Cowgirl Goods

Chicken and Dumplings

Most of you know I do a lot of low sodium cooking around here to keep the hubbies kidney's happy.  If you've noticed so many recipes call for chicken stock.  Even the low sodium version is super high in sodium.  One cup is 520mg, that's a lot if you are trying to stay under the 2k mg mark for the day.  My other question is what is that stuff....really?  I've made real stocks and they NEVER look or taste like that.  I'm happy to say if you use the right spices you don't even notice it's missing.  Most baking recipes you can't really cut out the salt but I might cut 1/4 off the salt.  In most recipes I just leave it out and add it if I need it at the end.  Most of you know the Pioneer Woman blog.  I have not seen her cooking show, I very rarely watch cooking shows.  I made her Chicken and Dumplings tonight.  I'm going to paste the recipe and tell you what I did instead.

Ingredients

• 2 Tablespoons Butter (skipped)
• 2 Tablespoons Olive Oil (3-4 tablespoons)
• ½ cups All-purpose Flour (mixed in a non salt seasoning)
• 1 whole Chicken, Cut Into Pieces (cut Up Fryer) (used 6-8 boneless/skinless thighs)
• Salt And Pepper (no salt lots of pepper)
• ½ cups Finely Diced Carrots
• ½ cups Finely Diced Celery (also added a sliced up fennel bulb and a bunch of spinach)
• 1 whole Medium Onion, Finely Diced
• ½ teaspoons Ground Thyme (used bouqet garni herb mix instead)
• ¼ teaspoons Turmeric (skipped)
• 6 cups Low Sodium Chicken Broth (used water)
• ½ cups Apple Cidern (yes and I used it to deglaze the pan)
• ½ cups Heavy Cream (oh yeah!)
• Dumplings:
• 1-½ cup All-purpose Flour
• ½ cups Yellow Cornmeal
• 1 Tablespoon (heaping) Baking Powder
• 1 teaspoon Kosher Salt (1/4 teaspoon)
• 1-½ cup Half-and-half (used milk)
• 2 Tablespoons Minced Fresh Parsley (optional) (I've started using parsley a lot, I love the flavor and the color it adds)
• Salt As Needed (not needed)

Preparation Instructions

Sprinkle chicken pieces with salt and pepper, then dredge both sides in flour.

Melt butter in a pot over medium-high heat. In two batches, brown chicken on both sides and remove to a clean plate.

In the same pot, add diced onion, carrots, and celery. Stir and cook for 3 to 4 minutes over medium-low heat. Stir in ground thyme and turmeric, then pour in chicken broth and apple cider. Stir to combine, then add browned chicken. Cover pot and simmer for 20 minutes.

While chicken is simmering, make the dough for the dumplings: sift together all dry ingredients, then add half-and-half, stirring gently to combine. Set aside.

Remove chicken from pot and set aside on a plate. Use two forks to remove chicken from the bone. Shred, then add chicken to the pot. Pour heavy cream into the pot and stir to combine.

Drop tablespoons of dumpling dough into the simmering pot. Add minced parsley if using. Cover pot halfway and continue to simmer for 15 minutes. Check seasonings; add salt if needed. Allow to sit for 10 minutes before serving.

*Adapted from Gourmet Magazine *** I adapted it all from Pioneer Woman

It was AWESOME!  The best part is there is enough left over for tomorrow night.  Perfect comfort food on a cold fall night.

One very happy chicken

We love our chickens.  This "batch" has been around for almost six years I think.  We still have Gimpy Girl, the one that had her leg broken and I isolated her and she healed up.  They don't lay as many eggs but enough for us.  They are very calming, we like that, animals have that effect. 

I have a few recipes I need to share with you.  We had some friends over the other night and it was cold and rainy.  It was a soup and bread kind of night.  I made this coconut red lentil soup and we ate every drop.  It was soooooo good.  I couldn't fire up the Egg because it was raining and I really wanted bread.  I do keep a pizza stone in my oven for rainy days.  I made this Flax Seed Wheat Bread  It looked just like the photo and I have to say it may have been one of the easiest breads I've ever made.  It was awesome!  I love the web site I got the recipe from.  You'll notice the measurements are in grams.  I'm learning and keep reading that when you make bread this is the way to measure out the ingredients.  There is a whole science behind the scenes of bread making.  Since I've started weighing out my ingredients I've had way better success.  I did cut the salt in half and not an issue at all, it still tasted excellent. 

If you have a pizza stone (you should) in your oven and you are baking bread here is a little tip to help you get that brick oven bake.  A lot of crusty breads need to have some water brushed on top of them.  Still do that or you can use a little spray bottle.  Let the oven heat to temp for at least an hour, you want that stone HOT.  Use semolina flour to dust your stone instead of corn meal.  Corn meal burns and it's not good for you like that.  Once you place that bread on the stone to bake, spray the entire oven.  Yes it will steam and all but that's what you want.  Half way through the baking time, spray the bread again.  You can even put a rack under your stone with a pie pan of water in it.  I learned this trick at a brick oven baking class that I took at the Stone Turtle Baking School.  Happy Baking!

Guess what?  The average piece of pizza has over 500mg of sodium. That's if it just has cheese on it.  Add the pepperoni, olives and extra cheese and it's off the chart. You're suppose to have 2,400mg for the entire day.  We are keeping our target at 1,500-2,000mg a day for Hubby's kidney/heart health. When he got the word from the doctor, "salt....bad" we both looked at each other and said, "ahhhhh man pizza......"  Well have no fear problem solved because when you have pizza you can't have just one piece.  You all know how I've carried on with my obsession about making the perfect pizza, well I might have made one of my best pizza's ever tonight.  I cut the salt in my pizza crust in half.  I made the sauce with Pastene peeled Italian tomatoes.  They are low salt and I simmered the sauce with a lot of garlic and olive oil.  I bought low moisture mozzarella and shredded it.  There is less sodium in a chunk of mozzarella than the preshredded stuff.  Joe just figured out the sodium count: 330mg per slice!  The bonus part, I'm not crazy thirsty. 

 

Coconut....the other white milk

I looooooooooooooove coconut milk!  You can make so many yummy things in a hurry with it.  I also think it gets a bad rap because of it's fat content.  There is this great article explaining the benefits of it and the type of saturated fat it actually is. Just a little food science for you.  One of my favorite bloggers 101 Cookbooks has a whole list of coconut milk recipes.

As much as I love to cook I absolutely HATE going to the grocery store.  HATE IT!  Will put it off as long as possible and this week I've gone twice and I'm not going back.  So tonight I looked in the fridge and freezer.  I saw one frozen boneless chicken breast, a bag of fresh spinach, some left over roasted cauliflower, shriveled up ginger in the bottom of the drawer (better than NO ginger) and an aging red pepper but HEY they are a million dollars a pound here, I can rehydrate it and a bag of scallions.  I thought hmmm if I have a can of coconut milk I'm golden.  Yep downstairs in my make shift pantry one lone can of coconut milk and a lone bag of rice noodles from my last Asian market trip 6 months ago.  We got dinner!

I cut up the chicken breast in tiny cubes to make it seem like a lot.  Sauteed that with the peppers, chopped garlic and ginger.  Added in the scallions.  THEN....this is cool because I just read about it.  I opened the can of coconut milk and the layer of cream on top (that is pretty solid) I scooped out and sauteed the mixture in that.  It started to brown up a bit and thicken, perfect.  I then added all the spinach, cauliflower and a teaspoon of sweet curry powder and a teaspoon of red curry paste, covered and let the steam cook down the spinach.  Then I added the rest of the coconut milk, OH and I added a few chopped tomatoes.  I let it simmer for a bit to thicken up.  Cooked the rice noodles and chopped up some cilantro for garnish.  Have we discussed cilantro?  I know Carla will pipe up on the cilantro post;)  This was AWESOME!  Super low sodium, yes it could of used a splash of fish sauce but hey it was tasty.  We grabbed some chop sticks and our bowls of this and gobbled it right up. 

Those are my kind of meals.  I totally get how Rachel has made millions on her 30 minute meals.  But that was my 30 minute meal and I did NOT have to go to the stupid grocery store. 

Hippie Hummus, Hamburgers & Homefries

Now I bet THAT title caught your attention!  Lot's to share on this post so grab your coffee.  I've filled you in on the new low-salt eating that is going on here.  I hate the word diet, it's not really a diet.  I'm eating Girl Scout cookies as I type this.  Yep they have salt.  So tortilla chips.  LOADED with salt, like hang a bag in the pasture for a salt lick kind of loaded.  Well problem solved.

 

HOMEMADE TORTILLA CHIPS

Heat oven to 350.  Line baking sheet with parchment, if not that is okay.  I only use white corn tortillas, very low in sodium.  Oil 7 tortilla's with corn oil I found you only need to do one side.  THEN cut into 6's (I'm such a dork I use to cut, then oil, duhhhh) spread on baking sheet.  Sprinkle with some seasoning if you like.  I used the Arizona Dreaming spice from Penzey's. Bake for 15-20 minutes.  I didn't even flip them over.  Just keep and eye on them and let them get brown and they will be crunchy.  I made up several batches tonight and stored in a zippy.  Well we ate a batch of them too, wicked tasty!

My sister called the other day for our old hummus recipe, "the one we use to make all the time" she said.  I did some digging and found the old "Hippie Hummus" recipe.  There are all these new fandangled hummus' in the stores and of course loaded with salt.  See these are the places that the salt creeps in.  My food buddy Joe F told me that when you rinse off beans you eliminate 40% of the sodium from them.  I've always rinsed my beans off, I can't stand that slimmy stuff, but good to know.  I ran out of time to cook my chick peas so I bought the low sodium Goya chick peas. 

HIPPIE HUMMUS

2-3 cloves of garlic (I roasted mine while making those tortilla chips)

1/2 a bunch of parsley

2 15.5 oz cans of chick peas, rinsed very well

6 Tablespoons of tahini (this is sesame paste, I found it at my rural grocery store, look in the Jewish or Greek food sections.)

6 Tablespoons FRESH lemon juice

Salt (to taste) I skipped it and used a tiny splash of soy sauce.

You might need to add 1-2 Tablespoons of water.

opt. cumin or cayenne to taste

Mix it all up in the food processor.  Grab one of those tortilla chips and enjoy!

I forgot to show you this one the other day.  We were dealing with that moon;)  I've started making my homefries this way on the EGG. I think yukon golds work the best.  I start them before the burgers, I do oil them with corn oil, don't use olive oil, and keep an eye on them or keep them over the cooler coals.  I've done these on a gas grill too.  They take about 20 minutes and you have to flip them a few times.  Hmmmmm hamburgers, our little store downtown sells great angus beef.  We found that good old fashion Pepperidge Farm hamburger buns have the least amount of salt.  Those were some yummy burgers.

~Happy Cooking~

 

 

 

 

Grain

When I feed the sheep and llama their grain I always want some.  If you've ever smelled a big bag of NC 16 Sweet Sheep feed you'd want some too.  So instead of eating that I made granola today.  I'm feeling the need to clean out the arteries and I don't know about you guys but I'm really tired of the packaging and air space you get for $3.69 in a box of cereal. I'm kind of done with that.  I think I will call this me Sweet Feed Granola.

Cowgirl Goods Sweet Feed Granola

4 cups of regular oats

1/2 cup slivered almonds (or any kind of nuts that you like)

optional: flax seed & coconut

1 1/2 teas cinnamon

1/2 teas salt

1/3 cup water

1/3 cup honey

1/3 cup maple syrup

2 TBS brown sugar

2 TBS canola oil

1/3 cup peanut butter

Cooking spray

2 cups of any kind of dried fruit, cranberries, diced apricots, raisins.

Heat oven to 325. Combine dry ingredients.  Combine water, honey, syrup, sugar, oil and peanut butter, stir with a whip and bring to a boil, keep stirring and shut off heat.  Pour over dry mixture.  Mix with a big spoon, spread out on cookie sheet either with cooking spray or parchment with a little cooking spray.  Spread out evenly, put in oven, gentle stir every 10 minutes.  After 30 minutes add the fruit, put back in the oven for another 10 minutes.  That's it.  You can easily double this recipe and share with friends.  Store in zippies or glass jars. 

 

Hubby took this great shot the other day.  I think he just found our new feeder.  He's welcome to dine here anytime.