My cafe has been pretty quiet lately. Got back from Rockaway Beach last week. It's just South of San Francisco on Highway 1, the Pacific Coast Highway. It's pretty and there are lots of surfers. We stayed at the Best Western Lighthouse. Not bad. You could hear the surf.
I'm thinking about seeing if I can get my Doctor to prescribe that drug they advertise now on TV that makes you throw a football better. The one where the guy is trying to throw a football through a tire and he's doing poorly until he takes the pill. Then he shoots a few passes through the tire and an attractive woman comes by and hugs him. Yeah baby that's the ticket.
May....be I'll cook some ritalin today or share a recipe for turkey with psilocybin mushroom stuffing. I lived in a communal type situation in the early 70's and someone did that turkey dressing for Thanksgiving. That happened to be a Thanksgiving I went home. so all I did was ate until I couldn't stay upright (my mom is a great cook). She has a good sense of humor too and an appreciation for the absurd. She was telling me about a story she had read about someone who was on trial for cooking up some crystal meth and his defense was that he was trying to make his own ritalin. I guess he was just a victim of the rising cost of healthcare and poor chemistry skills.
I'm trying to attract a family crowd or at least some truckers who aren't too hopped up on speed to my cafe so I'll cook something less exotic for the blue plate special today. I'm supposed to quit eating so much fat because I'm getting so fat so I imagine this recipe is not an every week sort of thing for me nowadays but I think this is a good thing for once in a while or to fatten up some of you overly skinny people.
Good old chicken and dumplings.
Cut up a chicken (remove feathers, beak, feet, insides..first)
Ohhhh this is sounding gross
Buy a cut up chicken at Safeway
Put some flour, salt and pepper in a bag
Shake the chicken in the bag o flour
Heat up a good sized frying pan with some good oil or not so good as you prefer (I'm rambling..what do you expect at 4 am)
Carefully place the chicken in the hot oil and fry it up baby to a nice brown color
Place the fried chicken aside
Add enough flour to your chicken grease in the frying pan and stir the grease/flour to form pea-sized balls
Mix some chicken boullion with hot water...or just add it to the pan
The boullion gives the resulting gravy a nice yellow color and more taste. I personally like the artificial taste of boullion more than a chicken stock you make.
Add milk and water to the roux and stir until it bubbles
Put the chicken back in your gravy
Make some dumplings using Bisquick and the recipe on the back of the box
Drop the dumpling dough into the gravy/chicken mix using a tablespoon and your fingers try to estimate how big each dumpling should be to end up with equal sized dumplings that cover the top
Put a lid on the mixture for awhile and let it simmer until the dumplings look done, about 30 minutes maybe
What would be good with chicken and dumplings? Maybe some corn or peas, coleslaw and a nice cold ginger ale. I think some sort of jello salad would be traditionally served with this if you were making a big ta do. It's really so filling and tasty you could just have it for a meal.
Happy cooking and happy Thursday...
