Category Archives: Recipes

Making comfort food in the winter

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chicken mushroom and broccoliCooking is not my thing. What I dread more than the actual cooking is the clean up after the meal. My goal for most meals is to cook a simple, delicious meal with very little clean-up. Therefore, one pot meals are my favorite. Winter seems to scream for stick to your ribs, comfort foods made in one pot. I love them! One of my favorites is a chicken mushroom broccoli dish I’ve been making for years, though I am not sure when I came up with this recipe. If memory serves me, I think one of my roommates from college used to make it and I have twisted it into my own dish.

Anyway, if you need some comfort food, which is delicious and easy to prepare, perhaps you should try this.

Chicken Mushroom with Broccoli

I love our cast-iron Dutch oven for this meal. If you do not have one, simply use a large heavy casserole dish.

Ingredients

  • 2 tbsp canola oil or other oil that won’t burn at a high temperature
  • Chicken, cut up– enough to feed your family
  • 2 cups of cracked wheat, quinoa, rice or other grain
  • 3 cups of chicken broth (if there’s not enough homemade handy, we use organic, free range, low sodium chicken broth by Pacific or Imagine)
  • 1 cup cream of mushroom soup (again if you don’t have any homemade, we use creamy Portobello mushroom soup by Imagine)
  • 1 cup of sliced mushrooms (be adventurous, use several varieties)
  • 4-6 cloves of garlic cut in half (always let your garlic sit for 10 minutes after it has been chopped/minced/crushed to allow for the chemical reaction that creates allicin, which is the chemical behind all of garlic’s health-promoting benefits –immune boosting, antibacterial, antimicrobial, cardio-tonic, and anticancer. Here’s what happens: a sulfur-based compound called alliin and an enzyme called alliinase are separated in the garlic’s cell structure when it is whole. Cutting garlic ruptures the cells and releases these elements, allowing them to come in contact and they form the magical new compound called allicin. If you don’t wait, you don’t get the healing properties.)
  • 2 cup broccoli, cut up
  • 1 cup of carrots, cut up
  • 4-5 inch strips of astragalous root (they look like tongue depressors) – Not a must, but a great herb for boosting your immune system. I like adding it to all my stews and soups during this time of year, to help us fight off any cold and flu viruses. It is not meant to be eaten, only for releasing its medicinal qualities, so remove before serving. You can find it at a Mountain Rose Herbs or Chinese herbal shops.

Coat pan with oil, sear chicken until skin is brown and crispy, then remove. Pre-heat oven to 375°. Add grain to Dutch-oven or oven proof dish (if using quinoa, wash and soak in water for 15 minutes prior to using, it helps soften it up). Add chicken broth, astragalous root, garlic, ½ of the mushrooms, ½ of the broccoli, ½ of the carrots, and then lay seared chicken (skin up) on top. Add remainder of mushrooms, broccoli, and carrots, then pour cream of mushroom soup on top, cover, and put in oven for 30-40 minutes, until chicken is done and quinoa is cooked.

Enjoy this yummy dish and rejoice in the fact that you only have one pot to clean!

Making treats for Dylan

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Dylan has separation anxiety. One theory is to give a dog a treat that keeps them occupied while we are gone. Some people give their dogs a Kong that are stuffed with treats that are hard for their dog to remove; others give their dogs puzzle boxes that require a series of moves/taps to extract treats. Most of the toys are made out of synthetic materials and it just seemed wrong to me to have Dylan chew on synthetic toys.  I gave him a raw cow bone, which he loved. Every day when I returned I would put it in the refrigerator so it did not rot too fast. What I noticed was that he just couldn’t get all the marrow out and would start to chip the bone apart, so that seemed like a bad idea too. Mike made some wonderful Vietnamese Beef Pho soup one day and used a fresh meat bone for the broth. When he was done using the bone for the soup, we gave it to Dylan and he loved it. I also noticed it was a lot more solid than the raw bone and did not splinter. So I decided to stuff it with treats, you can call it a “natural version of the Kong.”

I started with stuffing milk bones into the cow bone but they just slid out. What I needed to do was to find a treat that could plug the bone on either side, creating a challenge for Dylan, occupying him while we are gone. I tried a bunch of treats from the store but nothing really worked well, or the ones with natural ingredients were just too expensive.

Therefore, I decided to make my own.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I searched the internet and books in the library for examples that I experimented with. I finally adapted a recipe by Anne Jonna from book her “The Healthy Dog Cookbook”.  It contains all the elements of a great recipe – easy, limited effort, natural ingredients, yummy.  I am able to shape the treat into balls so I can create the perfect plug for the cow bone Dylan loves them.  Even Mathew and his friend enjoyed them, hence I needed to put them away and explain that they were for Dylan. Unfortunately, the whole exercise has been futile. The goal was to occupy Dylan while we were away, thus reducing his anxiety.  Although he loves the bone filled with treats, sadly, he does not eat the bone while we are away; he waits until we get back and then eats it. When I let him out of his crate, he simply runs out with the bone in his mouth, pees and then goes back into the crate to work on his bone. Cesar Millan, where are you when we need you?

Peanut Butter Ball Treat

Mash up 1 banana

½ cup water

3 heaping tbsp. peanut butter

1 ½ cups whole-wheat flour

Mix ingredients, wet hands and roll into balls.

Bake 350° for 20-25 minutes

Makes about 24

Store in jar, keeps for about a week, but they disappears faster, especially when boys find them.