Cooking

My favorite recipes!

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Make Ahead Chicken Pot Pie

We had dinner guests planned for a Sunday afternoon a couple of months ago and I needed a make ahead meal. Chicken pot pie wouldn’t normally fall into that category but I’m pleased that I came up with a version that my whole family loved! I even liked it and I’ve never been a huge chicken pot pie fan.

This would be a great meal for holiday gatherings or when you are planning to have house guests as you can do all the prep in advance.

Here’s how I implemented my make ahead plan:

(Note: This made three 9-inch pies. So these proportions will feed a crowd. I even had some filling leftover that served as leftovers on top of egg noodles.)

Two Days Ahead: I cooked up a bunch of chicken leg quarters in my crockpot overnight so that I would have plenty of good meat and broth.

The Day before: I deboned my chicken and strained my broth. Then I assembled my veggies – garlic, onions, celery, carrots, potatoes, corn and peas. I prepared the filling by sautéing the onions and celery in olive oil with salt and pepper. Then I added 4-5 minced cloves of garlic along with the carrots and potatoes. After those had sautéed for a few minutes I sprinkled on about 2-3 tbls of flour and stirred until the vegetable mix was coated and all the flour was absorbed. Then I poured my chicken broth over the mix and added 3 cups of heavy cream. I let it simmer for a few minutes until the sauce began to thicken. Then I turned off the heat and let it cool. The veggies don’t need to be cooked all the way through at this point as it will finish cooking the day of. Once cooled I poured it all in my big crockpot and stirred in my shredded chicken meat. Then it went in the fridge overnight.

Next I prepared the crust. I used a recipe for freezer biscuits that I modified to use as a pie crust topping instead. Mix 6 cups of flour, 2 tbls baking soda, 1 tsp salt, 1 tbls sugar and stir in 4 cups of heavy cream. Let the dough rest for about 10 minutes after you’ve mixed it together. Then divide it in thirds and pat it out into three rough 10-inch circles about 1/2 inch thick. Be sure that the circles are big enough to go over the edges of your pie plate. Lay the dough out on cookie sheets and cover with wax paper or greased plastic wrap and freeze overnight.

The Day of: Pull the crock pot out of the fridge and set it to cook on high for about four hours. The veggies will finish cooking and then you’ll only need about 20 more minutes in the oven to cook the dough.

About a half our before you want to eat, fill your pie pans about 2/3 full with your hot, steamy filling from your crockpot. Add your frozen dough topper and cook each pie separately on 400 for 20 minutes. It’s not a bad idea to put a jelly roll pan under your pie plate just in case you accidentally overfill the pie plate and the sauce spills over like mine did. Your chicken out pie should cook up beautiful and tasty.

Now eat up and enjoy your guests! Your work is done.

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Bagel French Toast

I was looking to make something special for breakfast the last snow day. I raided the freezer and pulled out a package of cranberry bagels. What could I make ahead with those? Hmmm. Baked French Toast it is.

Butter a casserole dish and line it with bagels. I broke mine open and scattered them about.

Mix up some French Toast batter. For a whole package of bagels you’ll need about 3 cups of milk, 6-8 eggs, 1 tsp of vanilla, 2 tsp cinnamon and 1/2 tsp nutmeg. Mix it up. Pour it over the bagels. Cover and refrigerate overnight. Add some cream or milk in the morning if most of the liquid is absorbed and bake at 350 for about 35 minutes or until the mixture is set. Drizzle with syrup and enjoy.


(The other casserole pictured here is French Toast for my allergy kid who can’t have the regular stuff.)

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Banana Blueberry Muffins

Saturday has become my baking day. I’ve been making the standard muffin recipe in my King Arthur Flour cookbook but I decided to change it up this week and the results were delicious.

Only two words are needed to sdescribe these muffins – Banana Blueberry! Mmmm.

This recipe makes about 12 muffins.

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 cup whole wheat flour

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 tsp salt

1 tbl baking powder

2 cups blueberries

Mix dry ingredients.

In a separate bowl mix the following:

2 eggs

3/4 cups milk

1/4 cup oil

2 frozen bananas, thawed and mashed

Stir all the wet ingredients until well mixed. Add the wet to the dry stirring for about 20-30 seconds. The less you stir the less dense your muffins will be. 

Pour into muffin cups. I like to use reusable silicone cups which I spray with a little bit of olive oil. Bake at 400 for 20-22 minutes. 

I also made this same recipe with chocolate chips instead of blueberries and it was equally delicious. 

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Winter Shepherd’s Pie

This is an alternate take on Shepherd’s Pie. I used a mix of chicken, chard and cauliflower with sweet potatoes on the top.

I wasn’t sure how it would turn out but it was quite good and flavorful. It’s a good way to use up meat from a leftover roasted chicken.

If you want to give it a try, here’s what I did….

Start by boiling 4 medium sweet potatoes in their skin (I like to cook mine ahead in the crock pot ). Next sauté a small chopped onion in light olive oil. When the onions are slightly translucent add six cloves of minced garlic and salt and pepper to taste. Cook for 1-2 minutes more. Add finely chopped chard and cook until wilted. Then add chopped cauliflower. Add 3 cups pre-cooked shredded chicken. Sprinkle with 2 tbls of flour and stir until the flour has been absorbed by the oil. Then add 2 cups of chicken broth. Cook about 4-5 minutes or until thickened. Transfer the meat mixture to a casserole dish. Remove the skins of your cooked sweet potatoes and mash a fork adding 1/2 tsp of salt and 1 1/2-2 cups heavy cream. Spoon on top of your meat mixture and heat at 350 until heated through.

Eat up! Even my one year old loved it.

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My favorite homemade bread

My favorite homemade bread couldn’t be easier. Get out your mixing bowls. It only takes a few minutes.

3/4 tbl. Active dry yeast

3/4 tbl. Sea salt

1.5 cups warm water

3 cups all purpose, whole wheat or spelt flour, plus a little extra for kneading later

Measure out the salt and yeast. Pour in the warm water and stir to dissolve. Measure out your flour and stir with a wooden spoon until the dough is combined.

Cover with a dish towel and let rise for 1-1.5 hours. Empty dough onto a floured surface and knead until the dough forms a smooth ball. This dough does best as a free form peasant loaf. Transfer the ball to a baking stone or cookie sheet sprinkled with cornmeal. If time allows cover with a tea towel and let rise for another hour. When it’s baking time, preheat the oven to 400. Slit the top of the loaf several times with a serrated knife before putting in the oven. Bake for 30-35 minutes until golden brown.

Let the loaf cool some before serving. If you try to slice before it has cooled it will not hold it’s shape and will squish down as you cut into it. 

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Dinner is done! Hearty beef stew and homemade bread. 


Dinner is done. And the best thing is that it’s only 10:00 in the morning. 

Homemade bread is thawing on the counter just waiting to be devoured this evening. The beef stew is simmering in the crock pot full of chunks of beef, red potatoes, carrots, onions, broccoli, celery, 8 cloves of garlic, and my home made beef stock and vegetable broth. 

I can’t wait to eat tonight. The meat, veggies and broth are going to make for a delicious and flavorful dinner full of good nutrition, vitamins and minerals. Mmmmm. 

What’s for dinner at your house tonight?

Homemade veggie stock

Homemade bone broth

Homemade Flour Tortillas
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Homemade Flour Tortillas

Mexican and Tex-Mex food is a staple in my cooking rotation. But even something as basic as packaged flour tortillas are out for us right now where food reactions are concerned. 

So for the first time ever I made my own. The actual cooking time took me about 30 minutes. Total prep time probably 1 hour 15 minutes, but most of they was time for the dough to rest. 

It’s not hard but it is a bit labor intensive. But it gives you control over the ingredients so it’a a win.

First mix up your dough.

3 cups all purpose flour

1 tsp. salt

2 tbls. baking powder

1 stick butter cut in with a pastry blender

(Every other tortilla recipe I found on google called for either lard or vegetable shortening. Well, I have one kid who can’t have pork and one who is super sensitive to palm/coconut oils so neither of those would work for me. This is why I chose butter. Use the fat of your choice that is solid at room temperature.)

I also found that the butter blended better if Inused my fingers at the end. You don’t want beads of butter like in most baked goods. You want it to be thoroughly blended so that when you pinch some of the flour together it sticks together like wet sand.

Once your flour mixture is the right consistency pour in 1 1/4 cups warm water and mix until the dough forms a ball in the bottom of the bowl. It should be a moist dough but not wet and sticky. Cover and let the dough rest 20 minutes.

After the testing period, pinch off bits of dough and form into 1 1/2 inch balls. Cover and let the balls rest 15 minutes.


Prepare a floured board for rolling out the balls and heat a cast iron skillet or griddle hot until water sizzles on the surface. 


Roll out the balls very thin using only as much flour as needed to keep them from sticking. 


Lay flat on your skillet with no oil. Once the top forms bubbles flip to the other side and cook for about a minute.


If there is residual flour on your skillet rub that off with a dry cloth before putting the tortilla on or the flour will burn.


This recipe made me about 30 tortillas. They are going to make a great bread substitute. I think I’m going to try using less flour when I roll them out next time as they ended up being a little dry. But they tasted great as soft tacos for dinner and were light and pliable. And I have enough for dinner tomorrow. Yay!

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Cranberry Muffins

So my allergy kid is causing me to get creative. He’s reacting to…. well lots of things, so everything is suspect right now. No store bought baked goods for us. I would fudge and buy muffins from the bakery once every few months. Since that’s not an option right now I busted out the muffin pans. I haven’t made muffins in, well, years. The King Arthur Flour cookbook gave me a refresher course and then I changed the ingredients based on what he could have.

Ready, set, go….


2 cups flour of your choice (I used All Purpose because that is what he is tolerating best right now)

Scant 1/2 cup sugar

1/2 tsp. salt

2 tsp. baking powder

1 cup fresh ripe cranberries (or berry of your choice)

Combine the dry ingredients and mix the cranberries in until coated with flour. Next, in a separate bowl combine…

1 cup milk

6 egg yolks (or 2 whole eggs)

1/4 cup light olive oil (or oil of your choice) 

Whisk together until combined. Pour over dry ingredients and mix only to the count of 20 even if your batter is still lumpy, that’s okay. The less you mix the fluffier the muffins will be.

Pour into lightly greased muffin cups (I use silicone ones) until 2/3 full. Per King Arthur’s instructions Inpreheated the oven to 500 and then reduced the heat to 400 when I put the muffins in. Cook for 20 minutes.


I used these mini silicone cupcake molds to use my extra batter. I cooked them at 400 for 14 minutes. They are a great size for travel or for the one year old. 

Happy baking everyone!

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Bone and Veggie Broth

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Break out your crock pots everyone! Whoever invented the crock pot has my eternal thanks. It makes what I’m about to tell you so EASY. I had a great time at the grocery store today. In part because I only had two of my four children with me which made shopping much easier. 🙂 But, otherwise, I was gathering all the fixins for some DELICIOUS broth. Ahhhh. Mmmmm.

I’m making two kinds – beef and vegetable. Let me tell you how to make your own.

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Beef stock with beef bones, beef marrow, garlic, onions and leeks.

Beef Stock:
Buy about 5 pounds of various beef bones from your butcher. Many stores will have packages set out labeled as soup bones. I bought one package of “soup bones,” two packages of neck bones, and two packages of marrow bones. If they don’t have any out, ring the bell at the meat department and tell them what you want. They can cut it up for you in minutes. When you get home dump all the bones all in the crock pot and add one head of garlic unpeeled and chopped in half, one leek, 1 cup onion quartered, 1.5 tsp sea salt, 1/4 tsp. pepper. Pour cold water over it all and cook on low for 12-18 hours. When cool either strain and freeze or follow my instructions for my favorite way to preserve broth – make your own bullion cubes.

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Veggie stock – beet greens, potato peels, onions with peels, garlic with peels, carrot and potato peelings, and leeks.

Vegetable Stock:
I don’t know why I’ve never thought to do this before but I recently saw an idea online to save all your vegetable scraps in the freezer and when you have a full bag use them to make veggie broth. That’s what I did and it is currently simmering away. Couldn’t be easier. Dump in all your scraps, cover with water, add 1 tsp. sea salt, 1/4 tsp. pepper. In this batch I added potato peelings, carrot peelings and ends, celery tops and bottoms, beet greens, leeks, onion tops and peelings, and one head of garlic with peels. You could really add anything. If you add peelings just be sure that you wash the vegetables before you peel them. I used the bag of veggie scraps from my freezer and just from putting these batches of broth together this afternoon I almost have another full bag in the freezer waiting for next time. I would say that the essentials to veggie broth that make it great are celery, leeks and garlic. Don’t skip the leeks. I buy them just for broth. They make it that much better.

Freeze them for later.
Save those scraps!

I’m going to be spooning this into my meals and the mouth of my kids when they are sick. My allergy kid is struggling right now from some recent food reactions so I’m hoping the extra vitamins and minerals will give him the boost he needs and help his gut heal and get back to normal. The healing properties of this broth can’t be equaled. Plus they are sooooo delicious. Enjoy.

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Leftover turkey? Turkey tetrazzini anyone?

My grandmother might consider it sacrilege to her recipe, or she might consider me practical and frugal, but I’m turning her chicken spaghetti recipe into turkey tetrazzini Friday after Thanksgiving. Let’s hope for the latter. Follow the recipe for chicken spaghetti and simply substitute turkey meat instead. You could even make some delicious turkey broth with that turkey carcass. Simply simmer it on the stove with some garlic, onions, salt and pepper, or do what I would do and cook it overnight in your crock pot. Mmmm. Broth makes great fall food. Enjoy!

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One pot leftover skillet dinner

This skillet recipe is a great way to use up holiday leftovers. The recipe listed is a Mexican skillet that calls for sausage but it’s just as good with chicken or beef. I made it with some leftover grilled  chicken on Sunday and it may show up on our dinner table later in the week with some turkey. Hint, hint for Thanksgiving leftovers.

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Apple Cinnamon Pancakes

img_0195-1It’s a sunny Saturday morning, so I decided to use up some of our apples from apple picking this fall to make some yummy Apple Cinnamon Pancakes.

Start with this base pancake recipe:

(This recipe makes a large batch which I refrigerate and eat on all week.)

4-6 egg yolks (carefully separated and rinsed with cool water to remove any egg white residue)
1/2 cup light olive oil
2 cups milk
2 tbl. white or apple cider vinegar
1 tsp. vanilla
1 tsp. salt
Stir the above ingredients until combined. Then add…

1 cup whole wheat flour
2 cups all purpose flour
2 tbls. cinnamon (optional)
2 tsp. baking soda

Combine all the dry ingredients and mix with the wet. Peel and finely chop 3-4 small apples (about 2 cups worth).  Fold into your batter mixture. Cook in small circles in your favorite cast iron skillet and serve. They are yummy with butter, syrup and even a layer of almond butter if so desired. Eat away. We saved some for breakfast tomorrow.

If you have food sensitivities, you could also use this Allergy-Friendly Recipe as your base and add apples to it as well.

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