Take the chill off.

Yummy Monday began as a way to break me out of my unimaginative culinary rut.  Each week I try brand new recipes out - using my parents and my own little family as guinea pigs.  Some recipes are found online, some from friends, some from random cookbooks and some I invent myself.  Some are masterpieces.  Some are flops.  But I'll tell you all about it so you can avoid the bad and relish the great!

Our first Yummy Monday of 2012 is a good one!  I had to start on a high note.  Not only is it new to me and my family, delicious and easy to make, it's also PERFECT for those cold, winter nights.  If you've got cold winter nights in your neck of the woods.  I'm still trying to figure out why it feels like a normal Wisconsin May right now.  Complete with no snow.  Weird.


Anyway, if YOU are chilled to the bone, try this guy out:


Creamy Chicken and Rice Soup

That recipe is from allrecipes.com and I happened to read the reviews and comments below before I went shopping.  And I'm glad I did.  If you peruse, you'll notice a lot of suggestions for improving the "blandness" of the original recipe and some useful tips about making it more soup-like than stew-like.  I went through the ideas and combined a few I found helpful and made some changes based on our personal taste and the soup I ended up with was amazing.  Truly, very good.  Even my super picky 4-yr-old liked it.  So, here's the recipe as I made it.

Creamy Chicken and Rice Soup
1 bag of frozen peas
1 small bag of baby carrots (cut each in half)
1/2 of an onion, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, minced
2 C uncooked white rice
4 teaspoon chicken bouillon powder
2 (14 ounce) cans chicken broth
1 C water
1/2 C Cooking Sherry
1/2 C butter
1/2 C all-purpose flour
3 cups chopped, cooked chicken breast meat
6 cups milk, divided
1/2 tsp garlic salt
1/4 tsp onion powder
salt and pepper to taste

• To prepare the chicken:  Rub salt, some pepper and a little garlic powder onto both sides of each chicken breast.  Cut them into pieces.  Pour some olive oil into a pan and brown the chicken in the olive oil - cook, stirring, until white all the way through, 15-20 minutes.  Set aside.
• In a large pot over high heat, combine the peas, carrots, onion, garlic, rice, bouillon, broth, water and sherry and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low, cover and simmer for 30 minutes, or until the rice has absorbed most of the liquid. Remove from heat and set aside.  In a medium saucepan over medium heat, melt the butter. Slowly add the flour, stirring often, to make a roux. Add 4 cups of milk, 1/2 cup at a time, while constantly stirring with a whisk. Add this to the rice mixture and stir.  Add the chicken.  Return the rice mixture to the stovetop over low heat.  Add the remaining 2 cups of milk.  Stir in the garlic salt and onion powder.  Season with salt and pepper to taste and allow to simmer for at least an hour, stirring every 15 minutes.

And if that doesn't warm you up, I don't know what will.  Also keep in mind that this may make enough for a small army.  You will either need to acquire an army to feed or plan on having leftovers.  Use a super large pot.

Our dessert was nothing super special, but kind of fun.  I simply made Cinnamon Roll Donuts.  

I used a package of cinnamon rolls - i.e. pillsbury.  I took each cinnamon roll out and divided it in half.  Then, I stretched one piece out and folded it back together, long and skinny like.  Then I folded it one more time and twisted it, kind of squeezing a bit to make sure it kind of stuck together.  I did this for each roll - so the amount of "donuts" you end up with will be twice the amount of rolls you start with.  Then just heat some oil in a pot and dunk your cinnamon rolls.  Let them fry until they turn a nice golden brown.  Drain them on some paper towels.  Make a sugar glaze by adding milk to a little bit of powdered sugar and stirring until it's dissolved.  Then, just drizzle the glaze over the top.  Yum!  (and easy too!)  Just make sure your twists aren't too thick or the inside of them won't get cooked.  And that's just gross.

Now, go warm yourself up!

  

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