Skinny Ms. Down Home Chicken With A Twist

A friend gave me the Skinny Ms. Slow Cooker recipe book this last Christmas. A few days ago (this is April) I finally remembered that I had it! I absolutely love it because there is not 1 complicated or time-consuming recipe in the entire book. Every single one is simple and most of the ingredients are either those I keep on hand or are very easily accessible.

I could not find a photo of the recipe results and as I'm crocking this meal right now, I don't have a photo to show you. I should probably wait but the simple fact is that I don't have time. I've got to go pick up my daughter from school, run to town and wait in line for my 120lbs of chicken I ordered (only 40 is for me), run home to scarf up some food & give my husband a kiss and a quick pat on the butt, then run my darling daughter to our local grange so that my best friend and her husband can teach Hunter's Education to this year's crop of new recruits. That'll last until...

Hey, you're not allowed to fall asleep!!

Anyway, I'm busy. No photo. I'm sure you'll forgive me.

Now, I have to tell you my little twist before we get started. The recipe calls for raw chicken breasts but I don't have any yet. What I've got is a large amount of canned chicken in quart jars because I spent an entire week last fall canning my little fingers to the bone from dawn until dusk after our 32cuft upright freezer decided to retire.

Interesting note, it has now been laid on it's back and turned into a feed bin for my pig feed. Yay repurposing!!

I am going to use 1qt of chicken instead of the 4 chicken breasts. I am going to add it about an hour before I shut off the crock. If you do not have canned chicken, just follow the recipe as it is below. I also don't have fresh carrots or potatoes so I'll be adding a can of carrots and a can of baby potatoes an hour before shutoff as well. No, canned is not as good but it's what I have. I also used water + bouillon and omitted the celery because I don't have any. It's all about using what you've got!

The Recipe

     1 tsp ground black pepper
     1/2 tsp sea salt
     1 tsp garlic powder
     2 bay leaves
     4 carrots, 1/2" slices
     2 large potatoes, 1" cubes
     1 tsp onion powder
     2 celery ribs, diced
     2 C chicken broth (or 2 C water + 2 tsp chicken bouillon)
     2 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
     4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts

Add all of the ingredients to the slow cooker and stir, adding the chicken last. Crock on LOW for 6-8 hours until the chicken is cooked through. Remove the bay leaves before serving.

Do you have a favorite chicken in the crock recipe?

Bread Machine Egg Bread Recipe

One of my favorite kitchen appliances is my Zojirushi bread machine. It's got a horizontal pan that will bake up to a 2lb loaf. I have the BB-CEC20 and I absolutely adore it. They also make a model that has special setting specifically for gluten-free recipes! These are ridiculously expensive but if you bide your time and consistently check Amazon's Warehouse Deals, you can get one for less than $120.

I wanted to make some bread today and I have never tried egg bread before but with all of the eggs I have, 2 to 4 dozen regularly, I decided to go ahead and make it. Not too long ago I bought BHG's Best Bread Machine Recipes from Amazon and I would suggest buying it to anyone with a bread maker. All of their recipes have a 1 1/2lb version as well as a 2lb version.

This bread could possibly be my most favorite recipe so far from a bread maker! It smells terrific, is fairly light, really soft, and is fabulous sliced and buttered with supper.

The 2lb Recipe

3/4 C Milk
1/3 C Water
2 Eggs
2 Tbsp oil, margarine, or butter
4 C Flour, I used unbleached all-purpose
3 Tbsp Sugar
1 tsp Sea Salt
1 1/4 tsp Active Dry Yeast

I'd recommend using your bread maker's instructions as far as setting, etc.

The steps I used according to Zojirushi:

Add the first 4 ingredients to the pan, then add the flour. Place the sugar in one corner, the salt in the opposite corner. Make a dimple in the middle of the flour without breaking through to the liquid below. Put the yeast in this dimple.

I used the 'light' crust control setting and the 'basic bread' setting.

Do you have a favorite bread machine recipe?

Meatloaf Spice Mix - McCormick's Clone

I've got an earlier post on meatloaf but I wanted to very quickly stop in and post the spice mix I now make and use exclusively. It takes just like McCormick's, only fresher.

Ingredients

     2 tsp ground mustard
     2 tsp paprika
     1 1/2 tsp sea salt
     1 1/2 tsp thyme
     1 1/2 tsp basil
     1 tsp ground black pepper
     1 tsp garlic powder
     1 tsp onion powder

If you use 1lb pork sausage plus 1lb elk burger (or beef), you'll add 1 Tbsp of this mix to your meatloaf ingredients.

     ...8 crackers, 1/2 C milk, 2 eggs.  375 in loaf pan for 1 hour

If you use 2lbs of elk burger (or beef), you'll add the entire mix.

If using beef and trying to recreate the rest of my recipe, add 3 more crackers as beef contains more fat than elk.

If you have a last packet of McCormick's to use up and want to try it with pork sausage like I do, you'll use 1/3 of the packet.

If all of this is confusing, raise your hand.

How do you make your meatloaf?

Potato Pen

This year I'm going to try making a giant box of potatoes. It'll be about 288 square feet of potatoes and straw once it's filled. A very good friend of ours gave us about 20 sheets of metal roofing a few years ago and I turned 4 sheets of it into a box last year to keep the Chicken Mafia, Rabbit Gang, Westside Ducks, Street Cats, and Barnyard Dogs out of the veggies. This year I've got 12 blueberry bushes (I got 10 just this year when I traded 2 male geese for them), 80+ raspberry bushes, 3 rhubarb plants from the pioneer days (they came over on a covered wagon!), 5 upcycled tires filled with pickling cucumbers, and I'll be planting more veggies in the weeks to come. 

With all the plants needing protection I've decided to just fence in the backyard/garden area but still build the box, this time to house the potatoes. I chose to use a box so that the straw won't spread with the wind. I can't chance uncovering potatoes too early, they'll turn green and the green part of a potato is actually toxic. Also, at $6.99 pre-tax per bale it isn't cheap. The layer you see in the photo took 1 whole bale and is maybe 3" deep. The panels are about  12' long and 3' tall and I'll be filling it to about the 2' mark. I estimate that'll take at least $60 so these babies better produce at least 30lbs to make it cost effective!

The Layout

My Dear Husband borrowed a tractor and tilled the garden for me last weekend and with no rain I was able to get the straw on before the soil compacted again. 

Tip: if you don't have plastic or straw and your yard isn't as windy as mine, you can lay cardboard over the soil so that rain doesn't compact it before you get a chance to plant. That will also work as a compostable weed barrier!

I regretfully did not get a photo of the soaker hose layout before I added the straw because I was in a hurry. It had been threatening to rain, the DH had just gotten home and I had yet to build a macaroni salad to go with the Ling Cod DH had caught and was planning to cook for dinner. Also, the Chicken Mafia had not noticed the garden construction yet and I failed to submit my application of protection ahead of time. Do you know what a Chicken Mafia will do to anything you're building outside if you don't secure protection from them?? They will inspect it top to bottom and then most likely tear it down and spread the remains like ashes from their fiery temper. It's true.

Anyway, I used 50 feet of 1/2" soaker hose ($20 at my local MalWart) in an 'S' pattern, staking down the rounded bends with 'U' shaped stakes, leaving the hose connection end outside of the box for easy hookup to the main hose. I then covered it with 1 bale of straw.

The Potatoes

Red Norland

I cut some Red Norland seed potatoes into sets today. A set is about an inch of potato with at least 2 eyes on it. You'll want to cut them a few days before you plant them so that the cutside has a chance to dry up. This will give it a better shot at not rotting when you place it in the ground. I'm also going to be planting our favorite type of potato, the Yellow Finn. They taste like buttah! Thin skins, yellowy flesh, great for frying, deep frying, mashing... we use them for everything. They seem to have the most flavor of all the types I've tried but I admit, I haven't tried a whole lot. I sort of stopped when we discovered these!

The Plan

To grow 288 square feet of big darn taters! I read a little about fertilizers and bone meal seemed to be the #1 thing to get a great sized tuber. Do you think I could find any?? No! Everyone seemed to be out. Instead I tossed a little Epsom Salt on the straw thinking that the rain would carry it into the soil. It's raining now, I'm guessing that's happening although I could go lick a piece of straw to find out...

I digress. 

When the sets are ready to plant, I'll just clear a little space under the straw and somewhat snug each piece into the earth a little and cover it back up with straw, making sure to plant them about 12-15" apart and in the middle of the rows created by the soaker hose. As the plants get about 8" tall, I'll cover them with more straw, repeating until they're at the 2' mark.

Why Soaker Hose?

You don't have to use soaker hose, I never have before, but by using it I will be able to water the taters with less effort and the straw shouldn't spread away like it could if I were to spray the top with a hose. My hope is to get a timer and just water them for a few minutes every morning at about 7am. 

Last year I tried using barrels but the material stayed too wet and I think the pine shavings I used created too much Nitrogen and I got poor results. 

Have you tried or heard of any other unusual methods? 

Do you have any tips for potato newbs?

Onion Soup Mix, Hold the Onion

I really hate onions. I can smell an onion a mile away and I gag if one slips through my defenses and into my mouth. It's pretty embarrassing in public but that doesn't happen too often anymore. I've learned to just ask if something has onion in it and it's very sad how much that limits what I eat when I eat out.

Over the last 2 years as I've really begun to cook, I've noticed that a lot of recipes for beef (I always substitute with elk or deer as I can't have beef) call for dry onion soup mix. I use it but I have always dry strained the mix over the bowl so that no sliver of evil dehydrated onion worms it's evil way into my food.

Lately I've been on this MMO (make my own) mix kick and today as I was creating a recipe for Extra Hearty Roast Con Gravy, I thought some onion soup mix might be good. Too lazy to look in the cupboard and excited to try my own, I created this Dry Onion Soup Mix Without Onions!

In the photo, you see Knorr Beef Bouillon which I do use, but this particular batch today was made with beef bouillon from the local co-op. It's just a little more spendy than Knorr in the hispanic aisle of my local MalWart. Believe me, I'd go all uppity and refuse to shop there if I could but the simple fact is that I can't afford to, and the bouillon with spanish writing is cheaper than that with only english. Go figure.

Recipe:

• 1/3 C Beef Bouillon
• 4 tsp Onion Powder
• 1/4 tsp Celery Seed
• 1/4 tsp Sugar

To substitute for 1 packet of Lipton Onion Soup Mix, start with 2 Tbsp of this mix and add as you like.

Ugh, iiiiiif you haaaaave to have stupid evil nasty gross evil onion flakes, you can add

• 3/4 C Dehydrated Onions

and start with 4-5 Tbsp of the mix to replace 1 packet.

But I wouldn't *shudder*

On Becoming a Lioness

I've always been a thinker, far more able to live in my own head than the outside world with real people whom I often don't quite understand and whose groups I just haven't ever seemed to fit into. This last year being off work has really given me the time and luxury to further develop my awareness of self and the biggest realization that I've come to, is that I have always felt late.

Late as in, not on time. As in BEHIND. Behind others, to be specific. Who set up this timetable of expectations, anyway? The feeling of having to, the driving need to, accomplish "on schedule" is just plain soul crushing.

At first.

I felt the weight of expectation is just about every pore of my body. From my mother who unfairly equated my B's with my sibling's D's, to my teachers who told me over and over that I had "so much potential". My family just KNEW that I'd be the first to graduate college and become a RAGING SUCCESS STORY!!!!!!!! Nowhere in there was anyone asking what I would like to do, what I thought, what I wanted to accomplish, what my future meant to me. I was saddled and ready to go... with no real tools of my own prepared for the ride.

And so I failed. Well, I felt that I failed. I failed before I could fail so that I didn't end up wasting their time with how badly I was going to disappoint them when the hype turned to dust in front of their eyes. I still have a problem with self-sabotaging but it's getting better.

As I grew up into my late teens and early twenties, I felt like not only had I seriously let all of my cheerleaders down, but that I wasn't equal to my peers. A few had bought homes, had babies, gotten married, moved out of town for longer than six months... and I didn't even have a CAREER yet. Now, it is good to compare yourself with others sometimes. It can be a good source of motivation or affirmation for the way your own life is going, but when you start tearing yourself down... that's when you're doing it wrong.

I did not learn that until a few short years ago. I am 32.

It took me so long to understand that i was not BEHIND. I was not LATE. Do you know why? Because who the hell designed the damn timeline, and there is never a "late" for the brave! There is no keeper of the schedule but you. If you are brave, time is rarely a factor or a limiting agent.

What prompted my amazing realization? My best friend and youngest sister, Samantha. Her little family, farm, and day to day life does not fit a mold, and it's okay. I have always felt that it is okay and defended her hippie ways and then one day, out of nowhere, realized that although I took it as a matter of course that her path was different and okay, I didn't give my own that same respect.

I didn't have to graduate from college. I didn't have to be married before having my daughter. I didn't have to own a house by the time I was 25. I didn't have to be married to the man I lived with. I didn't have to have a fancy career title that my husband, relatives, or friends could boast about when speaking of me. I didn't have to have all of that and a big, new home in order to be a spectacular wife, mother, daughter, sister, or friend.

I didn't have to, because my life is my own. I am where I need to be, I always have been, and that is okay because I said it is.

I wish the burden of other people's expectations, or your own inflated and disproportionate expectations on yourself, to fall from your shoulders too.

It feels good to breathe.

I am a strong person. I am a good person. These, in the eyes of my daughter, husband, family and friends, is what matters to me. Not what I have, what title I hold, or where I am.

It feels good to become a lioness.

Returning to blog... returning to work?

I had quit blogging a year ago due to the fact that I am so rural, I only have internet access via smartphone which is SOOOOoooo not conducive to a well-constructed and beautifully illustrated blog.

I'm finding it ironic that just as google seems to have gotten its blog construction straightened out, I might be returning to work. At least, I really hope I will but we'll see. I'm trying not to get my knickers in a twist waiting for a call. To work or not to work, it's a question best answered when told the salary and benefits package!

**I want knickers**

In the last year, I have slid a little away from crock potting but have really progressed in cooking nearly 100% from scratch. I don't make my own noodles *sob* oh gods, I know.... I fail. I FAIL!!!! Mayhap that failure could be offset by my sweet crafting skills, honed over these last 13 months. I'll be blogging a large paper flower project that I did for my sister Sam's wedding as well as an incredibly easy Teriyaki Chicken Crock dish and maybe even a pretty cool light fixture upgrade!

I know I'm not saying much.... I'm just saying, hang in there. New job or not, this blog shall live on!!