Wednesday Wonders: One Dish Chicken and Rice: EASY!

 Lately I was texting with one of our sons who wanted to make a chicken and rice dish we used to have decades ago.  I found the recipe I had put into The Country Wife Cookbook that I compiled when our children were in their teens. I wanted them to be able to 1. help with cooking at that time, and 2. have a resource to take with them when they left home to have foods that reminded them of home.  (And on the subject of The Country Wife Cookbook:  for some years now I have been writing The Country Wife Cookbook: A Culinary Memoir which was originally meant for our children to know a little family history as well as family recipes but now I am willing to share with anyone who wants it.  I have recently spoken with a woman in the publishing world who would like me to pay her $2500 to look at my "work" and see if I need to spend more money to get it published.  When I finish the re-write I am working on (thanks to Sasha for editing the book for me), I may just figure out how to format the book and then hand bind copies for the few people who might find it interesting.  We shall see. Please do not hold your breath...but if you are interested, let me know and I will start a list of possible recipients.

Anyway, back to to the chicken and rice:  as Son 4 and I were talking, he pointed out that the dish he made was too salty.  He said he used a boxed rice mix instead.  I thought that was a great idea.  Almost immediately after our conversation I saw an easy chicken and rice dish online somewhere...maybe a Facebook reel.  I took their idea and made it our dinner with variations!

This is what we did for our Sunday dinner :

In an 8 by 8 glass dish I placed one box of Zataran's Rice Pilaf and spread it around.  I opened a can of Cream of Chicken Soup With Herbs and spread it over the top of the rice then added 2 cups of chicken broth left over from pressure-cooking the heck out of a few pieces of chicken that had been in the refrigerator a week or so.  Almost a week or so...

With a wooden spoon I stirred the rice and liquids until they were pretty much combined then took some chopped chicken pieces from the top of a Chik-Fil-A Cobb salad that Dear One had not eaten as well as some tempura chicken that Dear One had not eaten, (do you see a pattern here?  I think I will refrain from getting him meat things in the future...I think he has gone back to mostly plant-based eating...) and sprinkled them on top of the rice mix.  At this point I put on aluminum foil and cooked in the oven at 350 degrees F for one hour.  It was very popular.  He ate much of the rice, and a little of the chicken.

This morning I made a double batch as we were having company over to share lunch with us.  (Just after I had mixed up the wet ingredients with the rice I received a text saying they had a last minute meeting and could not join us after all.  Oh well.  Plenty of food for us). 

This time I used Cilantro and Lime Rice mix and raw chicken breast pieces.  Not as popular.  The flavor was not one Dear One had ever had and did not enjoy.  The chicken breast was dry.  I remembered after putting it in the oven that someone had mentioned that dark meat should be used rather than white meat as it takes longer for the dark meat to cook which makes it come out the same time as the rice is done.  

So--the take away for me is...I will not use raw chicken breast in this meal and I won't use Cilantro and Lime Rice mix...aside from those problems...it is pretty good!

This is the easy chicken and rice bake I made today...the less-than-enjoyable-one per Dear One.  He did eat a good serving though!

Valentine Giant Skeleton Now St Patrick's Skeleton!

 Our neighbors have changed their skeleton!  Valentine's Day is past so now we have a greenly clothed skeleton on the street.  It gives me a real charge every time I drive by.  These neighbors are so creative.  And so nice to spend the time and money to entertain the neighborhood.  Don't you agree?!

Cute, cute, cute!

Monday Morning Mug Rugs!

Over the weekend I put aside my Atta Girl Sweater knitting and picked up smaller needles to knit a few mug rugs.  I had (on Friday-Valentine's Day) seen a pattern called Pair of Hearts for mug rugs.  Hearts, flowers, and butterflies always suck me in!  We have a ton of heart shaped cooking pans.  Love them.  Including a heart-shaped cast iron Lodge skillet.  I love that pan even though it did not work the way I thought it would.  I will have to make several more things in the pan to see if I can make them work.  Actually, I have only tried making pancakes in that heart cast iron pan.  How did I imagine I was going to flip that pancake? It did not work...

Anyway, in the spirit of using up all yarn in the house this year, I made a dozen heart-y mug rugs!  I love how they look.  Here is the big picture:

The first one, in the upper left corner, was made using US 8 needles.  It was too floppy for me so I dropped down to US 5 needles. I like them a lot better. I would have used the US 6 needles but they are all in other projects (another plan for this year is to finish ALL projects that are on the needles!) so they were not available for this project.

These mug rugs are knitted using the mosaic technique.  This is a very easy way to do color work.  For garter stitch mosaic knitting you will need to knit over and back in one color only.  For this pattern you knit the background color then slip the contrast color stitches as you get to them WYIB (With Yarn In Back).  On the way back across you slip the contrast color stitches WYIF (With Yarn In Front).  On the second color row you will be knitting the contrast color stitches and slipping the background color WYIB, then on the way back slip the background color WYIF, and on and on until bind off.  The designer of this pattern uses the Chinese Waitress Cast On which I did not notice until I had actually finished the last of these dozen mug rugs. Oh well.  Maybe I will try it next time.

Here is an up-close (more or less)  mug rug:

As you can see-I did not actually lay the mug rug flat to photograph...I just laid it over the arm of the chair which is why is looks somewhat wonky. It really is rather nice.  At least I like it.  I will be giving these away today.  This makes me happy.  I love to share pretty stuff.

This one I chose to add to the post because it clearly shows that I am using up yarn!  I finished the white yarn then started in with yellow.  Yay!  One ball down, many to go!  

Mosaic knitting is:  So easy. So fun.  So colorful.  It just takes time

While knitting these mug rugs I was watching YouTube, as usual. There were some great spinning videos plus I watched a few Knicoleknits Knows Knitting videos.  One was on marling.  You will see that here in the future, at least you will see my efforts at marling!  When we were on our mission lots of yarn was given to me.  Eventually there was too much so I started a marled blanket project.  It was very fun to do.  

The yarn organization project is in full steam ahead condition currently.  I bought some hair clippy things to attach yarn ends to balls so there will be no more tangled messes.  To give you an idea of the magnitude of the "problem"--I have purchased four cards with 14 hair clips on each card.  Today I need to purchase more hair clip cards...!  Not quite finished with the ones I have but don't want to run out.  When I am on a roll, stopping is not a happy option...

Friday Fun: Trying Out An Internet Pan Cleaning Recipe

 Last week I saw a recipe on the internet...maybe Facebook.  It was a way to turn sheet pans that had seen better days back to pristine shininess.

This is the pan I chose with the first little bit of baking soda on it.  Pretty grim looking.  The pan, not the baking soda...

Here is the pan filled with the first layer of the recipe:  baking soda.

This is a photo after adding hydrogen peroxide and turned into a sort of paste.

This photo (above) is after adding the Comet and the Johnson's Baby Shampoo and mushed around a lot.

The internet person said to let it sit at least six hours.  I left it for about 8 hours,

Here is the result after some serious scrubbing, but having said that, after several hours of knitting, the scrubbing hands were rather wimpy.  After the fact I wished that I have left the pan overnight.

You can see that there really is quite a difference between the top photo and this photo.  I am thinking that if I had been able to apply my hands a lot more to the scrubbing, the pan would be much shinier.  As it was, I did use a stainless steel scratcher after having started out scrubbing with a sponge with the green scrubby part on the back.  Did not really do much.

It is not really possible to see, but the surface is really smooth and more shiny than when I started.

This is about the first time that something I saw on the internet came out closer to what I had been led to expect. Usually I am just too gullible and the internet sucks me in to failures.  

 Maybe I will try again with another pan another day.

Sample Shawl Finished and On The Body

 Here is the finished shawl!  I love it.  Well, I love that it is an actual shawl the way this old lady likes to wear a shawl.  The bibs that all the designers make and call shawls these days rather turn my stomach.  Even if they are knitted in beautiful and expensive yarns.  I ALSO don't like wonky shapes.  A nice rectangle or triangle is what I like.  This is a triangle which I widened with short rows to make the point of the triangle more rounded.

This shawl started off with five cast on stitches.  This is the pattern I wrote up:

You will notice some Yarn Over increases that look rather wonky.  I did not know what I was doing really, but wanted to add a few more stitches to increase the width.  It seemed to work but in retrospect, I am sorry I put them in.  The band at the bottom with the more red and orange and other multicolors was to make the shawl as long as I wanted it...ie to come down almost to my wrists.  It worked.  It was Hobby Lobby I Love This Yarn.  I don't but I did not want to drive two hours to Joann to see if I could match the Amethyst and Wildflower Big Twist Carousel yarn....so, I took what I could find.

Today I wore the shawl in 45 degree F weather and was very comfortable.  Makes me happy.  Now on to the next started project. I really want to finish everything by the end of this year.  I won't tell you how many items are on the needles.  Too embarrassing.

A Quick Post: Hope-to-Make Edition

Today while going through Ravelry I found something I hope to make.  So cute.

This is it!  Cute heart coasters.  Some day I will knit them.  They are mosaic knitting which is very fun to do and so easy.  Once you wrap your head around it a little bit.  Watch for it here...but not any time soon!  Too much going right now.

A Marvelous Monday!

 Today I crawled out of bed hours before the sun showed up and hit the road to help a friend by taking her for an early morning surgical appointment.  Eleven hours later she and I were both safely home. I expect as I write this she is in bed recovering. I will soon be in bed myself.

During the day I spent in the hospital waiting room my fingers and knitting needles were flying.  I have been working on a sample shawl, having now used three balls of Big Twist Carousel yarn in colors  Amethyst and Wildflower.  Since more was needed to make the shawl as long on my arms as I desired, I purchased two balls of local yarn from Hobby Lobby in Orange Rust or some such thing.  The name is probably on my Ravelry page....

Anyway, today I spent nearly seven hours knitting and finished the first half, spliced in the second ball of Hobby Lobby yarn and managed another couple rows on the second half of the shawl.  Earlier I think I showed a picture here of my thought on how to make the shawl more rounded at the bottom by using short rows.  Today I put that into practice.  I did short rows in both directions.  This is what it looks like currently:

You can see the spine of the shawl here with the first half rounded by the short row shaping on the right.  Well, the photo is not really very good but I think you can see it.  The part that is more towards the top is actually the bottom of the shawl. I did not want to continue knitting the shawl with a sharp point at the bottom and I think it worked.  Eventually I will be showing the full shawl, including the nice "tree" shawl pins that arrived today, 

So, it was a great day helping a friend.  This time I received my own help by being able to knit for hours with no interruptions or self-guilt-tripping.  So great.  Having gotten so far today, I am inclined to really go to town on finishing the shawl. I now have the goal of completing the shawl by the end of the week so I can wear it to Church on Sunday.  I love the cool temperatures in our church building but sitting for a few hours makes me cold...so the shawl will be a blessing.

To top off a nice day I had just arrived home when one of our grandsons FaceTimed me to say he received the socks I made for him and that he wore them to school today.  He had them on under his braces as we spoke!  So nice of him to call.  How I love all our children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. It makes me so happy that they like the things I make for them.  That is the whole reason I make those items.

AND ON TOP OF THAT CALL!!!  I saw a note that our missionary elder grandson had sent a video!!!  Is that not the coolest...!. Truly it is.  He sent a sweet two minute video which was the absolute coolest thing.  He actually did receive the washcloth I had woven on our 16" Ashford rigid heddle loom and sent as a Christmas gift.  Earlier this very week our oldest son sent a picture where he used his cloth as a placemat under his healthy-filled dinner plate.  So happy.  So very happy.  I miss our family and friends so much.  These notes and calls and videos take the sting away and make me smile from ear to ear.  If you are fortunate enough to have family and friends nearby, give them hugs as often as you can.  Don't let them wonder if you love them.

The nice thing about moving to South Carolina, besides the no snow and ice on a regular basis, is that the people here are so nice and have taken us in.  The pain of leaving lifelong friends is covered up in the loving kindness of our new friends.  What is that adage: Make new friends, but keep the old.  One is silver and the other is gold.  So very true. I love love love the silver and gold in our lives.  May you all be safe and happy.