What's for Supper?

This is a question I ask myself daily.  Hopefully before anybody else asks me so that I can have an answer.  I have successfully done the meal planning thing in the past and somehow gotten away from it.  I really need to get back to that.  It was such a load off to get everything figured out ahead of time.  That was not the case last night though.  I got home from work around 7 pm with still no plan in mind.  I thought maybe I'd resort to my default scrambled eggs meal, but nobody was interested.

So, I opened the cupboard to see what inspired me.  This is what I came up with (and no, I don't keep frozen veggies and cooked meat in my pantry).  It doesn't really have a name.  It was creamy roast turkey with broccoli and fettuccine noodles.  Yes it includes cream soup. Sorry.  I was in a time and energy crunch. Feel free to make your own gluten/MSG/random ingredient free version of this ingredient.  It also includes sour cream.  That didn't make the picture because I added it as an afterthought at the end to achieve a more desirable texture to the "sauce".  In case you are wondering, yes I do keep bags of frozen roast turkey in my freezer.  I buy them around Thanksgiving when they are either free or dirt cheap with my grocery order then roast them up, shred the meat and package it up for individual meals.  Its a lifesaver on nights like this.

The lineup: fettuccine, shredded roasted turkey, chicken soup base,  golden mushroom soup, broccoli florets, dried minced garlic, my not-so-super-secret savory herb rub, oh and sour cream.

This is what the "sauce" looks like when its cooked and before  I thought to add sour cream.

This is pretty straight forward.  Boil water for the noodles.  Plop frozen turkey chunks into a big deep skillet with some chicken broth (hence the soup base).  I mixed up about 2 cups of broth for this.  Season with herb rub, garlic and some black pepper.  When the turkey is sufficiently thawed and shredding apart, add mushroom soup and stir.  Then add broccoli and cook til tender crisp.  

Meanwhile, boil your noodles til just about done.  Drain the noodles, but save a cup or so of pasta water in case you need more liquid in your sauce.  Dump most of the noodles into the pan with the sauce, toss around a bit to mix, simmer a minute or two to let everything come together and the pasta finish cooking.  This is also when it occurred to me to add some sour cream.  It just wasn't "saucy" enough once I added all the pasta.

The finished product.  Served with mandarin oranges and sliced strawberries.  This is my son's plate.  He was slow coming to the table, so his plate got to be my prop.

The kids loved this meal.  I thought it was ok, but missing something, so if anybody reading this has a great idea to add something that will take it up a notch, please leave me a comment.  

Rhubarb: The Sequel

I am finally getting around to posting about the sparkling rhubarb jelly that I promised to make a few weeks ago.  I did make it.  It is neither red, nor sparkly.  All around, it reminds me of pink lemonade.  Its about the same color as pink lemonade and kind of sweet and puckery at the same time, like pink lemonade.  

The recipe book said that it would be red and sparkly.  Like I said, it is pink, not red.  I'm sure due to the variety of rhubarb I used.  If you want a darker color jelly, you'd need to get your hands on some really red rhubarb (say that five times fast).  It is also not sparkly.  I made this twice and took care not to squeeze the jelly cloth (which puts little bits of fruit solids in the juice, resulting in cloudy jelly) and both times it turned out cloudy.  

Its still pretty though.  And it tastes pretty good on a crunchy English muffin.  I think its something I'd make again next year, if only because its unique and will make a good gift.

Sparkling Rhubarb Jelly

A Chicken Post

We have a new baby at our house!  One fluffy little Araucana chick was hatched a about two weeks ago now. We think its a baby girl chick.  Yay!  This little one is the first one we have ever had hatch at our house.  We usually go into the local fleet supply store in the spring and pick out a few new babies to add to the flock.  This year, we have both a rooster and a broody hen, so we thought we'd give it a shot and see what we came up with.  We've had chickens for years, but never a broody hen while we had a rooster around.  The only other time we had a broody hen, she almost starved to death trying to hatch a golf ball.  (You don't raise chickens 'cause they're smart.)  The kids are very excited to show their friends the new little peeper, and ok, the grownups are too.  Which might be why I feel compelled to blog about it...

She is starting to get her first grownup feathers along her wings.  I can't wait to see what color she's going to be.  The fun thing about Araucanas is that they are all different colors.  They aren't a "true" breed, so they don't have definite characteristics other than that they lay colored eggs.  They are sometimes called Easter Eggers because they lay eggs in pastel colors.  Each hen will always lay the same color eggs, but if you have 2 or more in the same flock, they may all lay different colors of eggs.  Ours are mostly shades of soft green, but some are more blue and one is a bit on the creamy almost pink side.  Cool huh?  Ok, chicken class dismissed.

Rhubarb!

My wonderful father-in-law gave me a few rhubarb plants about 3 years ago.  It takes them a few years to get established and really start growing, so I have been patiently waiting. And waiting.  Last year I had some nice plants coming up, then we got a hail storm in May that pummeled my poor rhubarb patch.  But this year, at last, a harvestable (is that a real word?) amount of rhubarb!  

So, I set out to see just what wonderful things I could do with it.  I made a batch of old-fashioned rhubarb muffins. muffin recipe here They're lovely.  And, nobody else likes them too much, so I actually get to eat them.

  I also made a batch of rhubarb bars.  They're much like a fruit crisp, but the crusty part is more like an oatmeal cookie so you can eat it on the go.  This is a recipe I got from a friend who said that they never hang out long at her house.  Guess what.  They don't hang out long at my house either.  The whole 9 x 13 pan was gone in less than 24 hours.  The kids loved them.  I loved them.  I think Matt would have loved them too, had he been a little quicker to get to the pan. I'll have to make them again. Soon. I did some googling and found the recipe online to share with my adoring public.  rhubarb crunch recipe here

Next on my rhubarb spree is to try rhubarb jelly.  It is supposed to be pretty and red and all around wonderful.  I know that all two of my readers will be staying up nights to hear how it turns out.  Never fear.  I will let you know as soon as the verdict is in.