Bridal Shower Bites - Aunt Kitty's Chicken Pie

Happy Sunday!

Things have been a little bit crazy here in the Boston/Cambridge area this week, but are thankfully starting to get back to normal. I wanted to make Aunt Josette's cookies during my unexpected day-off-work / governor-mandated-lockdown, but didn't have all of the ingredients (and couldn't go get them, either.  That's what a lockdown will do). I ended up making a banana bread instead with an old banana that I found in the freezer. I should have spent the time writing this post, though, since we actually made this recipe a few days ago, but I spent more time than I should have just watching the news (again, that's what a lockdown will do to you).

Chicken Soup with Rice

Remember the Maurice Sendak poem/book Chicken Soup with Rice?  I think of it every time I make any kind of chicken soup, with rice or no.  Admittedly, that's not often, as I don't make a lot of chicken soup.  What happens more often when I'm making soup is that I sing my soup-centered version of Shoop by Salt-N-Pepa.  You can probably figure out how it goes.  Not super original, I know, but catchy.  Anyway, Sendak calls the book "a book of months," which means that every month gets its own five-line poem about how chicken soup with rice is the perfect meal for that month.  This is the poem for May (Happy May Day!):

In May I truly think it best

To be a robin lightly dressed

Concocting soup inside my nest

Mix it once, mix it twice

Mix that chicken soup with rice.

Today was definitely the type of day for chicken soup with rice.  Not quite the type of day to be a robin lightly dressed, though, unless you want to freeze your tailfeathers off.

Leftover Thursday - Lemon Roasted Vegetables

Around about Thursday is when my dinner planning stops.  There are usually some leftover ingredients in the fridge that need to be used, and caution is thrown to the wind.  And that's where I found myself this afternoon, facing a half-full (or half-empty, depending how you look at it) container of mushrooms, a lemon that was nearing the end of its prime, half a bunch of collard greens, part of a head of broccoli, and two chicken breasts.  There are probably about a million combinations of those ingredients that would result in a delicious dinner (or, you know, at least ten), but this is the one I came up with.  

And don't worry, y'all - my new found love of early American cooking is still going strong.  Early Americans had a variety of poultry and fowl available to them, and Amelia Simmons has this general advice for the homecook choosing a bird: "Having before ftated that the female in almost every inftance, is preferable to the male, and pecularily fo in the the Peacock, which, tho' beautifully plumaged, is tough, hard, ftringy and untafted, and even indelicious - while the Pea Hen is exactly otherwife, and the queen of all birds."  I'm not even going to touch that "ladies are better than gents" statement, or make a broader analogy about peacocks or anything.  Though it would certainly be easy to do...

American Cookery, the first cookbook published in America by an American. 

Collards with Black Eyed Peas

After a scorching couple of days earlier this week, it finally cooled down and I was able to do a little cooking/baking without melting. Yesterday I made homemade cheez-its (yum) and today I baked a new oatmeal cookie recipe and made collard greens and stuffed chicken rolls for dinner. The recipe for the collards is inspired by my mom's hoppin' john recipe, and surprisingly, seems to be one of Matt's favorite veggie dishes.  People don't usually go for collards right off the bat - I mean, I did, but I grew up in the South - but he often requests this when I ask him what kind of veggies he wants.  When I don't ask him, we have broccoli.