Eliza's Corner

Chicken and Dumplings

Elizabeth — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:00:47 +0000

One of my favorite dishes growing up was my Grandmother’s Chicken and Dumplings. This recipe has evolved since I got married into a combination of that recipe and my father-in-law’s recipe that C loves so much. C likes it more of a soup variety and I like it when the sauce is a little thicker so this recipe seems to do both because the day it’s made the sauce is a little bit more of a soup and it thickens up overnight in the fridge in time for leftovers a few days later. C asked me to write the recipe down for a friend of his so I thought I’d post it as a way for me to keep track of it. The amounts are approximate since this is one of the few recipes I can do with out actual measurements.

Chicken and Dumplings

Ingredients:

1 whole Chicken (3 – 3 1/2 lbs)
2 cups of flour
1 tsp of salt
1 tsp baking powder
2 cups chicken broth

Directions:
Boil chicken until it’s ready to fall off the bone (usually about hour to an hour and a half)

In a medium bowl (about 15-20 before the chicken is done) combine flour, salt, baking powder, and broth from the boiling chicken. Mix together until you have a sticky dough (in some cases you may need to add more broth if dough isn’t sticky).

Flour counter surface and roll out dough. It doesn’t have to be perfect just make sure it isn’t very thin or extremely thick. Cut dough into squares using a pizza cutter or knife.

Remove chicken from broth, add about two cups of water if there isn’t a lot of liquid left in the pot, and place on plate. Let the liquid come to a simmering boil and drop the dumplings in the water. Stir occasionally so the water doesn’t boil over. While the dumplings are cooking shred the chicken into small pieces, toss the bones and skin, and add the shredded chicken back into the pot. Let simmer for about 15 to 20 minutes to let the sauce thicken and everything mix together.

Thickening Tip: add a spoonful of flour to a small (1/8 cup) amount of milk and stir until flour is dissolved and add to pot to thicken sauce.

Quick Cooking Tip: add two cans of refrigerated biscuits cut into four pieces each and add to water instead of homemade dumplings.

Salisbury Steak with Gravy

Elizabeth — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:00:00 +0000

I love to cook but I never have the time so I have had a subscription to Simple & Delicious (formerly Quick Cooking) for several years. The past year or so a lot of the recipes really haven’t been anything C and I would eat but I discovered this one in March of 2006 and both of us really enjoyed it. It seems to be a versatile dish that can be served with just about anything. The recipe called for fat-free milk and saltines but I just used the 2% that I usually buy and I picked up the whole wheat saltines that I found at the store. The gravy I substituted the jar I found at the store of beef gravy and I don’t think it was fat-free either.

Prep: 15 minutes
Bake: 50 minutes

Ingredients:
1/2 cup milk
14 saltines, crushed
2 tablespoons dried minced onion
2 teaspoons dried parsley flakes
1 pound lean ground beef
1 jar (12 oz) beef gravy
2 tablespoons ketchup
2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
1/4 teaspoon pepper

In large bowl, combine milk, saltines, onion, parsley. Crumble beef over mixture and mix well. Shape into four patties. Place in an baking dish coated with nonstick cooking spray.

In small bowl, combine the gravy, ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, and pepper; pour over patties. Bake, uncovered, at 350 degrees for 50-55 minutes or until meat is no longer pink.

Yield: 4 Servings
Source: Simple & Delicious (Mar-Apr 2006)

Cornbread

Elizabeth — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 18:00:06 +0000

A family recipe from my grandmother. I keep misplacing it so now that shouldn’t be a problem.

1 cup corn meal
1/2 cup flour
1 T baking powder
1 t salt
1 egg
milk to the right consistency.

Heat oven to 425 degrees and bake for 25 minutes

Pumpkin Pie

Elizabeth — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 09:50:26 +0000

This originally came from the usa weekend insert in the Sunday paper back in 2001. I usually follow the recipe pretty closely but I have added a full can of evaporated milk a few times, added or didn’t add enough spices, and a couple of other goofs but it always comes out tasting really good!

This recipe calls for a prebaked pie shell so be sure and follow the directions on the back of the pie shell before you start cooking the filling!

1 can (15 ounces) 100% pure pumpkin
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. ground ginger
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. allspice
2 large eggs, plus 2 yolks
1 cup canned evaporated milk
1 can (14 ounces) sweetened condensed milk
9-inch pie shell, baked

Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position. Heat oven to 300 degrees. In a saucepan, heat pumpkin, salt and spices to blend flavors, about 5 minutes. Add milks; cook until heated through. Purée eggs and yolks in a blender. With blender running, add pumpkin filling a spoonful at a time at first, then faster as eggs heat up; blend to form a silky texture. Pour warm filling into prebaked pie shell. Bake until a thin-bladed knife inserted near center of pie comes out clean, about 45 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool on a wire rack.

The One where Shel tagged me with the Halloween Meme!

Elizabeth — Sun, 08 Oct 2006 21:11:02 +0000

Shel tagged me the other day with this meme so I thought I’d give it a try.

1. What’s the scariest movie you’ve ever seen?

Over time I’ve found that I like movies that mess with your senses rather then blood and gore type that ends up all over the screen for 90 minutes with little or no plot to speak of in the end. I went through the phase of watching the Nightmare on Elm Street series back when I was in high school. All of this believe it or not is leading to the one movie that I know really creeped me out when I was younger, really young, was The Watcher in the Woods. How’s that for irony! I was a little freaked out by The Grudge a year or so ago but the first movie that comes to mind that really scared me was a Disney production when I was eight!

2. What was your favorite Halloween Costume from childhood?

Gypsy! My childhood version was one of those with the plastic skirt that by the end of the evening had you sweating and wishing the night was over. I had the opportunity to dress up for Halloween last year for work and I found a pirate costume that transformed into the perfect Gypsy!

3. If you had an unlimited budget, what would your Fantasy Costume be for this Halloween?

Fantasy Costume..
should freak my co-workers out
be fun to wear
be reusable in the future
should be…I’m still working on WHAT it should/would be at this point.

4. When was the last time you went Trick Or Treating?

When I was in seventh grade. My best friend Brandy and I took my little brother trick-or-treating after we all got home from my brother’s school carnival. Three blocks from the house we all three walked up to this one house that had a white coffin on the porch for decoration or at least we thought it was just for decoration. My little brother rang the doorbell and waited while Brandy and I stood behind him talking about “cute boys” at school when the coffin opened and this big mummy jumped out and yelled and growled, trust me it was more then just BOO, at us. All three of us took off running at breakneck speed down the street. My memory is kind of vague at this point if we continued trick or treating further down the street or went home.

5. What’s your favorite Halloween Candy?

Candy Corn!

6. Tell us about a scary nightmare you had.

I don’t have nightmares very often but the one’s that scare the living daylights out of me are any of the ones that involve being trapped in a location that I can’t get out of with snakes trying to attack me. I have one from childhood where I’m stuck in a blue pickup truck, I grew up in Texas so those of you familiar with old pickup trucks should know kind of the model I’m talking about, with the doors locked and a white snake with red eyes is slithering up from behind the seat to get me. Yeah I know the obvious out would be to open the doors but the locks won’t open and it has friends outside.

7. What is your Supernatural Fear?

I don’t really have a specific fear of the supernatural because I’m actually very interested in ghost stories and locations. The stories C and I come across about the house telling you to get out are a little creepy and the problems most of those stories deal with I can tell you I’d be packed and moved as quickly as possible.

8. What is your Creepy-Crawlie Fear?

See nightmare question above.

9. Tell us about a time when you saw a ghost, or heard something go Bump in the night.

Both C and I have had experiences in the past together and before we met in 1995. Our first apartment we had C found a 1928 Texas license plate outside the apartment a couple of months before we were married. He started having strange things happen like the tv in the front room moving about two inches back and some dishes that were in the cabinet above the stove move down to the end of the cabinets by themselves. Shortly after we married we were sitting on the couch watching tv when the doorknob on the front door proceeded to turn all the way to the left and the door opened about a foot and then the doorknob turned back to it’s original position. The catch being that the couch was right next to the front door so the doorknob was not that far from my head at the time. I wasn’t working at the time and during the day I was making the beds at the back of the apartment and heard someone call my name from the front room. I was shortly joined by Tiger and Abigail in the bedroom because whatever it was freaked them out. Soon after giving the license plate to a friend of C’s we stopped having problems. It really makes us wonder what the story was behind the license plate!

10. Would you ever stay in a real Haunted House overnight?

C and I have talked about staying at some of the haunted hotels and bed and breakfasts we’ve seen on tv and read about in the past. I think it would be interesting to see if something actually happened.

11. Are you a traditionalist (just a face) Jack O’Lantern Carver, or do you get really creative with your pumpkins?

mostly a traditionalist in the past but I haven’t carved a pumpkin in a long time since people started busting pumpkins yearly on Halloween.

12. How much do you decorate your home for Halloween?

Depends on the year! We’ve decorated the windows and door with pumpkins and wreaths and spider webs to nothing due to it being a wierd don’t feel like decorating year.

13. What do you want on your Tombstone?

What’s next?

Tagging anyone who happens upon this post and would like to tackle it! Feel free to trackback your answers or leave them in the comments.

Speaking of ghosts if you have the Sci-Fi channel be sure and check out Ghost Hunters. Season three starts this Wednesday, October 11 at 9/8C. TAPS uses scientific measures to investigate haunted houses throughout the country. Last years episode from the St. Augustine lighthouse was really cool! I think C and I still have it on the DVR.

Review IMDB Top 250 Films – mark what I’ve seen and pick 10 films I haven’t and watch them

Elizabeth — Sun, 08 Oct 2006 05:44:24 +0000

I checked earlier and this is the IMDB Top 250 Films as of October 7,2006. The movies on the list that I’ve seen so far are in bold and the movies I’m planning on seeing are italicized and listed at the end of the post.

1. The Godfather (1972)
2. The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
3. The Godfather: Part II (1974)
4. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
5. Casablanca (1942)
6. Schindler’s List (1993)
7. Buono, il brutto, il cattivo, Il (1966)
8. Shichinin no samurai (1954)
9. Pulp Fiction (1994)
10. Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
11. Star Wars (1977)
12. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)
13. Rear Window (1954)
14. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)
15. 12 Angry Men (1957)
16. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
17. The Usual Suspects (1995)
18. Cidade de Deus (2002)
19. Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
20. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
21. Citizen Kane (1941)
22. Psycho (1960)
23. Goodfellas (1990)
24. C’era una volta il West (1968)
25. North by Northwest (1959)
26. Memento (2000)
27. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
28. Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
29. Fabuleux destin d’Amélie Poulain, Le (2001)
30. Sunset Blvd. (1950)
31. It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
32. Fight Club (1999)
33. American Beauty (1999)
34. The Matrix (1999)
35. Vertigo (1958)
36. Taxi Driver (1976)
37. Apocalypse Now (1979)
38. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)
39. Paths of Glory (1957)
40. Se7en (1995)
41. To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
42. Untergang, Der (2004)
43. Léon (1994)
44. Chinatown (1974)
45. American History X (1998)
46. The Third Man (1949)
47. The Pianist (2002)
48. Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi (2001)
49. Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
50. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)
51. Boot, Das (1981)
52. The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957)
53. Hotel Rwanda (2004)
54. M (1931)
55. The Maltese Falcon (1941)
56. L.A. Confidential (1997)
57. Requiem for a Dream (2000)
58. Alien (1979)
59. A Clockwork Orange (1971)
60. Metropolis (1927)
61. Rashômon (1950)
62. Double Indemnity (1944)
63. Reservoir Dogs (1992)
64. The Shining (1980)
65. Saving Private Ryan (1998)
66. Sin City (2005)
67. Singin’ in the Rain (1952)
68. The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
69. Modern Times (1936)
70. Raging Bull (1980)
71. Aliens (1986)
72. Rebecca (1940)
73. Some Like It Hot (1959)
74. The Great Escape (1963)
75. Million Dollar Baby (2004)
76. All About Eve (1950)
77. Touch of Evil (1958)
78. Vita è bella, La (1997)
79. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
80. Amadeus (1984)
81. The Sting (1973)
82. Jaws (1975)
83. Batman Begins (2005)
84. Strangers on a Train (1951)
85. On the Waterfront (1954)
86. Forrest Gump (1994)
87. Sjunde inseglet, Det (1957)
88. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
89. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
90. The Incredibles (2004)
91. Nuovo cinema Paradiso (1989)
92. The Wizard of Oz (1939)
93. Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)
94. Braveheart (1995)
95. The Apartment (1960)
96. Blade Runner (1982)
97. The Elephant Man (1980)
98. City Lights (1931)
99. Full Metal Jacket (1987)
100. High Noon (1952)
101. Notorious (1946)
102. Donnie Darko (2001)
103. The Big Sleep (1946)
104. Crash (2004/I)
105. Ran (1985)
106. Fargo (1996)
107. Finding Nemo (2003)
108. The Great Dictator (1940)
109. Salaire de la peur, Le (1953)
110. Once Upon a Time in America (1984)
111. Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi (1983)
112. Cool Hand Luke (1967)
113. Mononoke-hime (1997)
114. The Sixth Sense (1999)
115. Kill Bill: Vol. 2 (2004)
116. Annie Hall (1977)
117. Unforgiven (1992)
118. Notti di Cabiria, Le (1957)
119. Ben-Hur (1959)
120. Oldboy (2003)
121. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
122. Wo hu cang long (2000)
123. Yojimbo (1961)
124. Back to the Future (1985)
125. The Killing (1956)
126. The Princess Bride (1987)
127. Life of Brian (1979)
128. V for Vendetta (2006)
129. The Green Mile (1999)
130. The Deer Hunter (1978)
131. It Happened One Night (1934)
132. The Graduate (1967)
133. Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949)
134. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
135. Platoon (1986)
136. Per qualche dollaro in più (1965)
137. Ladri di biciclette (1948)
138. Diaboliques, Les (1955)
139. The African Queen (1951)
140. Gladiator (2000)
141. Battaglia di Algeri, La (1966)
142. The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
143. Amores perros (2000)
144. Toy Story 2 (1999)
145. Shadow of a Doubt (1943)
146. Brief Encounter (1945)
147. Gandhi (1982)
148. Lola rennt (1998)
149. The Night of the Hunter (1955)
150. Smultronstället (1957)
151. The General (1927)
152. Duck Soup (1933)
153. The Conversation (1974)
154. 8½ (1963)
155. Harvey (1950)
156. Stand by Me (1986)
157. Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922)
158. Cabinet des Dr. Caligari., Das (1920)
159. Patton (1970)
160. Die Hard (1988)
161. Glory (1989)
162. Dog Day Afternoon (1975)
163. The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
164. Belle et la bête, La (1946)
165. Ying xiong (2002)
166. Spartacus (1960)
167. Gone with the Wind (1939)
168. Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005)
169. Cinderella Man (2005)
170. Finding Neverland (2004)
171. The Philadelphia Story (1940)
172. The Gold Rush (1925)
173. A Christmas Story (1983)
174. The Grapes of Wrath (1940)
176. Groundhog Day (1993)
177. Trainspotting (1996)
178. Mystic River (2003)
179. Magnolia (1999)
180. Before Sunset (2004)
181. Shrek (2001)
182. Tengoku to jigoku (1963)
183. Out of the Past (1947)
184. The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
185. The Lady Vanishes (1938)
186. Big Fish (2003)
187. Walk the Line (2005)
188. The Exorcist (1973)
189. King Kong (1933)
190. Idi i smotri (1985)
191. The Hustler (1961)
192. The Wild Bunch (1969)
193. The Big Lebowski (1998)
194. Du rififi chez les hommes (1955)
195. Little Miss Sunshine (2006)
196. Twelve Monkeys (1995)
197. Judgment at Nuremberg (1961)
198. Quatre cents coups, Les (1959)
199. Ed Wood (1994)
200. Heat (1995)
201. Kumonosu jô (1957)
202. Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
203. Sleuth (1972)
204. In the Heat of the Night (1967)
205. The Terminator (1984)
206. Stalag 17 (1953)
207. Snatch. (2000)
208. Anatomy of a Murder (1959)
209. Hable con ella (2002)
210. Hotaru no haka (1988)
211. Witness for the Prosecution (1957)
212. Young Frankenstein (1974)
213. The Straight Story (1999)
214. Manhattan (1979)
215. Sling Blade (1996)
216. The Lost Weekend (1945)
217. Umberto D. (1952)
218. Himmel über Berlin, Der (1987)
219. Sweet Smell of Success (1957)
220. Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
221. Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)
222. The Thing (1982)
223. Monsters, Inc. (2001)
224. Inherit the Wind (1960)
225. All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
226. Roman Holiday (1953)
227. Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998)
228. Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
229. Sherlock Jr. (1924)
230. Frankenstein (1931)
231. Haine, La (1995)
232. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006)
233. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962)
234. Central do Brasil (1998)
235. Bringing Up Baby (1938)
236. Scarface (1983)
237. The Searchers (1956)
238. No Man’s Land (2001)
239. A Man for All Seasons (1966)
240. Ikiru (1952)
241. Doctor Zhivago (1965)
242. Brazil (1985)
243. Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
244. Festen (1998)
245. Harold and Maude (1971)
246. A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
247. Ángel exterminador, El (1962)
248. Planet of the Apes (1968)
249. The Man Who Would Be King (1975)
250. His Girl Friday (1940)

So I ended up with 10 15 Films. Some I’ve wanted to see and a few I’ve heard about but never watched due time or interest when I first heard about a movie I double checked Amazon and it looks like all but Little Miss Sunshine are on DVD.

The Shawshank Redemption (1994)
Casablanca (1942)
Schindler’s List (1993)
The Pianist (2002)
Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939)
Notorious (1946)
V for Vendetta (2006)
Harvey (1950)
Before Sunset (2004)
The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)
Walk the Line (2005)
Little Miss Sunshine (2006)
Annie Hall (1977)
Crash (2004/I)

Mr. Rabbit, Alarm Clocks, and I’m not naming him…Yet!

Elizabeth — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 05:42:15 +0000

Mr. Rabbit gets a clean cage

So far nothing in the paper, around the neighborhood, and no word from the animal shelter. So for now we still haven’t had any luck finding Mr. Rabbit’s owners. I’m trying not to become to attached but I think I’ve already passed that fine line because my evenings have evolved into spending time in the living room watching tv with C and the “girls” and spending the end of the evening cleaning Mr. Rabbit’s cage, who I’m happy to report has taken to using the litter box in the corner of his cage which makes it 100 times easier to clean then last week’s attempts, and talking and petting him for a few minutes before I start closing up the house for the night. Mr. Rabbit really cracked up C Monday morning. We had a server crash that morning so I was gone for about 20 minutes which means C had to get up and turn off our alarm clock when the second alarm went off at 8:20 a.m. I normally turn off the alarm because it’s just easier on the both of us in the morning. When the alarm went off C let it go off for about four minutes and he said there was this aweful banging from the second bedroom. Mr. Rabbit, like the cats, is not a morning rabbit because he really did not like the racket from the alarm clock in our bedroom. Once C transferred into his chair and turned the alarm off Mr. Rabbit quieted down. He was asleep again by the time I got back to the house.

Mr Rabbit inside

I’ve resisted naming him but so far my father-in-law has suggested Sydney and I came up with Harry in honor of the rabbit from one of my favorite Jerry Lewis films “The Geisha Boy”. A lot will depend on if we still have him in the next month or two because I don’t want to name someone else’s pet and confuse the poor animal if the owners do finally coming looking for the goofy fellow. He is currently being treated like a member of the family because he already has several nicknames. Mr. Bun, Goofy Boy, silly boy to name just a few of the greetings he hears daily. I know not naming him but giving him a dozen nicknames still complicates the situation but I can’t take care of an animal and just call him the rabbit can I?

Blogging Challenge: WordPress Treasure Hunt

Elizabeth — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 04:38:53 +0000

The WordPress-related treasure hunt topics are:

1. 404 – Page Not Found? Try these links
2. accessibility
3. ajax
4. Akismet
5. API
6. asides
7. author
8. bad behavior
9. blogroll
10. bookmarklets
11. boren
12. botd
13. canvas
14. category feeds
15. comment moderation
16. comment spam
17. comments
18. css
19. custom fields
20. dashboard
21. design a WordPress Theme from scratch
22. difference between WordPress and Wordpress.com
23. donncha
24. drmike
25. favorite WordPress Plugins list
26. feeds
27. ftp
28. functions
29. gallery
30. google sitemap
31. hAtom
32. hierarchy
33. hooks
34. how to choose a WordPress Theme
35. htaccess
36. if single()
37. installing wordpress
38. ioerror
39. jaquith
40. javascript
41. Kiwi
42. LaTeX
43. localization
44. loop
45. matt
46. meta
47. mingus
48. moBlogging
49. moving WordPress
50. mu
51. mysql
52. nofollow
53. permalinks
54. photoblog
55. ping
56. podcasts
57. polls
58. post slug
59. query_posts
60. quicktag
61. refresh
62. rel
63. sandbox
64. search
65. semantic
66. semantics
67. seo
68. separating trackbacks from comments
69. sidebar accessories
70. sidebar
71. skelton
72. smilies
73. social bookmarking
74. spam karma
75. static front page
76. strayhorn
77. tags
78. Technorati
79. text control
80. text editors
81. the_excerpt()
82. theme lists
83. trackback
84. using character entities in WordPress
85. utw
86. validate
87. vblogging
88. visual anatomy
89. winkler
90. wordpress for beginners
91. WordPress Widgets
92. wordpress.com
93. wp_list_pages()
94. wp-cache
95. wpdb Class
96. write code in WordPress posts
97. writing plugins
98. WYSIWYG
99. XFN
100. XML-RPC

World Breastfeeding Week – October 1-7th

Elizabeth — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 18:51:01 +0000

In addition to October being Breast Cancer Awareness month I found out by way of Shaz at Adventures in Motherhood that October 1-7th is World Breastfeeding Week.

World Breastfeeding Week is an annual event that celebrates the importance of breastfeeding for all women, children, families and communities. The first week of October, the tenth month of the year, is chosen to celebrate World Breastfeeding Week because it is in the first week of life (after nine months of gestation) that a baby starts to breastfeed.

From INFACT Canada

It’s October and it’s Pink!

Elizabeth — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 14:14:35 +0000

It took most of the evening but I finally finished my new theme design for the site.
Some of the new features:

Sidebar is widgetized
The top of the sidebar rotates breast cancer information
My links have been updated to actually reflect the sites I visit normally
If you click on the main site it reflects the same theme as the blog