27. Cook my way through Paula Deen’s cookbook, “The Lady and Sons Cookbook”

pepper steak.

not a fan.

27. Cook my way through Paula Deen’s cookbook, “The Lady and Sons Cookbook”

Chicken and Dumplins.


Don't you feel better just reading those words? Total comfort food.

It's winter, snow was predicted for last night:

(correct prediction)

and I wanted some real food to have around for the weekend, so last night I tackled Paula's chicken and dumplins recipe.

Earlier in the week I was reading over the recipe and saw this:
Gulp. I'd never cut up a whole chicken before -- heck, I'd never even purchased a whole raw chicken before.

I got a tip from a friend that Whole Foods was having a sale on free range whole chickens, so I picked one up. Feeling like a very legitimate cook.

So then last night, I had to look up how to properly cut up a chicken, so I watched this video:



Deep breath, and here we go:


The before.....



And after.....
Let's just say, I think my chicken had more bones than Mr. Pampered Chef's did. Either that or his knife is amazing and slices through bone like it's butter. Or he just cracked a bunch of joints so quickly I didn't notice.

At one point I saw what I think is bone marrow.....eeesh. It was a little bit of a gross process, but worth it.

After this it was pretty smooth sailing --- threw a bunch of stuff in a pot and let it do its thing:






I don't know why it just now occurred to me to start doing videos on the blog instead of photos. So I don't claim to be destined for the Food Network, but here is some commentary:





Now would be a good time to let you know that I got some AMAZING Christmas presents this year -- I had asked for a food processor and when I opened it and it was from my sister, I wondered what on earth my parents were going to give me, because I kind of expected them to be the ones to give me the big ticket item I was asking for.....so I was blown away when I got a Kitchenaid stand mixer. I've been using the food processor this week and it has already changed my life (I'm not joking). I have yet to use the Kitchenaid, but I have no doubts I will use it soon. In the mean time it looks realllll purrrty sitting on my counter.


Ok so after everything cooked, I had to pick the chicken, then throw it back in the pot to cook the dumplins. Given that it was Friday at about 6pm and I was a bit braindead from the week, I read "cut into 1 inch strips" as the width the dumplins should be and made them really long. Next time I'll make them smaller (and OH H-YES there will be a next time).

So, final step:



I then ate a bowl full and shared some with my sister. If you're wondering if it's any good -- it is probably one of, if not THE best things I've ever made. Delicious. Next time I might add some carrots or other vegetables to make it even more hearty. But the flavor....amazing. Thank you Paula Deen.

Recipe here

27. Cook my way through Paula Deen’s cookbook, “The Lady and Sons Cookbook”

Another multiple update ---

I just finished a large helping of Paula's pot roast recipe...how is something so simple so delicious? Pot roast is just a great thing to cook. Easy, makes your place of dwelling smell amazing, and can feed one single female for almost an entire week's lunches and suppers (with the help of some side dishes).

Alright, so here is what the fallapartjuicydeliciousness looks like after cooking in the crock pot for over 8 hours:



Plus you get this amazing gravy or au jus or whatever you'd like to call it, that went well over the brown rice I fixed, and also would be AMAZING on mashed potatoes. I'll have to make some of those later this week.
Recipe here---by the way check out the picture of her pot roast -- this is not the prettiest meal you'll eat by any means.

Other recipes I've made: Sweet potato chips

Different, tasty. I give them a yes.
(I also had some fun with my phone camera)

Can't figure out how to rotate pictures on Blogger...but don't these look sort of like pralines? But...not. Yeah, not. Anyway, they tasted good. That's about all that matters.

Recipe here

Sesame Chicken Strips
I used panko since Trader Joe's didn't have "normal" bread crumbs. The panko and sesame seeds were a great combo if I do say so myself.

Mix it up.

Coat the chicken. (maybe this is why I'd never make it as a food blogger...)

Recipe here

27. Cook my way through Paula Deen’s cookbook, “The Lady and Sons Cookbook”

This one is a two-fer because, well, I made two recipes this week and only feel like writing one blog entry about it.

First up - Spicy Shrimp Casserole.

My goal was to cook a large dish so that I could have a little something to take for lunch every day to work (I'm trying to work on number 32 over there). I also knew I needed to get started on these main dish recipes or I'll never make it through this cookbook. Paula Deen, being right there on the water in Savannah, loves her seafood, so this one seemed pretty simple for my first seafood dish.

Now, once I got started, I realized that "casserole" is a very generous, all-encompassing kind of word. And I've eaten a lot of casseroles in my life. Some people don't like them -- everything for your meal kinda lumped together in one dish, but they really are very efficient and practical meals, and I have no aversion to them.

This one, however.....not a winner. It's basically like you're making a shrimp pasta dish with a cheese sauce....and calling it a casserole. And honestly, it didn't have a ton of flavor. By Friday at lunch I was glad to be eating the last of it. Five days in a row of anything can be a little much, but when you aren't crazy about it, it makes it that much more difficult.

Without further ado, I present the before:


and after:



Eh. Wouldn't recommend it.

To redeem this disappointment, I also made Broccoli Salad to take to my Community Group's potluck dinner on Tuesday. It's very very similar to the recipe my mom uses for hers, and is my MOST preferred way to eat broccoli. Let's just say the leftovers I brought home went fast:



I highly recommend this recipe, although I did omit the tomatoes. Mainly because I was rushing to get this ready for CG, but also because they didn't sound good to me in this salad.

Nobody makes broccoli kind of unhealthy like we Southerners do. Recipe here.

27. Cook my way through Paula Deen’s cookbook, “The Lady and Sons Cookbook”

And yet another Paula Deen recipe down. I am becoming more and more terrified of some of the recipes in this book -- mainly because they deal with seafood that I have never handled before.

This time, I played it safe and made Tomato Dill Soup for some friends who just had a baby.
It was easy and has a lot of flavors happening in it. It didn't blow my mind, and I think I may have liked it better if I had blended the soup so it wasn't chunky. But overall, fairly tasty.

Recipe found here.

27. Cook my way through Paula Deen’s cookbook, “The Lady and Sons Cookbook”

I hate bananas.

I cannot recall a time when I ever liked them. I used to have an aversion to all fruits (about the same time in my life when I would eat directly out of the sugar bowl...) but I've grown to like lots of them, just not bananas.

If I am served a dish with bananas in it, I can eat it, I just really don't enjoy it. And I feel like bananas have this overwhelmingly strong scent and taste, so it's not like you can eat something with bananas in it and not really taste them. Blech.

I sometimes wonder what bananas were like before the fall and if I would have liked them more. And if so would it be the actual banana that is better or myself that has a right attitude toward the banana. Ok, back to lighthearted blogging:

So, since I am cooking my way through this cookbook, and there are recipes with bananas, I have a bit of a predicament.

Enter my savvy thinking. I was asked to make a dessert for an event happening tomorrow evening but is one that I am not attending. PERFECT opportunity to make a banana dish since I won't have to eat it.

Therefore, today I made Banana Cream Pie. I also used an app on my Droid called Retro Camera to take these photos for a hip, artistic, i-wanna-be-cool effect.

So the "cream" part of the banana cream pie basically requires you to make homemade pudding on the stove. I did so, then set it aside to cool:

Then came the slicing of the bananas. I always think about how practical of a fruit the banana is. Comes in its own easy-to-remove packaging, is easy to eat, and is highly nutritious. Too bad it's disgusting and has one of the worst textures of any food I've ever encountered.

Anyway, back to the slicing:

But I mean really, the smushiness is too much.

See how thrilled I was at this point?
So then you layer the fruit and the cream in the pie crust like so:
And that's pretty much it. Stick it in the fridge and you're done. Although it's basically like banana pudding in a pie crust. Seems like it's going to be pretty messy to serve up. Sorry, people I don't know that will be eating my dessert and who I possibly will know in the near future since you all go to my church. Hope this doesn't make things awkward.

Well, that's about it except for two more quick things. When fixing this in my kitchen today I noticed out the window that our neighbors have a gutter pipe that opens at the top....for all that groundwater that just defies gravity I guess:

And if you would like to be terrified, check out this picture I took attempting to show my disgust for bananas. It turned out more like a terrifying demon-possessed face from one of the many horror movies being advertised on TV these days.

Ready? Don't say I didn't warn you....





Ahhhhh!

27. Cook my way through Paula Deen’s cookbook, “The Lady and Sons Cookbook”

For the aforementioned UGA football gamewatching, I checked another Paula Deen recipe off the list.

Brie en Croute #2 (the other Brie en Croute recipe is much sweeter)

I'm starting to realize that following instructions isn't so easy....I can't resist adjusting the recipe a little....maybe getting through this cookbook won't be as easy as I thought. I mean I'm only 3 recipes in and already I can't stay on track....

Anyway, I love baked brie and it's so versatile in terms of taste - you can make it savory and salty or sweet. I love this recipe's combination of sweet jam with brie. And the nutty flavor from the toasted pecans was a perfect touch. It would be easy to sweeten this one up with brown sugar, too. I might try that next time.

So, what variations did I make?
-Phyllo dough instead of puff pastry
-I only buttered the outside of the dough
- I didn't twist it up all fancy - just tucked the dough underneath the cheese.
-I used fig jam - it is SO tasty.

Sorry, again, no pictures.

But enjoy this recipe for yourselves: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paula-deen/brie-en-croute-2-recipe/index.html

27. Cook my way through Paula Deen’s cookbook, “The Lady and Sons Cookbook”

Ok, of these 9 things pictured above, which one was not included in the recipes I made today from Paula Deen's cookbook?

If you guessed Honey Nut Toasted Oats, you are correct.

If you guessed butter, I don't think you know who Paula Deen is.

So, I'm rapidly discovering how simple the recipes in this book are to make. Of course, all recipes are just an exercise in following instructions, but I mean, y'all. These recipes are almost too easy.

I needed to take a dish to a Labor Day cookout this evening and just ended up really wanting to make two things, so I did. I mean what the heck, who doesn't want more food options when you can have them?

So, first up:
Cobblers really must be the best investment desserts. Cheap ingredients, minimal effort, amazing results. I mean look -- I put a stick of butter in a casserole dish:

Stuck the dish in a hot oven to melt the butter while I mixed these ingredients together:

Unfortunately I can't find White Lily and Dixie Crystals up here near Yankee land. We're slowly getting more Chick-fil-a's around here though, and Blue Bell ice cream has found it's way into some of the grocery stores, giving me hope that maybe one day soon I'll find White Lily and Dixie Crystals (and Duke's mayonnaise and that pimento cheese in the clear container -- you know that one brand I'm thinking of ---) on our shelves. But anyway, back to the easy cobbler. So after the butter is melted and you mix flour, sugar, and milk together, you just dump it in the dish, followed by canned peaches and syrup.

It then looks like this:
After 45 minutes of oven magic, the cobbler part rises to the top and you're done.

Assessment: I should've used a different dish b/c my cobbler topping cooked before the middle of the cobbler did, but it was still tasty.

On to recipe #2:

These are even easier than the cobbler. You take these ingredients and mix them all together:


Then you dump the mixture into muffin tins:



And the result is something like this (I made two different sizes of biscuits):

Assessment: The biscuits were great - the beer makes them moist and the sugar balances out the beer really nicely. Definitely a good, simple recipe to keep in mind.

And with that, I was ready for the cookout.



And the best part is that I had some cobbler leftovers to bring home. De-lish.

Enjoy these recipes for yourself:
Peach Cobbler
Bubba's Beer Biscuits

27. Cook my way through Paula Deen’s cookbook, “The Lady and Sons Cookbook”

Tonight was the first of what I have realized will be many, many cooking sessions in order to cook through The Lady & Sons Savannah Country Cookbook.

I've had this cookbook for several years now, and have read it a few times. Yes, I just used the word read in the same way I would say I read The Help. Sometimes I like to read cookbooks. I skim them, and don't always read in order, but I often find that my imagination and creativity are more stimulated by the thought of food and creating something by using a new recipe than typically happens when I read a novel.Maybe I am meant to cook food, or maybe I am just a lazy reader. The jury is still out on that.

In any case, I chose this cookbook because I thought I was pretty familiar with it, and it isn't terribly long -- I wasn't trying to mimick a Julie & Julia type feat here - just master some Southern recipes.

See, it doesn't look too daunting, right?

So today I decided to go easy on myself and do a recipe that I have cooked many times - I've even gotten to the point where I've modified it and shared the modified recipe with others --- this doesn't happen very often, as usually if I modify a recipe, it doesn't exactly work out.

But, in order to be true to Paula, I didn't want to modify the recipe too much, so my sister and I made Chicken Georgia, and served it with brown rice and green beans.
And of course, what Paula Deen recipe would be complete without her favorite sidekick:


Though this doesn't win many presentation points, it's such an easy and satisfying dish that I'd recommend you try it -- here was my final result:


If you would like the recipe, it's posted online here: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paula-deen/chicken-georgia-recipe/index.html