Hearty homestyle cooking

Lately I have been on a hearty, homestyle-cooking kick.  Admittedly it isn't my favorite type of food, but Mr. McGhee and the minis love it.  And since we all know that us moms are basically 2nd class citizens in our own homes, I do what I have to do to please them.  

I have noticed to offset all this hearty homestyle eating, I have been having to do a bit more intense cardio workouts.  I recently started doing the stairclimber at the gym, it looks something like this....

I like to pretend it's an escalator at Nordstrom, where they have put the entire store at 99% off.  That'll get me moving.

The most recent meal I had to work off was a cheddar biscuits and a chicken recipe I found on pinterest.  This chicken recipe was claimed to be the "best chicken recipe ever" on pinterest.  In my experience, anything that states it is the "best ______ ever" usually ends up being pretty "meh" to me.  I gave it a go anyway.

Melt in Your Mouth Chicken

• 4 boneless chicken breast halves
• 1 cup mayonnaise
• 1/2 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese
• 1 1/2 teaspoons seasoning salt
• 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder

1.  Mix mayonnaise, cheese and seasonings.
2.  Spread mixture over chicken breast and place in baking dish.
3.  Bake at 375°F for 45 minutes.

NOTE:  I substituted plain, non-fat greek yogurt for mayo.  I don't buy mayo and I have never had success making my own.  

Mix up your sauce.

Smear it on your chicken.

Bake until chicken is thoroughly cooked. 

Best chicken ever?  Not a chance! Decent chicken recipe that we all ate?  Yep!

I served my chicken with baked sweet potatoes and cheddar biscuits.

Cheddar Biscuits

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons shortening
• 3 tablespoons butter, cold (or room temp works too)
• 1 cup buttermilk (i never have buttermilk so i use 1 c milk and 1 1/2 tsp vinegar... let them sit together until little bubbles appear on the top, about ten min.)
• 1 1/4 cups grated sharp cheddar cheese (i pretty much do 2 cups)

Buttery Topping:

• 3 tablespoons melted butter
• 1/4 teaspoon dried parsley flakes (not necessary... just pretty)
• 3/4 teaspoon garlic powder
• pinch of salt

1.  Preheat oven to 425 degrees. 
2.  In a medium bowl, combine flour, baking powder, garlic powder and salt. 
3.  Cut in shortening and butter until coarse crumbs are formed. 
4.  Lightly mix in grated cheese. Mix in buttermilk just until moist (dry spots here and there are ok - the biscuits will be tough if they are overmixed). 
5.  Drop the biscuits onto a greased or lined baking sheet. Bake for 12-14 minutes, until browned and golden. 
6.  While the biscuits are baking, in a small bowl combine butter, parsley, garlic powder and salt. Right when the biscuits come out of the oven, brush the butter/herb mixture over the biscuits evenly (alternately, you can dip the top of the biscuit into the butter mixture). Serve immediately.

 Mix your dry ingredients.

Add your butter, shortening, and milk.

Drop onto a baking sheet.

Bake until golden brown.  

I really loved these biscuits.  I am, admittedly, a carb-loving, bread-eating sort of girl...so these are pretty much what I spend my days dreaming about.  

Overall, this is a great meal for those chilly nights when the minis are starving after swim practice.  Or soccer practice.  Or volleyball practice.  Or piano lessons.  etc etc etc.....

Cookies and Chard

Yesterday's bread is ah-may-zing.  So, if a little bit of bread flour and shortening is wrong, then I don't want to be right.  I still plan on trying to replace the shortening with coconut oil, but I've gotta say....I am over my shortening shame.  Yesterday's bread is yum-o, delish.

Do your minis love granola bars?  I'm hearing from a lot of people that granola bars are a staple in their minis' lives.  Well, the mini McGhees are missing their granola bars, and I have this recipe from marathon mom that I have been dying to try.  Marathon mom is the homeschooling mom to 7 boys and pregnant with an 8th baby.  From now on, I will refer to myself as 5k mom.  Maybe even kids fun run mom.  Here's her recipe.

1/2 cup natural peanut butter

1/3 cup local honey

1/4 cup unsalted butter

1 cup oats (not quick oats)

2 tablespoons wheat germ

1/2 cup coconut

1/2 cup chocolate chips (Mini work best, but it doesn’t really matter.)

What to do:
1. Melt the butter, peanut butter and honey in a pot over medium to low heat, stirring constantly. Turn off the burner when melted.
2. Pour in the cup of oats and the wheat germ. Stir til combined.
3. Wait til it cools and stir in the coconut and chocolate chips. Or, if you’re impatient with things like this, like I am, go ahead and dump it all right in. The result will be a more uniform chocolate taste.
4. Pour into foil-lined 8 X 8 pan and stick in the fridge.
5. Once cooled, flip out (the bars….not you) onto cutting board and cut to the size you like.

OK, so I'm the type of girl that calls a spade a spade.  And this, folks, is a cookie, not a granola bar.  It's a damn good tasting cookie that the McGhee family snarfed down as if we hadn't seen food in real food in weeks (there's a joke in there somewhere, I know it).  However, I struggle to say that this is a healthy, nutritional snack to give your minis.  BUT, because this recipe is delicious and the minis loved it, I am going to tweak it, maybe add a few things to see if I can increase the nutritional value of it.  And, I will say....it is a HUGE improvement over the HFCS-filled store-bought granola bars.  Give it a try....the McGhee family gave this a huge, sticky, chocoately double thumbs up.

Tonight's dinner was a spinoff on chicken pot pie.  I made the "stuffing" of the pie, following this this recipe from allrecipes. 

• 1/3 cup butter
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 cups chicken broth
• 2/3 cup milk
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 1 cup frozen green peas
• 1 cup frozen diced carrots
• 2 cups cooked, shredded chicken meat

1. In a large saucepan, saute chopped onion in the butter.
2. Stir in flour and cook for 1 minute.
3. Remove from heat and slowly add chicken broth and milk. Stir well. 
4. Return to heat.  Heat to boiling, stirring constantly. Cook for 2 minutes.
5. Season with salt and pepper. Add frozen peas and carrots and cooked chicken.  Cook for 5-7 minutes, stirring often.

Instead of using a pie crust, I made biscuits using a previously posted recipe.  This time I made some tweaks.  I used a very small amount of all-purpose flour.  And, no, I am not proud of it...but just the tiniest amount of all-purpose flour gives whole wheat baked goods a much more desireable texture. 

• 1 3/4 cups whole wheat flour
• 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 4 teaspoons baking powder
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ¼ cup cold unsalted butter
• 1 cup milk

1. Preheat oven to 450.
2. In a medium sized bowl combine flour, baking powder, and salt.
3. Mix well with whisk or fork.
4. Cut the ½ stick butter into little pea sized pieces and then mix the pieces into the flour mixture. Using a fork, try to mash the butter pieces as you mix it together with the flour until it resembles coarse crumbs. It is okay if the outcome just looks like the same pea sized pieces of butter covered with flour.
5. Then pour in the milk and mix it all together.
6. Knead the dough with your hands 8 to 10 times and then turn out onto a counter or cutting board.
7. Pat it out flat with your hands until the dough is a somewhat even ¾-inch thickness (sprinkle with a little flour if necessary). Turn a drinking glass upside down and cut out biscuit rounds.
8. Then put them on an ungreased cookie sheet and bake at 450 degrees for 10 – 12 minutes or until lightly browned.


I served the chicken biscuits with swiss chard.  Never heard of swiss chard?  I hadn't until our CSA started giving it to us every.single.week.  This is what it you want to look for in the grocery store.

Remove the stalks and chop the leaves.

Sauteed Swiss Chard

• olive oil
• chopped/minced garlic
• swiss chard
• balsamic vinegar
• salt and pepper
• parmesan cheese

1.  Saute the garlic in the olive oil for 2 minutes.
2.  Add swiss chard and cook until wilted, about 5 minutes.  While cooking drizzle balsamic vinegar over swiss chard.
3.  Season with salt and pepper.  Grate fresh parmesan over the swiss chard.

OK, so I know you're looking at this picture and thinking, "Heids McGhee, there is no way that my minis are eating that."  Well, I say, do what I do.  Set the plate in front of them and when they start to protest, shoot them your best mama-means-business stank eye.  Don't have a mama-means-business stank eye?  You've got bigger problems than swiss chard!

Chicken Gnocchi soup

There's a particular large-chain Italian restaurant that the Mr. and the minis love to eat at.  And, this particular large-chain Italian restaurant is my least favorite place to eat.  There are a few reasons why I dislike this particular restaurant.

1.  When I read the nutrition information, I hyperventilated.
2.  It's expensive.  Seriously, $14 for noodles and pureed canned tomatoes?
3.  One day, Mr. McGhee and I took the minis to this particular restaurant when they were 5 , 3, and a baby.  As we were being seated at our table, a couple next to us got all huffy and started making comments about how my children were going to ruin their lunch.  And, then the couple had a long discussion with the waiter about how hostesses need to pay attention when seating customers and keep families away from couples.  OK, this was on a Saturday at 11:30 am.  I think there's an unwritten rule that restaurants before noon on Saturdays are fair game for families.  So, the entire lunch, I sat there shooting this couple my stank eye.  My stank eye that says, "I am pretty sure there's a big ole' sign as you walk in this particular restaurant that says, 'when you're here, you're family'". 

Now, Mr. McGhee says it's utterly ridiculous that this one incident has ruined the particular restaurant for me, but I swear, it has left a bitter taste in my mouth.  And one can't enjoy one's lunch with a bitter taste in one's mouth, right? 

So, that sort of puts the McGhees in a bind.  The reason the minis love this particular restaurant is because of their chicken gnocchi soup, so being the dedicated mother that I am, I spent 10 seconds one day googling "particular restaurant chicken gnocchi soup knockoff recipe" and voila....soup recipe.

Now, before we dive into making the soup, we need to do some prep work.  Because, remember, we gave up processed foods.  So, the packaged chicken broth and gnocchi need to be made from scratch.  Luckily, I had some leftover chicken from previous nights, so I just diced that up and step #1 was complete.

To make the gnocchi, I followed this recipe from Food Jaunts. 

12 oz potato, cut into 2 inch chunks

1 egg, lightly beaten

¾ cup of flour (I used half white whole wheat and half all-purpose) + more for the cutting board

¼ teaspoon nutmeg

Salt and Pepper, to taste

Steam potatoes for 12 minutes or until soft. Use a potato ricer, and rice potato into a bowl, discarding skins. Let sit for 5 – 10 minutes to cool.
Make a well in the center of the potatoes, and pour the beaten egg into the well. Cover with ¾ cup of flour. 
Being careful not to overwork, cut it all together until combined (if the dough is still too sticky feel free to add up to ¼ cup more flour, if it’s not sticky enough add another egg yolk, not the whole egg like before).
Flour your cutting board (you may have to re-flour as you go). Divide dough into 6 portions and roll into cigar shaped logs. Cut each log into 1 inch pieces. Now either run each gnocchi over the tines of a fork, pressing lightly as you go, or just press down lightly on each piece with the fork. (I did half of it by rolling over a fork then decided that was taking way too long and then just pressed down on the other half with the fork).
In a pot of boiling water, cook the gnocchi until they rise to the top of the water. Wait 30 seconds – 1 minute after they start to float, then drain.

*sidenotes*  I do not have a potato ricer.  Heck, I didn't even know what a potato ricer was until I googled it today.  A website called it an extra-large garlic press.  Well, I've got one of those, so good enough....just press the cooked potatoes through the garlic press if you don't have a ricer.  I also forgot to add the nutmeg, salt, and pepper, which means when my gnocchi were done boiling in water, they tasted like bland potatoes and flour.  No worries though, because after they were cooked I tossed them in the soup and they were delish by dinner time!

Here's the potatoes after I pressed them through garlic press.

Here's the rolled out dough.

Here's my pressing the fork into the dough.

We also need to make chicken stock.  I HIGHLY suggest doing this regularly, it's very easy and you can freeze it for when needed.  Lucky for me, I had some in the freezer.  I use this recipe from allrecipes.com. 

Chicken stock

 4 pound chicken

7 cups water

1 large onion, halved

3 stalks celery

3 carrots, cut into 2 inch pieces

1 bay leaf

1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger

salt to taste

Place the chicken in a large pot over high heat. Add water to cover and bring to a boil, then reduce heat to medium low and simmer for 1 hour.               
Remove chicken from pot. Leave water in pot. Cool chicken. Remove skin and bones from meat. Return bones and skin to pot. Add onions, carrots, celery, bay leaf, ginger, and salt. Continue simmering for 3 to 4 hours.
Strain and cool the stock, uncovered.
Use the meat for soups, salads, sandwiches, or other dishes where cooked chicken is needed. After stock has been defatted, use or freeze immediately. I freeze the stock in one-cup amounts and use instead of water for cooking rice or vegetables or making gravy.               

Now, you're all set to make your chicken gnocchi soup.  I tweaked the recipe to make double batch with a few other changes.

2 cups chicken , cooked and diced

8 cups chicken stock

2 cups half and half 

 2 cups milk

2 stalk celery, diced

4 garlic cloves,  chopped

1 carrot, shredded

1 onion, diced

3 handfulls of fresh spinach

2 tablespoon olive oil

2 teaspoon thyme

salt and pepper

16 ounces potato gnocchi

1.  Saute the onion, celery, garlic, carrot in oil over medium heat until onion is translucent.

2.  Add chicken, chicken stock, half and half, salt and pepper, thyme. Heat to boiling, then add gnocchi. Gently boil for 4 minutes, then turn down to a simmer for 10 minutes.

3.  Add spinach and cook for another 1-2 minutes until spinach is wilted.

*sidenote*  I did not put the gnocchi in at step 3.  I added spinach, and then when spinach was wilted, I turned down the heat and put gnocchi in (they were already cooked).

Here's the pot of soup.

I served this soup with a side salad of spinach, peppers, olives, tomatoes, cucumbers and this dressing.  We also had these biscuits.  And, as always, I did a little tweaking.

Whole wheat biscuits

1 1/2 cup whole wheat flour

 1/2 cup all purpose flour

4 teaspoons baking powder

1 tablespoon sugar

3/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup butter or margarine

1 cup milk

1.  Preheat oven to 450 degrees F.

2.  In a medium bowl, combine flours, baking powder, sugar, and salt; mix well.

3.  Cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs.

4.  Stir in milk just until moistened.

5.  Turn out onto a lightly floured surface; knead gently 8 to 10 times.

6.  Roll to 3/4-in. thickness; cut with a 2-1/2-in. biscuit cutter and place on an ungreased baking sheet. 7.  Bake at 450 degrees F for 10 to 12 minutes or until lightly browned.

*sidenote*  I have zero luck kneading and rolling, so I just dropped spoonfuls of the dough onto the cookie sheet.  Not as pretty, but it got the job done.

If you are looking for cheats, you can always save time by using boxed chicken broth and these gnocchi. 

But, I really encourage you to make homemade gnocchi and chicken stock.  There is some serious satisfaction watching your minis gobble down a bowl of homemade soup and biscuits from scratch on a chilly winter night.