Birthday Comfort Food: Comfort Definately Needed

Today was husband Bob's birthday. He loves when I make comfort food, it reminds him of his mom's cooking. Comfort food was definitely a good thing for tonight, as our 4 year-old is going thru "terrible 4's" (never knew there was such a thing). Yesterday, our babysitter had her in the longest time-out known to mankind. This is our angelic child, who usually is loved by all her teachers and her babysitter. She usually only tries to act up and assert her independence with me, since I'm the parents who is home the most. The last month has been a test of wills.

Today was finally a bit better. So I was able to find time to make bob his birthday dinner:

Chicken Pie

This is based on my mom's recipe. Basically, you take some leftover chicken and chop it up. Mix with a can of cream of chicken soup and half a can of water in a Pyrex pie plate. thrown in some frozen peas and carrots and then top with instant mashed potatoes and sprinkle with paprika. bake until potatoes a bit crispy and contents are hot.

I've varied this a bit. My mom usually would use a chicken leftover from making homemade soup. I usually buy a chicken from Sams Club and hack it up and use it for this dish and stuff like chicken salad. I like fresh carrots so I'll throw those in. It just takes a really long time in the oven for this mixture to warm up, which is tough when time is at a premium (i.e. 20 month-old is yelling at me for dinner).

My updated recipe: chop up some carrots (usually baby since that's what's in the house). throw them in the pie plate with a little water and nuke until tender. drain the water, then throw in frozen peas, reduced fat/salt cream of chicken soup and 1/2 can water, along with chopped roast chicken. nuke this mixture until heated thru a bit. then top with mashed potatoes and paprika and throw in oven. I usually will make my own mashed potatoes (Yukon golds with skim milk and a little butter) -or- buy pre-made mashed potatoes from the produce aisle. i don't love the instant ones.

tonight I cheated a bit and used a 1/2 can whole milk instead of water, and used whole milk in the mashed potatoes. SO good. and I roasted a head of garlic and spread that on rolls.
we felt better after this dinner. Especially when followed by a Wegmans Ultimate Chocolate Cake!

Notes: the picky now-evil 4-year-old eats the chicken plain, carrots plain and no mashed. i just put these things on the side before I mix the rest of it together.

also, put the pie plate on top of a cookie sheet so that the contents don't drip into your oven.

Note: I know this is now May 7th and this blog is from April 27. Oops, sorry, I'm a little behind!

Welcome

Let me tell you a bit about myself. I am a full-time mom and part-time optometrist. My optometrist husband and our two little girls live in central New Jersey with our two cats. We live the typical suburban life.

Is it just me, or do other moms feel that they need at least two more hours in their day? It is absolutely crazy how I run around all day, from the moment the kids get up until they go to bed. It's already 10:20 P.M., I have to get up at 6:30 on Saturday (yuck..i will never get used to that, even after 12 years in my profession). I REALLY should go to bed right now. But instead I am discovering a new way to fuel my internet addiction.

My goal here is to have a place to write down all those little pesky bits of information that I yearn to pass on to SOMEONE. If I discover something new that works in the kitchen, or with the kids, I can't wait to share it with someone. And sometimes I just need to vent a little. This is not the type of info one would immediately get on the phone and yap to their friends, but it's stuff that would be useful at some point to somebody. So if you want to read this, great! I hope you glean something from it. Otherwise, this blog may just serve as a place for me to archive stuff and vent a little. That's fine with me.

Recipe Ramble of the Day:

It's Passover, and one dish I will make for the family (and my mom made when i was a kid) was something called "Hamburgers, Potatoes and Onions". It basically involves cooking down some onions, throwing in some hamburger patties, browning the patties and then covering and cooking until the hamburgers are done. after that, you remove the burgers, cook the onions some more and toss in some boiled cut up potatoes. Pretty good comfort food, except that the hamburgers resemble hockey pucks when done, in taste and texture. Gordon Ramsay would throw them against the wall in a second (gotta watch Hell's Kitchen to appreciate).

Today I did something a little different. I've read in a few magazines about adding bread soaked in a little milk to a meat mixture to make it moist. so I took the ground beef, added a couple of spoonfuls of matzoh meal and a little bit of milk (ok, not kosher, but i'm not). You could probably use a little broth instead. Then I formed burgers and cooked as usual. The burgers were SO much better!!