Smells like Childhood
Don't you have certain dishes that bring back your childhood as if it was yesterday? There are certain things my "Nanny" made in her tiny house in Haskell Oklahoma that are to me, better than any gourmet meal I could ever eat. Just so happened that we made/ate two childhood favorites this weekend.
I had these cheap chicken thighs that I bought some time back. We didn't like them fried or baked at all, so I decided to make a chicken stock with them. Wasn't sure what I was going to do with the stock after it was made, but it was a start. So in went the old thighs with the classic three--onions, carrots, and celery. I added some pepper and poultry seasoning for good measure. No salt for a stock--has to wait until later when it becomes a broth. Three hours later the stock was good to go. In went the salt. Yum. I asked Eric whether he wanted to do rice or noodles to make chicken and noodle or chicken and rice soup. Noodles it was. Except that it wasn't. We had no noodles....and no rice! I'm really bad about doing that lately--not having the ingredients to actually finish what I start.
Eric says, why don't we make chicken and dumplings? In our 11+ years of marriage I have NEVER thought about making chicken and dumplings. This, despite the fact that it is my FAVORITE thing to order at Cracker Barrel, and one of those childhood favorites my nanny used to make. I don't know how ya'll do it in the rest of the country, but here in OK lots of us just pop open cans of pop 'em biscuits, tear them into pieces and throw them into the pot! Four cans of biscuits and 30 minutes later we had some absolutely YUMMY Chicken and Dumplings for supper! I think it will stay on the menu as a regular now that we've done it once.
The other childhood favorite we made this weekend was chocolate covered frozen bananas! Do you remember these? Cut the bananas in half (peeled), stick a Popsicle stick up the ends, freeze for at least an hour (I do overnight), then cover with that "Magic Shell" stuff you can get at the grocery store. Store in the freezer until time to eat. Yummy, and better for you than an ice cream bar!
This concludes our trip down memory lane.
1 comments:
My mother in law made her chicken and dumplings with canned biscuits, but told my FIL that she'd made those biscuits! the smell or taste from my childhood that I love and LOVE to replicate is bread stuffing at Thanksgiving time. LOVE those fragrant herbs all blended with the smells of roasting turkey, onions, celery, and jsut a hint of ginger.......yummmmm!!!!!
I make my chicken and dumplings the German way, and steam the dumplings on top of thesteaming chicken and gravy so its more biscuits sitting on top than throughout the gravy. Its a family favorite and a tradition for several of the kid's birthday dinner request...Charlies' too!
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