Merry Christmas From The Gang!

It's a beautiful chilly Sunday afternoon here at The Gang's Headquarters. Most of the gang is here, sprawled out watching football or Octonauts, coming down off the sugar high that is characteristic of our traditional Cookie Decorating Day. We're waiting for Shaggy and the lovely Miss A to arrive for family pictures and a late dinner together. It's the first quiet, peaceful afternoon we've had together for far too long. 

With the pace we've been keeping and the many "out of the ordinary" additions to the calendar that have come these last ten days, we only just this weekend got around to making holiday treats. Normally, I spread the baking out over three weeks so it works out that I'm replenishing the batches continuously. Like, a slow steady month-long IV drip of butter and sugar. It's glorious! This year, I just couldn't get that routine up and running and The Gang has been letting me know of the lack of holiday treats around here. No one has ever accused me of doing things half-heartedly and in the last 48 hours, LadyBug and I have made 3 double and 1 triple batch of The Gang's favorites. There's Christmas bark, Butter Pecan Turtle bars, German Christmas Cookies (now fully frosted and beautifully decorated) all filling up my cookie bins and my fridge at once. It's glorious! All that was missing were Shaggy's favorite White Chip Orange Craisin Cookies and I could hang up my apron. 

It should have been no surprise to me that by lunch-time today, I was operating in auto-pilot. As in, everything I've made in the last two days has required a lot of brown sugar. A. LOT. Turns out, auto-pilot may just have produced my new favorite cookie of all time!!!! Since they turned out so incredibly tasty and rich, I thought I'd give a present to all of you and share the {BRAND SPANKIN' NEW} recipe!

White Chip Orange Craisin Cookies

1/2 c. butter, softened

1/2 c. butter-flavored shortening, softened
          (This is tweak #1 - the original recipe calls for 1 c. butter)

1 1/2 c. dark brown sugar, packed

           (This is where autopilot came in - the original recipe called for white sugar.

            So I set about tweaking the recipe from this "mistake." This TASTY mistake!)

2 eggs

1 tsp. vanilla

1 1/2 tsp. orange extract

           (This is tweak #2 - the original recipe doesn't call for any.)

1 Tbsp. orange zest or dried orange peel

2 c. flour

1 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

1/4 tsp. baking soda

2 c. oats

1 c. craisins

1 c. white baking chips

Preheat your oven to 375.

Cream together the butter, shortening, and sugar. When fluffy, add eggs and beat in vanilla and orange extracts.

Slowly add the orange zest, flour, baking powder, salt and baking soda. Blend till all dry ingredients are incorporated.

Fold in oats, craisins, and white baking chips. Batter will be thick and heavy. And SUPER YUMMY!

Bake at 375 for 10-12 minutes until edges are dry but do NOT overbake these goodies.

True confession time: the original recipe on which this one is based is an old W#*ght W@tchers favorite that called for things like "light butter," a sugar/sugar substitute blend, and egg whites. NOT that that particular version ever really got made around here.... because, well, "light butter?" As if. I mean, I might have made it the W#*ght W@tchers way once, a looooong time ago. But never again. Ever. And now? With the change-out from white sugar to lovely dark rich brown sugar? Oh.MY.LANDS. I ain't NEVER goin' back, sister friend. NEVER.

So, there ya have it. Thank you, auto-pilot! You are my new bestie bestie, as Mei Mei says. About everyone. Ha!

Merry Christmas

from The Gang's Momma and her gang!

Allllllll-most Fall {and a recipe!}

Yesterday was a cool and breezy day full of little hints of autumn. Football was on the tv screen. BBE spent the whole afternoon prepping our fire pit and side yard for LadyBug's "end of summer" bonfire with friends. The Boss was working in the master bath, prepping for our big re-do (pictures coming soon) that starts on Tuesday. I had spent all Saturday afternoon filling the freezer with yummy casseroles for those weekday afternoons full of junior high football games and other Mommy taxi duties. Yes, fall is definitely in the air these days!

I was really looking for something easy to make for the family, given that I'd cooked for 4-5 hours straight on Saturday. I knew left-overs one!more!time! wouldn't cut it for the Gang, no matter that I felt wiped out. I also think I might be brewing a cold, so I was pretty motivated to simplify my day. This recipe was JUST the ticket! It's been going around the interwebs in a few different forms, with a few variations. It sounded really delish and easy to pull off so I gave it a whirl for The Gang this Sunday. It felt like just the right "introductory" fall meal. 

True to form, I couldn't just leave the recipe alone, so I'm sharing here what I did. Feel free to make it your own. It was indeed very easy and all The Gang members, including Shaggy and Miss A who joined us for Sunday dinner, gave it a huge thumbs up! I hope you all enjoy it as much as we did. The kids are eating it now, as I type this, for a delicious left-over lunch.

Slow Cooker Chicken and Dumplings

Ingredients:

 4 boneless, skinless chicken breast, in 1-2” chunks

   (or 6 skinless chicken thighs)
2 Tbsp. butter, chunked
1 medium onion, chopped
2 cans cream of chicken soup

1 can chicken broth

2 cubes chicken bouillon

1 12 oz. bag frozen mixed veggies, steamed and drained well

Cornstarch and cold water (if needed)
1 roll (10 per pkg) refrigerated biscuits, quartered
Flour to coat biscuits

Directions:

1. Lightly spray a crock pot with baking spray. Place chicken in bottom of crock. Over the chicken, dump the butter, onion, soup, broth and bouillon.
2. Cover crock pot and cook on low for 4-6 hours. If using frozen chicken, cook on high for same amount of time then reduce to low for the remaining time.
3. Around the 3 or 4 hour mark, add steamed, drained veggies and stir well. Re-cover and allow to cook for an additional hour or two.
4. While you are waiting for serving time, quarter the biscuits and toss them to coat in all-purpose flour.
5. About 30-45 minutes before serving, thicken the mixture with cornstarch and cold water (shaken together well) if it’s too loose and soup-like.
6. Drop flour-coated biscuits onto the top surface of the chicken mixture and cook with lid on for another 30 minutes. (For a single batch of these proportions, you might not need the whole roll of biscuits.) Do not stir!
7. Once the biscuits are puffing and the broth is really bubbling well around them, it''s ready to serve. Be careful, those biscuits are HOT HOT HOT inside! Enjoy this hearty dish with your family!

I'd be interested in hearing what you did to change it up for your family's taste buds. I'm thinking that I might do a combo of white wine and chicken broth, with a dash or two of rosemary or dill added in with the liquids next time for a little added burst of flavor. There's just something about those flavors that really speaks "fall" to me.

What's a Girl to Do?

It's likely because of the cold weather and biting winds we've had lately but this momma has been CUH.RAY.VING. some good old fashioned comfort food. In particular, as I was compiling my grocery list Tuesday night, I was craving a heaping dish of The Pioneer Woman's Chicken Spaghetti. But my frugal side could not bring myself to actually fork over the money at my nearby grocery store for such recipe specific ingredients when I wasn't at my normal "discount" store. It was meant to be a quick run out for just the immediate needs. But the craving would not go away.

**Side note - I've let this month's meal planning and regular grocery shopping slide far too long with the crazy grumpy weather we've had so it's my own darned fault, I know. I'm sorry. Moving on.**

When I got home from the quick run, I took stock of the pantry and left-overs to plan Wednesday's dinner

What's a girl to do when she has a big batch of left-over shredded BBQ Chicken and can't face eating one more sandwich from it?

What's a girl to do when she finds a huge R*bberm@id container of whole wheat spaghetti left from Monday night's family feast? (Shaggy has been gone since September and I'm still making spaghetti portions like his carb lovin' self is at the table every time! Oh well. He's coming home Saturday so why bother adjusting portion sizes now?!)

(Yes! I said Saturday! Shaggy is coming home on SATURDAY!!!!!! 

Yay, Yay, YAY!!!!!)

Where was I?

Oh, yeah. The spaghetti. Lots of left over spaghetti.

Here. Right there. See?

Well, the girl gets inspired and turns on the Phillip Phillip tunes while she creates her own knock-off of a yummy family favorite! Who knows? Maybe the girl is about to stumble upon a brand. spankin'. new. family favorite? Crazier things have happened 'round these parts. Here's how it went down. In case you want to try such craziness in your own kitchen!

I warmed both containers up slightly, to loosen them up and make them easier to mix. Please. DON'T forget to cut up the spaghetti in smaller pieces once it's warmed... it'll be a lot easier to blend in with the other ingredients. NOT that that ever happened here. Heh. I'm just sharin' the benefit of my mistakes, er, wisdom.

I put all the meat and long stringy spaghetti in my largest mixing bowl and started adding the yumminess.

For my-sized crowd, I used about 2 cups of cheddar. 

If I'd had two cans of beans, I would have used both.

But one can, rinsed and drained well, went into the bowl.

Followed quickly by these little green bites of scrumptious,

drained lightly, of course.

It was a little thick and hard to mix thoroughly,

so I added a can of this. Low fat, low sodium.

Cuz that's how I roll with the cass-ah-rollz!

It looked like this while I was adding and mixing.

Poured it all into my trusty P@mpered Ch*f

9x13 deep baking dish.

Well-sprayed to avoid sticking and staining.

I slid it into the oven without covering it.

Voila! Dinner was done before 1:00 in the afternoon!

Do you use your timed cooking and delay start

options on your oven?

If you have them, you should use them.

I LOVE them. They have set me free from the madness

that is 3 p.m. - 6 p.m. 'round these parts.

Homework, lessons, chore charts, meltdowns, you know what I mean.

Back when the older kids were really little,

my mentor-mom-friend called them the "witching hours."

Cuz if a momma isn't careful, 

she can get pretty witchy-like.

Yeah. You know what I'm talkin' about!

Anyhoo..... back to our story.

As the madness subsided, I had Li'l Empress and Baby BlueEyes set the table.

LadyBug made the salad and all the fixin's for it.

All that was left was the eatin'. Mmmm, the eatin'.

Oh. Wait. Can't forget that once it cooked all it's yummy goodness

together for about 45 minutes, I added a little bit more of this on the top.

I cooked it for another 10 minutes or so

till it got to this stage of melty, ooey-goodness.

You can see, we almost forgot to snap a picture before digging in!

YUM!

You're welcome.

I Just Can't Leave It Alone...

I found the below recipe inside the box of my generic low-fat cream cheese last month. I've been just waiting for the right time to make it. Frankly, to be home for a morning long enough to play around with it.

Normally, when I find a new recipe, I try to make it exactly as written for that first time. I might jot notes in the margins or think out loud while I'm cooking about the possibilities for tweaking it, but I really try to just follow the recipe. The first time.

However, when I saw this one, I knew immediately that I just wouldn't be able to do that. It's a simple, straight-forward pasta dish and when I read it, I could all but hear it BEGGING me for some creative touches. Some panache. Some wow factor changes. Really. I heard the little white cut-out card whispering to me.

It's a sickness. I know. Leave me alone with my voices, thankyouverymuch.

I canNOT wait for dinner, now. The smells in here are making me swoon. The texture of this dish and the look of it, even just waiting to go into the oven for tonight's feast is making my fingers itch. I want to pick at the tender pasta and sample the chicken smothered in sauce. I can't stand it.  And as of this writing, I have about 6 hours of this torture to go.

I'll share the bare-bones original recipe with you here, then I'll give you all my tweaks and tricks that have produced this masterpiece sitting on my counter.  I'll add more pictures later, to show you the bubbly yummy goodness, after it gets topped with these babies and cooked to perfection.

Three Cheese Chicken Penne Pasta Bake
1 1/2 c. multi-grain penne pasta, uncooked
1 pkg. (9 oz.) fresh spinach leaves
1/2 lb. boneless skinless chicken breast, cut into bite size pieces
1 tsp. basil
1 jar (14.5 oz.) spaghetti sauce
1 can (14.5 oz.) diced tomatoes, drained
2 oz. low-fat cream cheese, cubed
1 c. shredded mozzarella
2 Tbsp. grated parmesan cheese

Heat oven to 375. Cook pasta as directed, adding spinach leaves to the pasta water at the very last minute.

While pasta is cooking, cook and stir chicken and basil in a large non-stick skillet on med-high for 3 minutes. Add spaghetti sauce and tomatoes. Bring to a boil and simmer for 3 minutes or until chicken is cooked through. Stir in low-fat cream cheese.

Drain pasta and return to sauce pan. Stir in chicken and sauce mixture and add 1/2 c. of mozzarella. Pour all of it into a lightly sprayed 9x9 baking dish.

Bake 20 minutes and sprinkle with remaining cheeses. Bake another 3 minutes till cheese is melted.  Makes 4 servings.

What I did:

• I doubled everything, of course, in my handy-dandy 9x13 P@mpered Chef stoneware baking dish. LOVE my PC stoneware, incidentally!
• I used almost 4 c. total of uncooked pasta (to make up for the added water in the spinach - see below).
• Once cooked and drained, I poured the pasta into a sprayed 9x13 stoneware pan.
• I grilled the chicken breasts low and slow on the outside grill (it was a gorgeous sunny morning and I wanted the flavor that only grilling can produce.). I didn't add it to to the sauce either. Once the chicken was cooked, I chopped it up and layered it all over the pasta in the 9x13.

For the sauce, I did this:

• I omitted the basil, as my sauce was already quite flavorful.
• I used more than 2 oz. of cream cheese - I was trying to use all the left-overs from another recipe.
• I added two little triangles of Laughing Cow Garlic and Herb spreadable cheese, as they needed to be used up. (Hey, I'm frugal, what can I say?!)
• I added extra parmesan to the sauce - probably about 1/4 c. (I am 50% Sicilian, after all!)
• I added about 3/4-1 c. of white wine. (See above note about my Sicilian roots.)
• I used a box of frozen chopped spinach, and just put it right in the sauce mixture from the start to thaw it and retain the nutrition in the mix.
• Just before I took it off the stove, I added 1 c. of mozzarella and about 1/2 c. of an Italian blend of shredded cheese left from another recipe. (Frugal. Sicilian. Cheese Lover. Whatever.)
• When it all came to a boil and simmered for a while (I lost track of time while I was breaking up fights over Little People weddings at the Little People zoo.), I poured the sauce over the pasta and chicken in the 9x13 and gently mixed it all up.

It's in the oven now, set on time delayed baking and waiting to be topped by yet more cheese. Don't worry, my heart will be fine. All my mozz is of the part-skim variety. I promise.

I can guarantee, when this baby makes it to the table, I will NOT be the only one who can't leave it alone. If heaven has a smell, it is this dish. Really.

Mmmmmm, just look at this beautiful, cheesey,

creamy, wine-y goodness.

Sunday Snapshot

The big, gaping hole in my kitchen ceiling

left behind by the leaking, spewing toilet

is finally being fixed. 

The Boss assures me it won't look like this

for very long. The green really clashes with my

red and yellow kitchen decor.

But this???

This sweet summer flower doesn't clash at all.

In fact, she only makes the other flowers around her

seem faded when compared with her beauty.

I might be a bit biased, but really?

How perfectly summery is my girl lookin' today?!

Link up for some summer

fun with Sunday Snapshot.

Leave me a comment

and I'll return the favor!

Great Case For Ordering Your Home

It's no secret among my family and friends that I prefer to run a tidy, organized home.  I've taken a lot of heat for it over the years - jokes about OCD, anal-retentiveness, and other psycho-babble that is easy to let roll right off my back. After all, my pantry is spit-polish clean, neatly stacked with T*pperw@re galore (most of the time).  And when I go searching for something important (like, say, that amazing recipe for butternut and farfalle in a creamy chive sauce), I can usually find it pretty quickly (or at least in time to make it for dinner that week).

But when I read this article, the heavens opened.

The angels sang.

The "cleanie" in me sighed in joy and contentment.

In her eloquent and logical way, Jamie Lee Curtis explains beautifully just why an organized home is a happy home.  Why neatly stacked containers of dried goods, complete with labels (snicker if you must, but I LOVE my label-maker), make such good sense for a busy wife and mother.  Why streamlined closets and archived boxes full of the kids' most sentimental belongings makes room for creativity, freedom and contentment.

Sigh. I think I have a new celebrity crush.

And a whole lotta new ideas for some fall projects!

Wordless Wednesday

For temporary use, there was the un-laminated

pressboard counter in place.

It snagged a lot of my clothing.

Nicely laminated. Trimmed off.
Painted and cleaned.
Done. DONE. DOOOOONE!

Another home improvement project brought to you by The Boss.

For more Wordless Wednesday fun,

head over to 5 Minutes for Mom.

I Should Have Seen It Coming

The Boss got some unexpected, good news at work a few weeks ago. With the little "windfall" that the good news carried, we decided that it was time to finally replace our very messed up floor in the kitchen. About five years ago, for a quick and inexpensive fix, we laid adhesive tiles down over the existing floor. But in those five years, we've had a couple spills (heh, heh!), some leaky faucets, a jammed ice-maker which resulted in a leaking freezer, and lots and lots of regular everyday foot traffic. The kitchen, after all, is smack in the center of the house and bears the brunt of all the wear and tear that our Gang dishes out.

While I had The Boss in "re-do" mode, I suggested that this might be an excellent time to paint the kitchen. We'd planned to do it back in January, but things at work have been very fast-paced and high pressured for The Boss so it just kept sliding to the end of the "Honey Do" list - right down there with replacing that bathroom faucet that drips and drips and drips and drips . . . .  :)

So, this weekend, The Boss began demo'ing the kitchen floor, doing as much prep work as he could do with five kids running all around him at the same time.  While he was demo'ing, my creative wheels started spinning.  By Sunday morning, I was smokin' with ideas. I shared my favorite one with him, and by Sunday night, cabinets had been moved and counter-tops sawed off. (I never would have seen that coming, he's NEVER moved so quickly on a spontaneous change of plans for a home-improvement project!)

Then, when he was done working for the night and we'd finally crashed together on the couch to decompress, he looks over and says, "Are you sure you're going to be okay with moving that pantry into the hallway?" I should have seen it coming. He does that second-guessing thing in the early stages of almost every home project we undertake. In fact, the paint color we finally agreed upon is a direct result of his second-guessing. (In that particular instance, he was right. The light was funky the day we made the original choice.)

I should have seen it coming . . .

AAAAAAAAAAACCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKKKK!

Why does he do that?! Lay that on me at 10:50 p.m?

So, guess what I spent most of last night and the early morning hours of today doing?

Yup. Re-arranging kitchen cabinets and pantry space in my head. In fact, in one of my crazy, dis-jointed dreams, my friend Comfy Denim was trying to make tea in my kitchen and she couldn't find the tea bags.

I haven't come up with a "GREAT" plan for how to re-arrange things and re-organize my kitchen. But now, you can bet that little else will be on my mind, straining my powers of strategy and analysis. All my energies will be focused toward optimizing efficiency and home management from the hub of our home.

I should have seen it coming. As I wandered around the kitchen Friday and Saturday, I kept wondering what all my GREAT! FANTASTIC! RE-DO ON THE CHEAP! ideas would mean to our daily routine and traffic patterns to move that big red pantry.

I kept coming back to how nicely it fit into the hallway corner. But then I'd wonder how I'd feel about stepping around the corner to get to all my cooking and baking supplies. 

Thinking about how nice and open and welcoming the workspace would feel with the shortened counters and re-arranged/re-purposed cabinets. But wondering how long I'd be able to tolerate the inconvenience of the hugely-altered footprint of the kitchen.

Thinking I can get used to anything eventually, that I am usually good with inconvenience, once it becomes part of my regular routine. But knowing that I have one or two particular Gang members that are really put off by change and worse, by inconvenience.

But the deed is done. The cabinets are moved. The counter has been sawed off. The change is irrevocable. There's no going back. My kitchen re-do is underway. As long as the coffepot remains in a highly central and accessible location, I guess we can get used to anything!

"Before" pics and "Afters" will be posted . . . .