A whole chicken from the grocer costs less than four chicken breasts. Did you know that?
I didn’t know that, and I was pleasantly surprised when I bought a completely gutted and ready-to-go chicken for a batch of chicken soup I made recently.
I’m not crazy about canned chicken soup. In fact, I don’t like it at all. That’s why I normally use store-bought stock to make my soups.
But on this day I was feeling adventurous. On this day I wanted to boil Ms. Cockadoodledoo down to the bones instead. It was very rewarding to actually SEE the flavor floating in the stock.
Sometimes this dipper wants the flavor of a good dip without actually doing any dipping. And that’s exactly why I am featuring these three creative snacks. I can’t take credit for any of the following recipes, but I can attest to their awesomeness.
First up, baked spinach dip mini bread bowls from the Picky Palate. If you’re not careful with these, you could eat your entire day’s wroth of calories in one sitting. They’re that good. (more…)
Last year about this time I binged on pumpkin dip. I fell in love so deeply with a sweet pumpkin dip that I couldn’t go more than a few hours without sneaking to the fridge and snarfing down a handful of ginger snaps and a mound of pumpkin dip.
Several days of this proved dangerous. I overdid it. I ate too much pumpkin and haven’t had any since then. At least not until I saw a recipe for pumpkin bacon waffles with pumpkin sauce.
Pumpkin? Bacon? Waffles? How can I say no to that? (more…)
Yes, I’m still on a butter kick. Except today instead of dairy spread I’m on to nut butters. Almond butter in particular.
First off, did you know that you need nothing more than 1200 watts of power and a handful of almonds to make almond butter? And no, I’m not exaggerating about the watts.
I read up on how to make nut butters, and what I read was true: (paraphrasing) Turn on the food processor and when you think you’re never going to turn your almonds into butter, keep processing for another 10 minutes. It’ll eventually get there. (more…)
When I say “butter,” you say “dairy spread.”
You say that because that’s what we most often think of when we hear the word butter. We think of that fatty cream that gets churned and churned until it’s a nice yellowy spread perfect for our muffin or roll.
But there’s more than one kind of butter. There’s actually dozens. There’s all the different dairy-based butters, which includes the uncultured, sweet cream butter we most commonly eat, and then there’s all the other butters that fall outside traditional dairy spread. Nut butters, fruit butters, vegetable butters, cocoa butter (from the cocoa bean), etc. I could go on and on.
For the sake of this post, though, we’re talking about that famous dairy spread. (more…)
Mornay sauce = perfect sauce for vegetables or noodles.
Morney sauce = the sauce that gives mac ‘n cheese life. (more…)
To spice up the ordinary burger, I whipped up my own version of McDonald’s Special Sauce. Not sure what I’m talking about when I say “special sauce?” (more…)
