Musings

A few years ago I found a "copycat recipe" online for Olive Garden's Chicken & Gnocchi soup (anyone else love that bottomless soup, salad, and breadstick lunch special??) and have modified it a bit each time I've made it. It's my go-to meal to take to friends with new babies because everyone raves about it and big brothers and sisters love it too!  The measurements can be adjusted a bit for your preferences, but here is how I've been making it: Ingredients: 2 cups chicken breasts, cooked and diced (I roast them with salt, garlic powder, onion powder, and Italian seasoning blend) 6 cups chicken broth (I make it with Better Than Bouillon) 2 cups cream 1 cup celery, finely diced 1 1/2 cup carrots, finely sliced 1 cup onion, finely diced 3 garlic cloves, minced 1 cup fresh spinach, chopped  1 tablespoon avocado oil 1 teaspoon dried thyme 1 teaspoon parsley 1/4 teaspoon salt 1 pound potato gnocchi* Parmesan cheese, as desired Heat up a sto...

I've always loved deviled eggs, but can never bring myself to hard boil and peel eggs. Ugh. But, Costco saves the day again! They have organic hard boiled, peeled eggs at a wonderful price. So suddenly the thought of making deviled eggs feels possible! Here's how I did it. I know if you're making this as an appetizer, you'll do a much bigger batch, but these were just for Matt and I :) Ingredients: 3 hard boiled, peeled eggs 1/8 cup Miracle Whip Light 1/2 tsp yellow mustard Several drops buffalo/hot sauce Pinch of salt Paprika Cut the eggs in half length-wise. Squeeze each half to pop the yolks into a bowl (SO EASY). Also put in the bowl the rest of the ingredients, except paprika. Use a fork to mix it all up. Then spoon the mixture back into the eggs. If you want them to look fancy, feel free to pull out your frosting supplies and pipe the filling into the egg whites. But I decided sprinkled paprika is fancy enough for me!

Sometimes even those of us who pride ourselves in making things from scratch finally get honest with ourselves and admit we need to compromise. Since I was making all of our food for Christmas, one compromise was buying pie crust instead of making it from scratch. And since I bought it at Costco, I had a bunch in the freezer. So here I am, finally using some more of that pie crust. And it is delicious and I have no shame!  I decided to start with a Betty Crocker recipe and make some modifications to my liking instead of wasting time searching online amongst everyone claiming their recipe is the best. Here's what I ended up with: 1 1/2 cups (roughly) peas, sliced carrots, and sliced mushrooms (or you can switch these with celery, broccoli, or cauliflower if that's what you like) 1/2 cup chopped onion (I used leeks) 2 cups cut-up cooked chicken (another suggestion for convenience: use a rotisserie chicken!) 2 tablespoons butter 1/2 cup all purpose flour 1 1/2 cups chicken...