We ate a lot of what we called chicken pie when I was growing up, and I loved it, but it was not like the chicken pie I’ve eaten at other people's houses or in restaurants. Those usually have onions, peas, carrots or other vegetables in a sauce that is rather thick. At our house there were two ways of making chicken pie, baked or on the eye of the stove in a stew pot. I later learned that the stove top version would more often be called chicken and dumplings – in this case strip or rolled dumplings. This was my very favorite. Del isn't that crazy about any of it, but will eat either kind, and David would probably still just as soon have one of the cheap frozen kind he always preferred as a child.
Baked Chicken pie
Mother kept a bag of bony pieces of chicken such as backs in the freezer and added to it until she had enough to do something with. Then she would cut up a chicken and stew them together. Stewing meant simmering the chicken in water with salt and pepper until done. Mother would put resulting broth in a Pyrex dish and add the backs wings and short legs (thighs, or short jumpers as Mr. Williams called them). Then she would cover the dish with her homemade pie crust and bake until the crust was golden brown and the broth was bubbly. She would reserve the rest of the broth and chicken for chicken salad or some other dish.
Chicken Pie – stove top version
Recipe:
Stew a chicken in sufficient water to make a goodly amount of broth. Remove skin and bones and return to broth. Taste broth. If it tastes bland, add a bouillon cube or some chicken stock base and pepper.
Pastry
2 cups all purpose flour
½ t. salt
2 T Crisco
½ cup hot water
Mix flour and salt. Cut in the shortening with two knives until it resembles coarse meal. Stir in the hot water with a fork. Form into a ball and roll until 1/16” thick. Cut into strips approximately 1” by 3” and drop into simmering broth. Cook for 20 minutes, but do not allow to boil or they will break up.
Note: I prefer to keep the chicken out of the broth until after I cook and remove dumplings and most of broth into a heated serving dish. Then I quickly reheat the chicken in remaining broth and add to the dish.
Note: In a pinch, you can substitute strips from thinly rolled canned biscuits.
Saturday, November 5, 2011
Friday, November 4, 2011
Butter - Easy Recipe for Children of All Ages
The computer is fixed, the wedding festivities for niece Sarah are over and both sets of friends who stayed with us here at Massanutten have left , so I thought It was time to get back to business. We have had almost two wonderful weeks with friends and family in Williamsburg, Suffolk, Newport News and here in the mountains of Virginia.
On to butter… As I have said before, we lived in the country on a family farm. We lived in the home place, and Ruby, a teacher, and sometimes Eunie, lived there too. Garland, Daddy’s younger brother, lived across and down the road on one side. He had seven children, Garland, Jr. who went away to school because there was no education in Emporia at that time for a child who was deaf, Jimmy, Marsha, Randy, Mike, Brenda and Eric. Big Bubba and Stella lived across and down the road in the other direction. Big Bubba was the oldest. We sort of went from one house to the other, depending on what was going on. Big Bubba worked shift work at Johns Manville, as my daddy did, and Jimmy, Marsha and I used to take turns staying with Stella on midnight to 7 shift because she did not like to stay alone.
We had a cow until after Bubba went off to college. He was chief milker, and I felt it was my responsibility to keep him company while he did it. Keeping him company probably consisted of asking one question after another, and may have occasionally plucked his last good nerve, as sister in law Daryl Lyn says, because he sometimes aimed at me instead of the bucket. He had really good control. I remember the farm cats and kittens used to show up at milking time and wait with open mouths for him to squirt them.
We churned our own butter in crockery churns with wooden dashers. You had to let the cream come to the top of the milk, spoon it off and put it into the churn. Then you pulled the dasher up and pushed it down until the butter formed, leaving butter milk in the bottom of the churn. Then you had to scoop the very soft butter out of the churn and into a crockery bowl so the remaining butter milk could be worked out with a wooden paddle. Once that was done, the butter could be shaped into a log or a ball or pushed firmly into a butter mold. Ours was wooden and consisted of a form with a plunger that had decorations on the surface. When the plunger was depressed to push out the butter, it left a pretty decoration. I was given a butter pat sized mold and loved to make individual servings of butter, but most of the time, we just used the big one.
The butter milk was saved for making biscuits or for drinking by those who were so inclined. Crumbling up cold biscuits in the milk and eating them with a spoon was considered a special treat by some, but not by me.
When we churned butter at Big Bubba and Stella’s, we sat on the front porch and sang “Come butter, come” as we worked. I think those were the only words to the so called song.
I also remember that when we needed rain so badly that the wells were in danger of running dry, Stella used to gather the cousins on the front porch, and we would sing “There Shall Be Showers of Blessing.” over and over and over again. But I digress…
When several of the cousins were around, we were sometimes given a Mason jar of cream which we shook until it turned to butter. I remember that we had races to see who could shake the fastest and get butter first.
Making butter was a favorite speech activity at Medina County Board of MRDD. We prepared picture communication boards so that non verbal students could request a turn or a taste of the butter and attached a food processor to a device so that children with limited hand mobility could use a switch to activate the processor.
Recipe
1 cup whipping cream
Pinch salt (optional)
Pour cold cream in bowl of food processor. Process until it is way past the whipped cream stage. A small amount of liquid will separate from the creamy butter. Don’t expect it to be yellow like the butter you get at the store. It will be quite soft, but will firm up in the refrigerator.
The children loved it on saltines or bread. Because of my own opinions of the matter, I always put the butter on the bottom or unsalted side of the cracker so the salt touched the tongue. Don’t laugh. I know you have some food rules.
On to butter… As I have said before, we lived in the country on a family farm. We lived in the home place, and Ruby, a teacher, and sometimes Eunie, lived there too. Garland, Daddy’s younger brother, lived across and down the road on one side. He had seven children, Garland, Jr. who went away to school because there was no education in Emporia at that time for a child who was deaf, Jimmy, Marsha, Randy, Mike, Brenda and Eric. Big Bubba and Stella lived across and down the road in the other direction. Big Bubba was the oldest. We sort of went from one house to the other, depending on what was going on. Big Bubba worked shift work at Johns Manville, as my daddy did, and Jimmy, Marsha and I used to take turns staying with Stella on midnight to 7 shift because she did not like to stay alone.
We had a cow until after Bubba went off to college. He was chief milker, and I felt it was my responsibility to keep him company while he did it. Keeping him company probably consisted of asking one question after another, and may have occasionally plucked his last good nerve, as sister in law Daryl Lyn says, because he sometimes aimed at me instead of the bucket. He had really good control. I remember the farm cats and kittens used to show up at milking time and wait with open mouths for him to squirt them.
We churned our own butter in crockery churns with wooden dashers. You had to let the cream come to the top of the milk, spoon it off and put it into the churn. Then you pulled the dasher up and pushed it down until the butter formed, leaving butter milk in the bottom of the churn. Then you had to scoop the very soft butter out of the churn and into a crockery bowl so the remaining butter milk could be worked out with a wooden paddle. Once that was done, the butter could be shaped into a log or a ball or pushed firmly into a butter mold. Ours was wooden and consisted of a form with a plunger that had decorations on the surface. When the plunger was depressed to push out the butter, it left a pretty decoration. I was given a butter pat sized mold and loved to make individual servings of butter, but most of the time, we just used the big one.
The butter milk was saved for making biscuits or for drinking by those who were so inclined. Crumbling up cold biscuits in the milk and eating them with a spoon was considered a special treat by some, but not by me.
When we churned butter at Big Bubba and Stella’s, we sat on the front porch and sang “Come butter, come” as we worked. I think those were the only words to the so called song.
I also remember that when we needed rain so badly that the wells were in danger of running dry, Stella used to gather the cousins on the front porch, and we would sing “There Shall Be Showers of Blessing.” over and over and over again. But I digress…
When several of the cousins were around, we were sometimes given a Mason jar of cream which we shook until it turned to butter. I remember that we had races to see who could shake the fastest and get butter first.
Making butter was a favorite speech activity at Medina County Board of MRDD. We prepared picture communication boards so that non verbal students could request a turn or a taste of the butter and attached a food processor to a device so that children with limited hand mobility could use a switch to activate the processor.
Recipe
1 cup whipping cream
Pinch salt (optional)
Pour cold cream in bowl of food processor. Process until it is way past the whipped cream stage. A small amount of liquid will separate from the creamy butter. Don’t expect it to be yellow like the butter you get at the store. It will be quite soft, but will firm up in the refrigerator.
The children loved it on saltines or bread. Because of my own opinions of the matter, I always put the butter on the bottom or unsalted side of the cracker so the salt touched the tongue. Don’t laugh. I know you have some food rules.
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