind. What you have in the end is a sweet yet very strong liquor that, well.. I guess it would be okay for shots, but I think it would be better used in place of straight vodka in mixed drinks or something. Anyway, first I'll cover that then move on to the food. Also, I did this last week but have been too lazy to post, hurrhur.

The place I got the recipe for from is this cute little site, Mix That Drink. If you're interested in the process, they have far better pictures than I do of the processes. Also, I love the little bottles they use, I might order some.

I'm tasting the rainbow already, baby. You take your skittles. You tell yourself "Don't eat any, they're for the vodka.". You tell the whining man in the background that he can't have any either and that that does not in fact make you a "meanie". Then you sneak one of the super malformed ones that are rock hard and probably won't dissolve well. There's a double rainbow joke in here somewhere.

Add your colors to 6 oz of vodka each. Now, that doesn't look like a lot of vodka in each but I can assure you that it killed half of that huge bottle in the first picture. Don't they look neat?

Anyway, you shake them a bunch, blablabla let dissolve overnight. You can read the recipe yourself at the other site. Anyway, the filtering was really crappy and I did the first two in a very wrong way. Do not not use a funnel. You need it. Things went much smoother after. And while the website says 4 coffee filters, after finding they just were too much, I used 2 at first, then after about half the liquid had gone through and was starting to get stuck, I poured what was left in the filter into 2 other ones and it went smoothly.

If you were wondering what the stuff left behind looks like.. ew.

There, a nice and brightly colored booze. I don't know if they will be worth all the trouble I went through, and I'm told that sugar + alcohol = hangover. So, I suppose we'll see how insane things get when the skittles vodka finally gets broken out. WOOOO PARTYYY!

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaanyway, now on to the ACTUAL COOKING.

I love sloppy joes. Well, I actually dislike how sloppy they tend to be, but I love how they taste and that is reason enough to go to the effort. And I like potatos. And I had never tried to make my own fries in the oven, so oh my god it's KITCHEN ADVENTURE TIME! Are you all ready?! *rides a rainbow into the kitchen*

First, the fries. I don't know if I would make them again. I enjoyed them but Sean said they were too "something". I get that a lot. "It's too.. something." I think he lacks the culinary brain to figure out what part he doesn't like. Also they were a bit odd to prepare but that's mostly because I don't have big enough bowls and my microwave is too small and blabbity blah. They were pretty good though, I enjoyed them.

I think I'm going to start posting instructions and pictures, followed by the recipe so that anyone who wants to copy and paste it for printing or anything can actually do so easily.

Garlic Potato Wedges (original recipe here)

Cast of characters: Garlic Powder, Kosher or Sea salt, Pepper, Cornstarch, Cayenne Pepper, Olive Oil, 8 cloves of garlic and 3 russet potatos.

Mince or press your garlic into your oil. Looks a little like lemon zest!

Cut your potatoes into 12 wedges each. Cut in half, then each half in half, then each half into 3. Don't mind the green pepper, that's for the sloppy joes, and it just HAD to be included. It's a well documented fact that bell peppers are attention whores.

Now is when the recipe gets a little weird. Next, you remove 5 tablespoons of oil from the bowl of garlic and oil, and toss it onto your baking sheet. Then you toss the potatoes with the remaining garlic and oil in the bowl.

After that (I have no picture because it was weird and awkward and I had to do it in multiple batches due to my tiny little microwave) you cover the microwavable bowl in plastic wrap and cook for 6 minutes or so, shaking the potatoes around halfway through to distribute. You're basically cooking them a little bit. Next time I would probably just parboil the wedges first then toss them with the garlic and oil.

While those are cooking, mix your salt, pepper, cornstarch, cayenne pepper and garlic powder in a bowl.

When your potatoes are done, sprinkle mixture over top and toss to try and evenly coat everything.

Then, pour potatoes out onto your garlicy oil covered sheet pan. Your kitchen will be smelling amazing, by the way. Oh garlic, you are the greatest of all. I bow down to you. Arrange in a single layer.

And then you bake them at 440 degrees F, turning once about halfway through baking, for 30 to 40 minutes until nice and golden brown.

Here's the recipe!

• 8 garlic cloves, minced
• 6 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• 3 russet potatoes (about 8oz each), each cut into 12 wedges
• 3 tablespoons cornstarch
• 1 1/2 teaspoons coarse sea salt or kosher salt
• 1 1/2 teaspoons black pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1. Preheat oven to 225°C/440° F.
2. Combine the garlic and oil in a large bowl, warming it until the garlic is fragrant, about 1 minute.
3. Transfer 5 tablespoons of the oil (leaving the garlic in the bowl) to the baking dish, coating it well.
4. Add the potatoes to the bowl with the garlic mixture and toss to coat. Wrap tightly in plastic wrap and microwave on high power until the potatoes are translucent around the edges, 3 to 6 minutes, shaking the bowl to redistribute the potatoes halfway through cooking.
5. Combine the cornstarch, salt, pepper, garlic powder, and cayenne in a small bowl. Sprinkle over the hot potatoes and toss well to coat.
6. Arrange the potatoes in a single layer on the prepared baking sheet and bake, turning once, until deep golden brown and crisp, 30 to 40 minutes.

Honestly, I think the reason these fries were less of a star was because of how damn flavorful the sloppy joes were. They definitely took the prize that night. Next time I make them, I will try another recipe and see which is better, and this one is going to be hard to beat. And soooo easy.

Your buddies: Ground beef, onion powder, green pepper, garlic, ketchup, chili powder, ground mustard, worcestershire sauce, salt, pepper, tomato paste, and hot sauce if you think it needs any. Not pictured because I'm a dingus: water, brown sugar and red pepper flakes. Oh and a little bit of butter. Though you probably don't need it with all the grease from the beef.

First, you brown your beef. And then you drain it. Still with me? I know, this is complex stuff, but I'm here to help. Then you add your diced pepper and garlic. And you COOK THEM. For several minutes even! Until the pepper starts to get nice and soft.

Now comes the really hard part. And then you add everything else in. And you mix it up. And cook it. OH MY GOD LOOK, YOU'RE MAKING SLOPPY JOES HOLY CRAP.

Now, I would recommend waiting to add your salt, pepper, worcestershire and hot sauce until you have all the other stuff mixed in and then taste it. I found mine to be just spicy enough with the chili and pepper flakes so I didn't add any hot sauce. But I found it a little sweet so I added a fair amount of worchestershire, about 4 teaspoons worth, but I love the stuff. Not so much salt, and a bit of pepper. Here's the recipe!

Sloppy Joes (as adapter from Pioneer Woman. I'll give you her recipe but I halved it because it is so huge and serves an insane amount of people)
Serves 8!

• 2 Tablespoons Butter
• 2-½ pounds Ground Beef
• 1 teaspoon Onion Powder
• 1 whole Large Green Bell Pepper, Diced
• 5 cloves Garlic, Minced
• 1-½ cup Ketchup
• 1 cup Water
• 2 Tablespoons Brown Sugar
• 2 teaspoons Chili Powder (more To Taste)
• 1 teaspoon Dry Mustard
• ½ teaspoons Red Pepper Flakes (more To Taste)
• Worcestershire Sauce To Taste
• 2 Tablespoons Tomato Paste (optional)
• Tabasco Sauce (optional; To Taste)
• Salt To Taste
• Freshly Ground Black Pepper, To Taste

Add butter to a large skillet or dutch oven over medium high heat. Add ground beef and cook until brown. Drain most of the fat and discard.

Add green pepper, and garlic. Cook for a few minutes, or until vegetables begin to get soft.

Add ketchup, brown sugar, chili pepper, dry mustard, and water. Stir to combine and simmer for 15 minutes, adding salt and pepper to taste. Also add tomato paste, Worcestershire, and Tabasco if desired. Taste and adjust seasonings as needed.

Serve on buns with or without cheese! Hooray, dinner is served! Man it smelled good in here.

The wedges look pretty good, huh? They were tasty. This was a lot of food for 2 people though. I wish Sean was a bigger eater so I didn't always have so much left behind that only I had to eat. I also couldn't stop munching the leftover sloppy joe mix cold right out of the container. It's good, beware.

You know, I wonder how many pictures I'm allowed to put in these posts. I notice in a lot of other blogs, they upload their pictures elsewhere, but I've been uploading mine right to the post. I wonder if there's a limit to how many I can put per post, or per month. I guess I'll find out if they all suddenly disappear!

Lentil and Sausage Soup!

*yawns*

I like video games. Yeah, that part of me still hasn't changed. Tonight, Sean and I are going to the midnight release of the new expansion for the game World of Warcraft. It's my first midnight release. I anticipate it to be boring and cold. And full of nerds. (like myself)

However, you know what you should do on cold nights? Make soup!

I don't eat a lot of lentils. Or anything like them. But I tend to enjoy a lot of lentil soups, especially just like the one I made tonight. It reminded me a lot of one I really like to get at this italian place we go to sometimes. I had a couple of recipes bookmarked and after looking at them, they were all pretty similar, so I kind of made an amalgamation of them all. Oh damn, BUST OUT THAT DICTIONARY, PEEPS. IT'S BIG WORD TIME.

So please enjoy my yummy soup. Would make again but maybe with bulk sausage instead of pre-cooked. I had to use up some more of those Sam's Club sausages that we got. Granted, I still have a ton left. Aaanyway.

Lentil and Sausage Soup

• 2 tablespoons Olive Oil
• 8 oz of fully cooked sausage (I just used 2 and a half links of Italian)
• 1 teaspoon Onion Powder
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 carrots, chopped small
• 2 stalks of celery, chopped small
• 1 1/2 teaspoons dried thyme (more or less, I just threw about half of a tablespoon in)
• 2 cups of lentils
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste
• 14.5oz can of diced tomatoes, juice included
• 6 cups of chicken broth, plus a little more if needed
• 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
• Salt, to taste
• Pepper, to taste

Look how basic all that is! One of these days I'm going to get a pepper mill so I can feel snooty about my pepper and then grumble when I have to grind up a certain amount of pepper for a dish.

I chopped up everything as small as I could to give the soup a nice mouth feel. The sausage was a bit of a mess because it contained little pockets of cheese, which all kind of melted into the soup and disappeared. Normal sausage would be fine too.

In a large pot over medium high heat, warm the olive oil. Add the sausage and saute until lightly browned, about 2 minutes or a little more.

Add the garlic, carrot, celery, onion powder and dried thyme and saute until the vegetables are softened, about 3 minutes or so.

Stir in the tomato paste to get it mixed in, then add the tomatoes and the crushed red pepper.

Add lentils!

Stir up and cook, stirring occasionally, for 5 minutes or so.

Increase the heat to high, add the 6 cups of broth and bring to a boil. Check your salt level at this point, it can be a lot different depending on how salty your sausage was, if you used salted tomatoes or if you used reduced sodium chicken broth. The original recipes I was looking at all called for a good amount of salt but mine was already pretty good when I tasted it, I added maybe 1/4 teaspoon of salt, and I probably didn't even need to. And your pepper! Don't go overboard till you taste it because crushed red pepper goes a long way.

Reduce heat to medium low and simmer, partially covered, until the lentils are tender, about 40 minutes. The lentils will soak up a lot of liquid so if it gets TOO thick, you might have to add more broth. I wound up adding the last cup of broth I had just to add it, but it's going to be a very thick soup to end with anyway.

If your lentils don't feel done after that much time, taste them again after simmering for another 10 minutes.

Tada! Delicious soup! It actually reminded me a lot of the soup that I love from restaurants, I was really happy.

My first homemade soup was a success and also very easy. Don't be afraid of lentils just because they are good for you, they are delicious! And now with that post, so very late at night, I'm off to play WoW until I pass out. Hopefully later this week I'll be making homemade sloppy joes and garlic fries! Mmmm!

Cajun Chicken Pasta!

DINNER FAILURE! Okay, well, not so much failure in that it was edible and still tasted good, but the sauce went horribly wrong at one point and that SIMPLY WON'T DO.

Let's talk about the elephant in the room, shall we?  .. No, not that one.

WHO ARE YOU AND HOW DID YOU GET IN MY HOUSE?!?!?!

Ahem. Sorry. I meant spicy foods. Some people love'em. Some people hate'em. Some people love'em but can't eat them because they are, as they say, "supreme wussies". And some people have cast iron tongues and stomachs like some friends of mine and THEY BE CRAZY. But I digress.

Spicy foods. Awesome. Sean can't eat spicy foods much anymore because he is of the wussy breed, but that's alright. This dish was delightfully spicy and I would probably cut back on it a bit next time if only for Sean's benefit. He still loved it.

Now, this is yet another recipe from Pioneer Woman. I have a bit of a foodie crush on her, if you couldn't tell. She is truly a neat lady. My food never looks as amazing as hers does in the pictures though. I will make a roux that looks like hers one of these days! You'll probably see plenty of her in the future. Among other yummies. Oh delicious yummies, how you make my life happier. *heart*

On to the main attraction! I urge you to try this pasta, it was really tasty, and even with my major screw up, it still wound up being delicious.

Cajun Chicken Pasta A La Ree (adapted from Pioneer Woman's recipe)

• 3 whole Boneless, Skinless Chicken Breasts, Cut Into Cubes
• 3 teaspoons Cajun Spice Mix, More To Taste
• 1 pound Fettuccine
• 2 Tablespoons Olive Oil
• 2 Tablespoons Butter
• 1 whole Green Bell Pepper, Seeded And Sliced
• 1 whole Red Bell Pepper, Seeded And Sliced
• 1 teaspoon Onion Powder
• 3 cloves Garlic, Minced
• 4 Roma Tomatoes, Diced
• 2 1/2cups Low Sodium Chicken Broth
• 1 cup heavy cream (I used the leftover half and half I had from the bean casserole.)
• Cayenne Pepper To Taste
• Freshly Ground Black Pepper, To Taste
• Salt To Taste
• Chopped Fresh Parsley, To Taste

Cook pasta according to package directions. I'm not always sure when to start my pasta so I usually start the water warming with the lid on while I begin a dish and when I think I'm about halfway through get it boiling so I can get the pasta in there sometime near the end of cooking. Timing is a tough thing to learn in cooking, takes EXPERIENCE! Anyway, don't forget to salt and not overcook your pasta, blablabla.

Your mis en place. That's a fancy term for having your stuff out and ready to go when cooking or baking. Also usually premeasured too. It's french and means "put in place". Oh, I'll put it in its place alright. IN MY BELLY!

Red pepper, green pepper, tomatoes and garlic. By the way, cutting tomatoes is really hard. I don't usually work with them unless they are canned and so it was pretty terrible. My dice was rather bad and it kind of contributed to another problem in the dish later.

This is your chicken.

This is your chicken covered in 1 1/2 teaspoons of cajun seasoning. Sprinkle and mix around to coat.

Now, something important to note is that you need to check that your cajun seasoning has salt in it. If not, you'll want to lightly salt your chicken as well. If it contains salt, don't go too crazy, if you're looking for more heat you can always add more cayenne later. I wound up using the full amount of Zatarain's and it was fine.

Melt 1 tablespoon of oil and butter in a heavy skillet. Now, Ree's recipes always use cast iron or whatever and they always get nice brown bits and stuff, but I use a big nonstick skillet and I can't brown or get brown bits to save my life usually. MY SAUCES DON'T HAVE BROWN BITS, I'M SO ASHAMED.

Ehh the original recipe says to add it in small batches, I guess to brown it more evenly and gave small cooking times, but I really just cranked the heat to high and tossed all the chicken in.

Then I left the heat on high and didn't touch them for awhile as they cooked, letting them brown up on each side. Don't leave them alone, don't burn your chicken. It makes us all cry a little inside.

Once your chicken is cooked and browned, remove it to a plate and set aside. Oh baby look at that brown chicken. THAR BE FLAVOR!

Melt the remaining oil and butter in your pan and watch that baby sizzle because it is very hot.

LOOK AT THOSE BUBBLES. That's how you know good things are happening. Also that your stovetop is going to be covered in splatters and cleaning is going to suck later. Hooray!

Then add your peppers and garlic in and sprinkle the remaining cajun seasoning right on top as you cook them. This is where you're supposed to cook them over high heat for a minute or two to caramelize them as quickly as possible, but since I was missing plenty of onions in mine, I feared for the safety of my garlic as it bubbled away in the oil. I cooked for as long as I could stand before panicking and adding the tomatoes.

Sadly, my tomatoes were so poorly diced and small that they basically kind of began to melt away into some sort of tomato pulp. It's okay, it happens. I am an eternally imperfect person.

We're meeeeeltiiiiing!!

After your tomatos and veggies have cooked for a few minutes, remove them to the plate with your chicken.

Now, if this was a normal person cooking, their pan would be covered in brown and stuff from the chicken, but mine wasn't. However, while I was removing the veggies, the tomato pulp browned up and gave me.. FAUX BROWN BITS. Add in your chicken broth! Cook on high for 3-5 minutes while you scrape the bottom of your pan to remove all the brown bits.

Oh look, it looks just like the real thing. Ah whatever, flavor is flavor.

Reduce heat to medium low and add your cream, stirring/whisking constantly. Cook sauce over medium low until it starts to bubble and thicken. Taste and add your spices. It should be spicy!

This is wear MY version of this recipe starts to fall apart. I don't think I cooked that long enough to make it bubbly. I'm pretty sure I just had a brain fart and after about a minute of the chicken broth being in the pan, turned it down. By not allowing it to get hot before adding the cream, my mixture never came up to temperature to bubble quietly on medium low heat, and in an attempt to get it to bubble more, I turned my heat up higher and that was my downfall. Cream does not like higher heat.

My cream curdled. Yes, I know, the shame. However, while it looked bad, it still tasted just fine. It never wound up thickening though, but I worked it out in the end. ANYWAY.

Once your sauce is bubblin away, add your veggies and chicken back in. You'll notice a delightful colored juice has pooled on the bottom of your plate. Don't miss adding that back in, ohhh the flavors.

Cook for another few minutes, or until it's thick enough for your likening. Remember, it won't ever get THICK thick so don't bother trying. Your pasta will drink it all up anyway.

Ewwwww. Curdled. Oh well, next time I'll pay more attention.

Pasta! Drain it, yo.

Add it to your skillet!

And mix it up! I let mine sit for a good 10 or 15 minutes and it soaked up a looooot of the liquidy sauce. Cover with chopped fresh parsley if you are smart enough to not forget to buy it while you're shopping like I did!

Oooooh. Pretty. And soooo good. Don't let the cream scare you, I just really made a mistake. At least it turned out good to eat still!

Don't be afraid of spicy foods, they are your friend. Well, usually. Don't quote me on that.