Chicken Pot Pie - Sandra Lee Style

I love Sandra Lee-style meals (semi-homemade).  This chicken pot pie recipe can go MANY ways.  You can use canned or frozen or even fresh veggies (if you cook them a little first), you can use different combos of soup mixes, and you can use different types of chicken.  I have used leftover chicken from other dishes, rotisserie chicken, and even boiled breasts and cut them up for this.  I have done so many different ways but it always turns out great.  One of my favorite things though, is the refrigerated crust.  In my opinion, for this dish, it is not worth your time to make the dough from scratch.  Tastes the same and takes forever, plus rolling it out is a chore.  I am a huge fan of doing things homemade, so go for it if that's your thing, but using premade crust and soup mix makes this meal that you can prep in 10 minutes, tops.  This is one of Glenn's favorite and most requested meals.  

What you need:
- 2 refrigerated pie crusts (they usually come in a 2 pack)
- 3 to 4 cups of cooked and cut up chicken
- 2 cans of veg-all, drained (or 3 cups of frozen veggies) 
- 2 cans of cream of chicken soup (or one cream of chicken and one cream of celery)
- 1/2 cup of milk
- dash of Worcestershire
- black pepper to taste
- egg white 

What you do:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. In a large bowl, add soup, milk, black pepper, and Worcestershire and mix up.  Add veggies and chicken and stir up.  Lay the first crust out over the pie pan and add the chicken mixture. Unroll the second pie crust and place gently on top.  Cut a few slits in the top for steam to escape and then use a fork to close the edges.  If you are dorky like me, you can take the extra crust from the top and make a seasonal theme for your pot pie ( I intended to post this a few weeks ago for Halloween, but baby brain hit me hard).  Brush the top of the pie with egg whites and bake for 45 minutes to an hour.  Some people like to cover the edges of the crust with tin foil so it doesn't get burned, but I have found with cooking it at a lower temperature you don't need to do this step.  Probably depends on the oven too. 

Enjoy!
-hayden

Irish Cream

When it starts getting chilly outside and the stores are full of holiday cheer, I always feel like that's the perfect time for Irish cream.  And I really like to make it myself, because I can tweak all the ingredients to my own personal preferences...for instance, I put more whiskey in it than I'm admitting to here in this recipe.  I made 2 jars (yes, jars...I live in Kentucky now, so a Mason jar just felt appropriate for my booze), one of them with a peppermint twist on the original.  I didn't use the blender this time, because The Beeb was sleeping and she's not a big fan of the blender sounds.

I dunno', how would you pose a jar of booze?

Ingredients

1 cup heavy cream

1 (14 oz) can sweetened condensed milk

1 2/3 cup Irish whiskey

1/3 cup cold coffee

1/4 cup chocolate syrup (I like Hershey’s Special Dark syrup)

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp almond extract (OR ½ tsp mint extract)

Instructions

1)  Put all the ingredients in a blender and blend.

2)  Chill, serve over ice, slurp!

OR, you can do it the Kentucky way:

1)  Put all the ingredients in a Mason jar and shake vigorously.  Step 2 remains the same.

enjoy!

 ~ j

Ham and Potato Casserole

YUM

Think scalloped potatoes with ham.  This is a simple and hearty meal.  Good for those cold nights during the winter.  I am finding myself wanting comfort food more and more and this one definitely hits the spot.  Trust me, your husband will thank you...if you don't wait til 845 to serve it like I did.  This is a quick meal to put together but it takes a while in the oven.  My recipe served 4 as the main course.  I made it in a small pyrex dish, (think half size of normal casserole dish) but you could easily double this recipe to serve more.

What you need:
-about a half pound of ham, cut up (I had leftovers from a whole ham, but you could use a hamsteak cut up or even sliced ham if you wanted)
- 3 medium potatoes, washed and sliced thinly (if you have a food processer, use it...takes about 15 seconds)
-  1 can cream of mushroom soup
- 1/2 cup of milk
- dash of Worcestershire sauce
-black pepper
1/2 block of cheddar cheese, shredded
-cayenne pepper

What you do:
Preheat  the oven to 350 degrees F.  In a medium bowl mix together soup, milk, pepper, and Worcestershire sauce. Spray pyrex with cooking spray (or if you are naughty like me, coat with butter. Butter makes everything better!).  Layer 1/3 of the potatoes so they overlap slightly, 1/3 of the soup mixture, 1/2 ham and repeat until used. On the top of the last layer (should be cream mixture) sprinkle cheese and cayanne.  Cover with tin foil (tip- spray tin foil with cooking spray so cheese doesn't stick) and put in oven for an hour.  Uncover after an hour and test potato tenderness with a fork, let cook on a high shelf (if your oven has a top burner) for 15 to 20 minutes.

Enjoy!
-Hayden

Bell's Brewery - Two Hearted Ale

I have suspected for a while now that I may have a problem, well, now it has been confirmed.  I am addicted to IPAs.  In fact, I am also ruined by them…most other beers just can’t cut the mustard.  I am an appreciator of all beers (including the likes of PBR), but a good IPA just hits the spot for me.  Which brings me to one of my favorite IPAs, Bell’s Two Hearted Ale.  I first had this while on a work trip to the Outer Banks on a recommendation from a colleague, and have been a fan ever since.  Some IPAs can blow you away with hops (which is a good thing!), but this one has just the right amount of hoppy and malty flavor.  Upon first sniff it may not seem all that impressive, but the first sip will make you a lifelong fan, I promise!  At 7.0% alcohol, it has enough kick to do you right, but not too much to beat you up if you have more than 2 or 3 (or 10).

Happy Drinking,

Squatch

EASY Apple Dumplings

These are super quick and easy (as the title might imply), and quite tasty.  I found this recipe (on allrecipes.com, and then tweaked it…just like pretty much every recipe I make), because I had a bunch of apples that were starting to reach their shelf life.  As you can see from my photo, I didn’t quite follow my own directions.  I didn’t peel the apples (much to The Squatch’s dismay), and I didn’t place the dumplings seam-side down in the pan (I didn’t wrap them with the seam on the flat side of the apple halves, next time I will try it that way).  Next time I will also make sure I have some freshly whipped up whipped cream…but The Beeb was sleeping, so I didn’t’ want to fire up the Mix Master.

Ingredients

1 (16 oz) can refrigerated flaky biscuit dough (jumbo biscuits)

4 apples – peeled, cored & halved

½ cup brown sugar

½ cup water

½ cup butter, melted

2 tsp vanilla extract

chopped walnuts (optional)

ground cinnamon

Instructions

1)  Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

2)  Lightly grease 9”x13” baking dish.  Separate biscuits and flatten each one into a circle.  Wrap one biscuit around each apple half and place, seam side down, in pan.

3)  In a small bowl, combine sugar, water, melted butter and vanilla.  Pour mixture over dumplings in pan.  Sprinkle walnuts on top of each dumpling (optional).  Sprinkle cinnamon over the dumplings.  Bake 35 to 40 minutes, until golden.  Serve hot.

enjoy!

 ~ j