Ok you didn't have to wait long 😋😀
So I have been watching 30 minute meals on Food Network with Rachael Ray I forgot how much I love that show.  Normally I don't have time for TV but this season with watching a little wee one I have some minutes while feeding her. So I decided to get back in the kitchen and try some of the recipes and then I remember this blog my friend Steph and  I started. So here I am going to give you recipes I have tried and some adaptations of the recipes.. This first one is 30 minute Comfort Food

Chicken Pot Pie with Puff Pastry.
Measurements are really for an example you decided how much you want in....
Chicken cooked and diced 1 to 2 cups
1 box of chicken stock
1 to 2 carrots diced
1 to 2 stalks of celery
1 onion diced (white or yellow)
half of a leek
fresh or dry  parsley
fresh or dry  thyme
fresh or dry rosemary
1 to 2 potatos diced
1 apple diced
half lemon
3 tbsps. cream
half stick butter
3 tbsps. of flour
poultry seasoning
salt and pepper
puff pastry 1 box
preheat oven to 400 degrees for puff pastry.  Use baking sheet and parchment paper on top.  Take puff pastry out of box use some flour to coat a cutting board.  Use knife to cut slits in pastry brush egg wash on each sheet of puff pastry. (egg and water mixed) Cut sheets in any shape you like you can use cookie cutters ect I just did squares. Lay on baking sheet with parchment put in oven 15 to 20 minutes. (keep eye on)
 In a good sized pot add olive oil to coat and the onion,leeks,potato,apple, carrot, and celery. Salt and pepper and let cook add fresh and dry herbs cook until veggies are soft but not to soft.  Make a well or circle area in middle add butter. When butter starts to melt add the 3 tbsp. of flour mix through out the veggies.  Add the chicken broth and chicken let boil until thick. Check your puff pastry. Add cream, mix and then right before serving add squeeze of lemon.  Pour some chicken yumminess in bowl top with cooked puff pastry! Delicious!

Stay tuned.... I have a new kitchen so new recipes are coming!!!

Yummo Chicken Pot Pie

Filling:
2-3 cups cooked and cubed chicken.
1 med onion chopped.
1 bag baby carrots cooked or steamed.
4 or 5 potatoes washed, peeled, cubed and cooked.
1 to 2 stalks of celery.
Any other veggies you want (bag of frozen peas works well)

Gravy:
Saute onions and celery.
add salt and pepper
parsley
poultry seasoning
cook until onions translucent
add 3 to 4 tbsp of flour to mixture.
Mix until flour coats everything then add homemade or good quality chicken stock. (Rachel Ray is my fav, also like Hannafords Organic)
I use about 1/2 of the 32 oz boxes of stock, but use as you need. Taste and continue to add seasoning if needed.

Put potatoes, carrots, and other veggies and of course chicken in pie plate or baking dish. Pour gravy over and stir so it coats everything. Now onto homemade crust.

Crust:
This makes crust for 9" pie top and bottom but I use a baking dish with the crust just on top.

1 cup butter,chilled (very important)
3 cups flour
1 tbsp of salt
pinch of sugar
1/3 cup ice water (also important)

Mix flour,sugar,and salt together. Cut butter in tablespoon pieces. Cut butter in the flour. ( i use pastry thingy but from experience two knives work well) When you have a crumbly mess add water. Keep mixing until dough clumps and before it turns into a ball. Flour your work area and rolling pin kneed the dough divide and roll out. You can chill for 30 mins but i never do, to hungry. Put on top of the filling and gravy or if you are doing an actual two crusted pie put one rolled out crust on bottom and one on top. We all love this very delicious.
Oh yeah bake on 350-375 for about 20-25 minutes until crust is golden brown.

Orange/Honey Chicken over rice

I made this dish tonight it is a copulation of different recipes mixed together. Very simple and easy but looks like you worked really hard on it. Kids at first were like yuck I don't want that I made them take a bite they loved it so did John. Needless to say I am glad John's friend wasn't hungry when he came to pick him up we had no leftovers.
Ingredients: 1-2 pounds of boneless skinless chicken cut up.
1-2 tablespoons butter or EVOO.
1 cup orange juice
1/4 cup honey
1 teaspoon of red pepper flakes
1/2 teaspoon of nutmeg
2 tablespoons of flour
1 med sweet onion
salt/pepper
paprika

In sauce pan put butter or oil and start pan frying chicken breast season with salt,pepper,red pepper flakes, and paprika. When chicken is done remove from pan, add sliced onion, while they are cooking mix orange juice, honey, nutmeg,and flour stir together. Pour over onions let cook on low few minutes add chicken cook few more minutes until thickens. I made rice and served it over the rice everyone loved it.

Asain Wraps

I made these tasty yummys during Homecoming week, I know crazy right!?!? Very simple and delicious my kids loved them called them Chinese tacos, John loved them. A big hit.
Ingredients:
Good soy sauce (add as much as you like, i used 1/4 cup)
Thai chili sauce about 3 tablespoons
Rice vinegar about 3 tablespoons
1/2 teaspoon of minced ginger
1 tablespoon of sesame oil.
I used ground beef but you could use ground anything(pork,turkey, ect)
scallions
boston lettuce or tortillas

Ground the beef, drain the fat mix wet ingredients together in bowl. Taste make sure you like the flavor before putting it in the beef. Add to beef cook a couple minutes to burn stuff off and infuse flavor add scallions. Wrap meat either in tortillas or lettuce leaves. I loved then wrapped in lettuce John loved wrapped in tortillas.

Superior Cinnamon Rolls

I have been on a personal culinary quest for several months. My mission has been to find the very best cinnamon roll recipe ever. I can even name the date that this mission began. December 29th. Very important date. My mother's birthday.

You see, her friend Denice made her a batch of truly scrumptious cinnamon rolls that day. They were just so perfect, I had to have the recipe. But as it is with most great cooks and their creations, there is no recipe. It's some of this, a little of that, maybe cook it for this long and see what happens, then maybe a little bit longer if... you know how it is. So we tried to organize a little cooking class so Denice could teach me how she does it. It has never materialized and so I have spent nearly 6 months trying to perfect the cinnamon roll. And today, I think I may have done it!

I have made lots of batches of these yummy treats and while none of them has been inedible, none of them had been to-die-for either. Now you may wonder how some white bread spread with cinnamon and sugar could be worth dying for, but that just means you've never had a truly amazing cinnamon roll. Take a regular Pillsbury cinnamon roll. It's decent. Now take a Pillsbury Grands cinnamon roll. It's pretty tasty. But take a homemade cinnamon roll and you've got died-and-gone-to-heaven. That's what I mean when I say to-die-for. And yes, it's still an overstatement. But welcome to the world of a foodie.

Anyhow, today's recipe was fantastic! I brought the batch to a friends house for coffee talk time and we all ate two. That is acceptable when something is truly scrumptious. (I confess that I keep thinking of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. I continue to write off course...) One of us is pregnant, the other three of us have no excuse... We did share with the kids.

Before sharing the recipe, which honestly has far more to do with technique than ingredients, I will share the most important things I have learned:

1) Do not roll the dough too thin. It will make crispier rolls and I think most of us would agree that we want a super-soft, fluffy roll.

2) Most recipes don't call for enough cinnamon and sugar filling. You are going to lose some during the baking process (it'll ooze out with the butter) so more is better.

3) Most recipes call for baking the rolls for 30 minutes- too long! Unless you cover them with foil while baking until the last 5 minutes or so. Again, they will come out overbrowned and crispy if you don't do this.

4) Unbleached flour yields a really soft and silky dough. Regular flour is fine too, but I have noticed a real difference using the former.

Now, any white bread recipe will work for these rolls so if you have a favorite, use it. You can even use frozen dough. Here is my recipe.

1 and 1/4 cups warm water

1 tsp salt

3 TBSP sugar

1 TBSP butter

4 cups unbleached white flour

2 tsp baker's yeast

I use a bread machine to make all my dough so I have zero tips on how to make great bread dough from scratch. I know it takes a lot of kneading to get a really great dough and I swear by using a little sugar to help activate the yeast and gain a silkier dough. Silky dough is a beautiful thing.

When the dough has risen, punch it down and, on a floured surface, roll the dough into a large rectangle. Again, not too thin. Mine was a bit bigger than a cookie sheet.

Now the filling can be tricky too because if you use too much butter, it will all melt and ooze out of the rolls. This will inevitably happen, but this seems to help:

Mix 1/4 cup of room temperature butter with 1 cup of sugar and 1 TBSP cinnamon. Use a fork to mash it and make a paste. Spread and pat this over the dough.

Roll up the dough carefully, into a long log. Using a very sharp knife, slice the dough into about 1.5 inch pieces. I got 12 pieces out of mine and this was perfect. Lay each piece on a greased cookie sheet (I recommend using 2 pans so the rolls have room to rise and spread). Allow to rise in a warm place (I use a slightly warmed oven). When they have doubled in size, they are ready to bake. Cover loosely with foil. Preheat oven to 350. Bake for about 20 minutes, then remove the foil. Bake for about 5 more minutes. Don't allow them to get too golden- just a hint of color.

I am not especially fond of powdered sugar icing, but today I made a thick batch that worked well.

I softened 1 TBSP of butter in the microwave, almost melted. I added some powdered sugar, perhaps a cup (see, starting to work without a recipe) and added a bit of milk. Mix with a fork. If too thin, add some more sugar. If too thick, add just a tinge more milk. Mine was about as thick as cake frosting. When I applied it to the warm rolls, it didn't melt off for being too thin and glazed up very nicely.

It's hard to believe that a few simple ingredients and a bit of technique can produce something so sublime, but I challenge you to give it a whirl. It's so easy and, my cooking wives counterparts agree, delicious!

Chicken Divine!- Jamie O's Roast Chicken Recipe

When I bought Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution cookbook, I made a vow to "pass on" at least one recipe from each chapter of the book. He kinda makes you sign a promise to do so in the front of the book. He's on a mission to get people cooking at home from scratch again. Most of the recipes are of typical weeknight foods: chili, stir-frys, fajitas, stews. All are simple. This is the third recipe I have made from the cookbook and all I can say is "wowza!"

Roast chicken is awesome for many reasons: It's cheap, makes a lot of meals, is simple to make, and the big one: my kids will eat it! It's a classic dish that I suspect anyone would eat. But if you can take this simple bird and take it from good to divine (and still get your kids to eat it) I'd say it deserves a try.

The most important thing about this dish is what I'm going to tell you right now: make what Jamie calls a "vegetable trivet". All this means is, wash a few carrots, a few stalks of celery, and an onion or two and throw it in the bottom of your roaster with some garlic cloves. You don't even have to peel the veggies (not even the onions!). Drizzle some oil over the veggies.

Next, you are going to rinse your chicken, take out the guts which are most likely in a bag, and set it right on top of the veggie trivet. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and drizzle with a little oil. Take a lemon and pierce it with a knife all over. Stuff it in the chicken's cavity and add some fresh herbs. I used rosemary. Delish.

I covered the bird with foil and baked it at 400. Uncover to brown the skin after 2 hours or so. The pop-up timer on my chicken may have been defective because it never popped. I baked a 7.5 lb bird for about 3 hours and just couldn't stand waiting anymore. It smelled so good and everything else was ready. So we may have eaten undercooked chicken, but it sure tasted good.

Anyhow, about 20 minutes before the bird is done, or when you take the foil off to let it brown, scoop those yummy roasted vegetables in the trivet out and put them in a saucepan. Take out all the drippings so far and add them too. Place the saucepan over medium heat and add enough chicken broth or water to cover the veggies. Bring the mixture to a boil and carefully mash the veggies as they cook. It will be lumpy- no big deal. Cook for about 10 minutes. I added a splash of balsamic vinegar while it cooked. The mixture was a gorgeous brown color. When done simmering the sauce, pour into a course sieve over a bowl. Use the masher to press the veggies to extract as much broth as you can. DON'T chuck those veggies. Return only the broth to the pan.

Add some more chicken broth or water to the pan (up to a quart total). Bring back to a simmer. Mix 2 TBSP corn starch with 1/4 cup cold water and add to the broth mixture. Reduce heat and stir. It should thicken up into a lovely gravy. Season with salt and pepper. This gravy is wonderful! Complex from the roasted veggies, vinegar, and chicken drippings!

Hubby's leftovers to take to work- that gravy is gorgeous!

I have always cooked my roasters in an oven bag so I was afraid I was going to end up with a dry chicken. Not at all! This dish was simply delicious! There were quite a few dirty dishes to hate afterward, but everything else was to love!

I added the leftover veggies from the trivet to the chicken stock I prepared with the bones and leftover meat. Can't wait to try that in some homemade soup!