Dark roasted soul: Some people eat to live,

and some live to eat.

Any guesses which category I fall into?

Here are some photos of yummy foods I have cooked in the past couple of weeks.

These are strips of chicken breast meat, topped with slices of provolone cheese and salami. I then covered them in plastic wrap and whacked them with a cast iron skillet until they were nice and skinny :)

In the pan -- the cheese and salami got nice and crispy. This was an amazing combination of flavors! I'll definitely make these again -- and they cook in about 5 minutes, with very little oil.

To go along with the chicken, I cooked some lima beans and barley.

Mmmm....

The next evening, I covered the rest of the chicken tenders in a simple batter (seasoned flour + pureed onion and hummus) and fried them in a very minimal amount of oil -- it's actually amazing how little is needed to get a nice brown crust.

Here they are sizzling in the pan. Smelled wonderful :) Sorry it's kinda blurry...

Plated. You can better see the crispy texture. They were moist and flavorful inside. TJ's organic chicken strips may be worth the extra dough!

To go along with the chicken, I made creamed potatoes and gravy...

The gravy was sort of an improvisation, which is probably how the first gravy was invented. I had delicious left-over drippings and fat from the chicken, and leftover flour from the batter. Put 'em together and voila!

As you can see, the meal also included a "vegetable soup." We won't delve into that debacle :P

The next week, I decided to be more economical and see how many meals I could get out of one (albeit large) roasting chicken. I also stocked up on some veggies that were on sale at Schnuck's. Acorn squash! :)

The bird and some onions, potatoes, and the acorn squash after a couple of hours in the oven (it was a 5 1/2 # bird and needed the time).

After deboning the chicken, I made some stock...

Here's some video of chicken stock boiling. A simple culinary wonder :)

I used about 1/3 of the stock to make this yummy kale and potato soup. I cooked the kale in one part of the stock, and heated up the roasted potatoes in the other. Then I blended the potato portion into a puree and mixed it in with the kale. It was fantastic!

You can see the potato puree and some remnants of potato skin here:

And I actually even reserved the bones and solid stuff and made a *second* stock overnight in the crock pot, which was too thin for a soup base but was perfect for cooking rice. Alas, I wanted to stick the rice in the fridge and go to bed, but it was still scorching hot and I was afraid it would spoil the milk or something.
So I gave it a cold water bath :)

Take that, Certeau! We modern folks still innovate and create new techniques in the kitchen, even with our industrial products. After 10 minutes sitting submerged in water, the rice was cool and ready for the fridge.

Later in the week, I used another portion of chicken stock and the meat of the acorn squash to make this creamy soup. A bit of chicken meat and some half-and-half gave it more body. It tasted like Autumn. :)

Video... I was a little infatuated by the creamy swirls on top.

What did I do with all the chicken meat, you ask? Where did that delicious seasoned rice go? So glad you asked! I did what all bachelors from the South do when confronted with several ingredients at once: I made a casserole!
And what would a casserole be without a 3-cheese sauce?

Plus some delicious sauteed mushrooms:

Microwave-steamed broccoli (there's really no better way to cook it!)

Spread the rice out on the bottom of a pan, then topped it with the veggies and some of the chicken meat. You know what's coming next :)

I just love the shape and texture of broccoli...

Cover it all in cheese! Delicious, creamy cheese! I am your servant, oh dairy gods.

I devoured my casserole in 4 meals :)

The final bit of stock (aside from a portion I put in the freezer) and most of the breast meat went into one of my favorite traditional dishes: chicken and dumplings.

Here's my dumpling (at an early stage): rolled out buttermilk dough, ready for cutting

After a couple of minutes in the pot of stock, the dumplings begin to puff up. Don't they look pillowy and soft? Don't you just want to pluck them out and devour them? well, DON'T!! They are trying to trick you. They're just chewy dough at this point, as I discovered the first time I made this dish. You have to wait until they shrink back down to their original size and start becoming translucent.

Like so:

Finally, for dessert I whipped up a Red Velvet Cake in tandem with Kati's cupcakes. My laptop - which was open to google chat video of Kati in her kitchen - was just outside this shot :)