Friday, January 9, 2009

Continued Biscuit Fun...

So today's recipe is NOT from the book I mentioned before. When I purchased 101 Things to do with Canned Biscuits (by the way....they have many other selections...I also have the tortilla one) I got it for use in the classroom. PLEASE be aware that I am far from the convenience food junkie. (I am not addict...just a recreational user!!! hahahahaha) Due to the time limitations in my classroom, cookbooks like that are nice for it shaves time of the student's lab experience. Anything I can do to get those kids cooking experience or being creative in the kitchen is GREAT to me.

Now, on the 8th grade level I am more into showing the differences between convenience foods and homemade and how they taste...and the important of shaving time of food preparation by using some convenience foods but not to the point of losing the 'from scratch' taste. For example....making a pie. Using an already made pie crust but taking all the credit for what you put together on the inside. You get what I am saying now?


When I decided to showcase this book (only really because it happened to be by me at the computer...LOL) and I picked a few out, it occurred to me that I had some other recipes that I could do. I think the next book I won't get so overachieving and pick ONE recipe from the book to highlight and perhaps suggest others that sound good. K-man doesn't mind being my 'quality control taster' but I know he likes some of our regular things (like our homemade pizza) and I don't want him feeling deprived now do I??


This next recipe shocks me, from that whole year in Home Economics and the things we prepared in class...why is THIS the only recipe I can remember? Granted I was young, in 7th grade, I was probably hormonal from puberty, HECK, it was freakin' 1978!!! I do remember my teacher Ms Lindberg was on her last year, ready to retire....she was always cranky. I remember her yelling at me for not cracking my eggs separately. But everything else I may have cooked is a blank. (I kept my dress that I sewed!)

I get emails from my former students telling me how they remember making French Toast, pizza, brownies, or other requesting Minestrone Soup recipes they made in High School....Yet I can't remember anything I made that year (clearly no spark was set during those years to be a FACS teacher) But that following summer, I remember spending a week with my Me-mom and I asked her to purchase these ingredients so I could make it for her.

I can't even remember the name of this recipe so I had to make one up.

Mushroom and Chicken Dumplings
(The only memory of my cooking in Middle School)


Can of biscuits (10 count)
Package of sliced mushrooms
2 cans of mushroom soup
2 cups whole milk or cream (depending on how rich you want this)
Garlic powder
Salt and pepper to taste
My suggestion is to hit the salad bar for the following items:
Cooked chicken (1 cup)
1/3 of a Bell pepper (what ever color you prefer)
1/2 of small onion finely chopped

Place cans of soup and milk or cream in 3 qt. pan. Stir and heat through soup while prepping the dumplings.

Finely chop the peppers, onion and cube the chicken. Place in bowl, salt and pepper to taste, sprinkle with a bit of garlic powder. Chop all the mushrooms into small chunks and divide into half. Place one half in soup mixture and the other into the bowl with the chicken, peppers and onions. Mix chicken and veggies. Open biscuits and use rolling pin to flatten biscuits (I used a tortilla press). After all biscuits are flattened, take spoon and portion out all the chix/veggie mixture among them. Pinch each biscuit closed sealing the chicken mixture inside dumpling. After all dumplings are sealed, turn up soup to a simmer. Put in ONE dumpling. Gently stir to get dumpling totally covered with soup. Add remaining dumplings, stirring gently between each addition. Simmer dumplings for 15 minutes or until dumpling is cooked through. Ladle into bowls with 3 dumplings and some soup. Serve with hot crusty bread. Serves 3-4.
I added a pile of spinach on our for added color and more veggies. Just a serving suggestion here!!

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