Chicken and Dumplings

What a great meal for a cold rainy night! My kids love Chicken and Dumplings and is an easy go to meal for me. The recipe is so versatile as most soup recipes are. You really just need to dump in what you have. I will post the basic recipe and then tell you how I changed it up last night using what I had. 

Chicken and Dumplings        (Items marked in red are ones I substituted)

2-3 Chicken Breasts boiled and shredded (save stock)          
Small Onion

Celery

1 Bay Leaf

1 Can Chicken Broth

1 Package Lipton Noodle Soup

3 Diced Potatoes
1 Can Cream of Chicken or Mushroom Soup

Bisquick Biscuits 

Boil chicken with onion, celery and bay leaf. Remove bay leaf and shred chicken. Add chicken, broth, leftover chicken stock, potatoes, cream of chicken soup, and noodle soup. Bring to boil and add salt and pepper. Drop biscuits and boil for about 20 minutes until biscuits and potatoes are done.

Alrighty!! Great basic recipe! Last night I simplified it some due to having to use what I had on hand and it turned out great! (I had 3 servings!!!)

Here are the changes I made last night... easy peasy folks!
~Instead of shredding the chicken I just cubed.. or diced it up small to save time.
~I omitted the celery because I didn't have any
~I didn't use chicken broth OR the noodle soup. Instead I used the stock I saved from boiling the chicken. I drained out the onion and bay leaf and chicken goo. I then threw in a chicken bullion cube.
~No Bisquick in the house but I did have a package of Grands Biscuits. They were the jumbo butter ones that I just quartered. 
~ I also added carrots to mine.. I used canned but fresh is good too! If you use canned be sure to wait to add them until right before you drop your biscuits. 

 

As you all know my son Cody is in culinary school and he has just finished up his first quarter/session. I'm going to toot my own horn here and brag on him for making the President's Honor Roll at the Le Cordon Bleu. Congrats Cody!! One of the things he mastered this quarter was a 7 sided french cut called a Tourne cut. I believe it's pronounced Tor-nay...that's what it sounded like he was saying anyway. The chefs at the school were very impressed with how quickly Cody caught on. To me.. as I look at the finished product I think... why bother? Just give me a chunk of potato in my soup.. I don't care if it has seven sides! Ha.. oh well. Here are some pictures of Cody demonstrating this difficult cut.

 This is the finished product. They cut potatoes and carrots in this shape for soups and stews. Look at all the wasted potato! Ha! This one was made from using half of a smaller potato. 

Those knives are sharp by the way. Notice Cody's finger injury. ;) 

Kid at Heart

Looks like this may be out last nice day for a while. The temps will soon be falling which will make me want to start decorating for Christmas. I will need to force myself to hold back for a couple weeks so that I don't completely skip over the Thanksgiving season. 

I'll be packing up the Halloween tonight so I thought I had better post what my creepy project was this past week. Britt and I made a spell book out of an old book that was laying around. Then we made potions out of used bottles we had. We also printed off creepy photos from the internet and framed them. I had to spray paint the frames black. All of this cost me a total of .50 cents. I already had everything.. just happened to find a potion bottle at our local thrift store that I spent 50 cents on. That's it! I think it turned out cute. Michaela's dressing table was in limbo.. already out of her old room waiting to go into her new room.. so we just put it in our entry way to display all our handmade stuff! 

 

Britt waited patiently for the trick or treaters last night. He sat on the top step so that he could see them coming. He had so much fun passing out candy.. look at that smile! 

Don't mind the paint on the door..we are under construction..lol