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Chicken and Dumplings

12/11/2009

Tis the season for warm things for dinner! And chicken and dumplings is just what Boy 2 ordered! When ever I make chicken and dumplings Boy 2 always wants me to make extra so he can have leftovers for his lunch the next day!

I tried getting this recipe from my mom because she made the best chicken and dumplings EVER, but she is the type of person that throws a little of this and a little of that in and I could never mimic her recipe. So one day when I was at a friends house and she was throwing out a ton of cookbooks, I noticed this cookbook ~ Old Fashioned Country Cooking and it has the "Cracker Barrel" name and logo on it, so I saved it from being sent to the dump (she really wasn't throwing them in the trash, she was taking them to the thrift store or somewhere like that). I adapted the recipe a little and it is pretty close to how my mom used to make them!

Old-Fashioned Chicken and Dumplings

1 3-pound chicken
2 quarts of water
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
3 TBL shortening
3/4 cup buttermilk

salt and pepper to taste

Boil chicken in 2 quarts of water. Once boiling reduce heat and simmer for about 1 hour, our till tender and chicken is easily coming off the bone. Remove chicken from broth to cool, de-bone chicken and cut or shred into bite size pieces. Put chicken back in the broth, and bring broth to a boil.

While waiting for broth to boil, combine flour, baking soda & salt. Cut in the shortening. Add buttermilk and stir with a fork until moistened. Knead the dough 4 or 5 times then flatten till about 1/2 inch thick. Pinch off dough into 1 1/2-inch pieces and drop into boiling broth. Reduce to medium heat and cook for about 8-10 minutes. Stir occasionally. Add salt and pepper to taste.

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It's Begining to Look A Lot Like Chirstmas!

12/10/2009

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Another tradition we have is to decorate the house for Christmas the weekend after Thanksgiving. Now, I must say, I LOVE decorating for Christmas, heck, I just LOVE Christmas, but what I don't love is the mass chaos that happens in our house on 'decorating' night. Hubby likes to bring ALL the Christmas boxes into the living room all at one time, and the kids like to empty the boxes with no regard to where things should be placed, they just pull things out and put it in the nearest clearing - that could be the floor, a chair, an end table, the dog, they aren't particular, their ultimate goal is to get it out of the box! This is the moment I sneak away to the kitchen and open a nice bottle of wine. (And NO, I don't care what time it is, 9AM here - that means it is 6PM in Texas, so I am good, plus, it makes my family not hate me on this insane day, so don’t judge me! ;-) You see if it were up to me, I would take out one box at a time, one item at a time and put things in the perfect place upon unwrapping, but it is not up to me & this is what my house looks like on D-Day. (DECORATION DAY.)

I know they are all cute, but look at all those boxes!!

Everyone has a Christmas tree for their room.....

Girl decorating her tree.

Boy 2 with his tree

I do love this day even though the chaos stresses me out a little a little at first, but I have learn over the years to just give in and let everyone have fun, and decorate to their little heart's content. The kids and Hubby decorate everything, including the tree. Then come Monday when Hubby is back at work, and the kids are back at school, I go through and fix it all, while no one is the wiser. (OK, maybe they figured it out, but they don't say anything when they come home and everything has been changed.)

Boy 2 being silly!

There are 2 things I LOVE about this night. One is watching the kids have a ball (yes, chaos and all) and two is when Hubby unwraps the Christmas tree ornaments! This is my favorite part of all. Almost all our ornaments have special meaning and each time Hubby unwraps an ornament he tells the small story behind it.....we got that one in Aruba (a starfish painted like Santa) oh, this was from our wedding (a car with a bride and groom in it), and this one was from when Girl was born....and so on. The ornaments that got the most questions this year were the 'family' ornaments, the ornaments that have our names on them. Boy 2 didn't like the ornaments that would have Mom, Dad & Boy 1 - he would question why not everyone’s name was on the ornament.

Girl's first grade ornament

Boy 1's ornament from 2003

Merry Christmas!!

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Thanksgiving Day (AKA, American Chuseok!)

12/5/2009

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Here in Korea when we mention Thanksgiving, Korean people everywhere relate this day to their big celebration call Chuseok. The information below is provided for my non-American friends that read this blog. Thanksgiving as defined by Wikipedia:

Thanksgiving Day, presently celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November, has been an annual tradition in the United States since 1863. Thanksgiving was historically a religious observation to give thanks to God but was established as a secular federal holiday in 1941.

The first Thanksgiving was celebrated to give thanks to God for helping the Pilgrims of Plymouth Colony survive the brutal winter. The first Thanksgiving feast lasted three days providing enough food for 53 pilgrims and 90 Native Americans. The feast consisted of fowl, venison, fish, lobster, clams, berries, fruit, pumpkin, and squash. William Bradford's note that, "besides waterfowl, there was great store of wild turkeys, of which they took many," probably gave rise to the American tradition of turkey at Thanksgiving.

OK, now what Thanksgiving Day means to me. Reflecting back over the years, being thankful for what I have and for what I don't have, cooking, family, friends, food, fun, football (yes, I said it), games and more cooking. (It is a really good thing that I love to cook).

Even though I am a firm believer in tradition, each year our Thanksgiving Day is a little different than the one before. This was the first Thanksgiving feast we have had that was only us, our immediate family, me, Hubby & the kids. Most years we either go someplace, or invite friends over that are single, or their spouse is out of town, or people that have no place to go. But this year was a little different; Hubby had been out of town for three and a half weeks, arriving home the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving. Three and a half weeks shouldn't seem all that long for us, since we are use to being away from him 6 weeks, 6 months, 12 months and even 15 months at a time, but since being here in Korea we have all been spoiled having Hubby around all the time. So, since we missed him SO much, we felt like we needed straight family time and what better way to celebrate our little family than with a Thanksgiving feast.

SO, on to some of our traditions. My BFF introduced us to this tradition several years ago, and it has stuck since then. The story: I was complaining to her about how no one likes to say what they are thankful for at Thanksgiving & how I have tried many ways of getting this done. You see, I feel like since IT IS Thanksgiving, you should be thankful, AND you should share what you are thankful for. In the past I tried to go around the table having people say one thing they are thankful for....well, this would turn into some people not wanting to talk (introverts), some people talking too much (extroverts), some people crying (my MIL), some people being silly and so on....you get the idea. Another thing I tried which worked OK was I had everyone write what they were Thankful for on a piece of paper, then turn it in to me on Thanksgiving morning, and then I baked each slip of paper in the crescent rolls. At the meal, we 'broke bread' and read the 'thankful' that was in our bread. Now this one worked OK, but you can see problems here....what if everyone was not there before you made the rolls, and of course the possibility of a fire. I had a few other things I tried, and they all worked "OK", but when my BFF introduced me to this, it was PERFECT for us and we have been using it for years.

On Thanksgiving morning we take the kids outside to find branches from trees that have fallen to the ground, and we collect them then bring them back in the house to create the centerpiece for our table. We put the branches in a vase (the same vase every year), and this becomes our "Thankful Tree". Once the branches are collected Hubby and the kids cut leaves out of colored paper (I'm in the kitchen cooking). We put the leaves, tape and a couple of pens on the table and throughout the day we go to the table and write what we are thankful for and then tape it to the tree. It is so much fun watching our tree fill up with leaves. At the end of the day the kids like to read the leaves out loud. I have found this is the prefect way to be 'thankful' as no one feels uncomfortable because they know they don't have to say anything out loud, and as a bonus I have been saving all the leaves from our thankful tress. It will be fun to go back when the kids are grown and read some of the old leaves.

Our thankful tree, 2009

Here are a couple of 'traditional' food items we have at our Thanksgiving.

Since the seafood is SO fresh here, on Thanksgiving morning I like to wake up and head to the fish market to pick up some super fresh oysters! Here are Hubby and I enjoying a few oysters on the half shell. The kids don't want anything to do with this tradition!

Celery thingies: this is ONLY because Hubby LOVES them, no one else in our family eats them. This celery stuffed with cream cheese and green olives. (Yuck, gag, gross!)

Deviled eggs:

Homemade pumpkin and pecan pies:

Homemade cranberry sauce, not the kind from the can that makes a slopping sound as it plops out of the can, you know what I am talking about, the red jell that has indentions in the sauce from the can, I'm gagging a little just thinking about it.

Green bean bundles! These bad boys will clog your arteries just looking at them and this is why we only have them one time a year. (Don't even get me started on green bean casserole - it will never be made by me. In fact I just threw up in my mouth thinking about GBC.)

And of course, no Thanksgiving would be complete without the turkey:

I hope you all had a fantastic Thanksgiving. Be thankful for what you have, I know I am!

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A Hawaiian Birthday Celebration

12/1/2009

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As I told you in the last post, Girl's b-day celebration was delayed by a month due to the postal system. I ordered things for her party well in advance, but something happened and after 3 weeks her party goods still were not here, so we had to postpone. (Just FYI, Oriental Trading Company was fantastic and shipped out a new box free of charge, and it arrived within 5 days. The next day, the old box arrived, CRUSHED on one end.) In the end everything worked out and she had a fantastic party!

Girl had already decided the theme of her 8th birthday party BEFORE she even had her 7th birthday party, so here we go….Hawaii in November!

The cake....seriously easy to make & FUN!

The guests were all presented with a lei upon arrival.

After receiving their lei's, all were required to make grass skirts for this festive event.

We even got big brother in on the action!

They also made beautiful tropical flowers....

The pineapple cups were a HUGE hit!

Here is the birthday girl sporting her lei and grass skirt in the feeding area. Her menu was teriyaki chicken, Hawaiian pizza, goldfish, Hawaiian punch, pineapple on a stick & of course a little Hawaiian chocolate....

Hawaiian dancing....

Instead of 'hot potato' we played 'hot coconut'!

After making skirts, flowers and eating & playing 'hot coconut' it was time to head outside for more fun! We had a LIMBO contest, a hula hoop contest and a relay race while dressed in Hawaiian clothes. The kids had to do these games in 37 degree weather...

Birthday girl with her pants down....

After freezing outside we headed back in for a bubble gum blowing contest! (They had to find the bubble gum in the pie first!)

Some had more fun than others...

And here is our winner!

Piñata time! We had to have 2 piñatas since there were so many kids!

Once we finished with the piñatas, we headed back inside to warm up and to have a little cake and ice-cream!

And then our time was up. We played hard for 3 short hours and did not finish all the activities we had planned, but mom was pooped and sent the kids packing! Girl had a GREAT party!