Food experiments

One of my favorite things to write about is food, why?  I dunno, probably because I envy everyone who can eat it.  Still, I love to cook, and I love to take pictures of what I cook especially since I have pretty dishes now to feed people with.

This is an experiment.  I call it.....um, chicken chili.....hahaha very original.  See, I remembered I had a slow cooker, thanks to my old roommie Sarah, and I thought if I cooked the chicken in spices and sauce, it would get super tender and make excellent quesadillas.  So I blended a can of tomatoes with tomato paste, onions and garlic, and a burrito spice pack.  Then I cut up a chicken breast and added it to the mix and let that slow cook for 3 hours.  When I went to take it out, it hadn't worked quite like I wanted, and I didn't know what to do with the sauce.  So I had another idea.  I shredded up the chicken pieces, and let them slow cook for another hour, and also added a can of butter beans. Then I sliced up tortillas, brushed them with oil, and baked them until they got crispy.  Then I topped them with cheese, and baked them again. The finished product ended up being a chili kind of thing atop cheesy tortilla chips.  Nick said it tasted amazing!  So, cudos to me.

This was nothing terribly special, just a breakfast I made for our house guests from Panama.  Bacon, fresh strawberries, with homemade whipped cream, orange juice, whipped eggs, and sour cream pancakes.  Oh my gosh, my house smelled incredible the whole day.  Sour cream pancakes are my favorite.  There wasn't a thing left on that table.

And tonight, we had Will and Emily join us again (I'm really liking these Sunday dinners).  I made home made mashed potatoes, which Nick sliced up for me.  We also had french bread and asparagas stir-fry veggies.  Now the main dish, the chicken, I got a little creative with.  Nick told me to use my imagination, so I went to town!  I had this thought, since my "chicken chili" turned out so great, how about something similar, in a white sauce?  I started with garlic and onions, chopped up and sauteed in butter.  Then I added basil, nutmeg, worschershire sauce and crushed red pepper.  Let that all reduce, and then added flour for thickener, sour cream and milk.  Once that was all mixed and thickening,  I added a handful of shredded mozzarella.  It smelled sooooo good!  I put it all in the slow cooker, while Emily chopped up the chicken for me.  When she was done, I seared the chicken in butter before adding it to my white sauce, and let that slow cook for two hours.  We shredded that chicken too, and it ended up looking like the chicken stuff you put on Hawaiian haystacks.  I decided that would be the topping for the mashed potatoes, and it actually turned out pretty good, it even was yummy blended.  Hehe, I'm so original.  

Isn't it tragic someone like me likes to cook so much?  It's like asking a deaf person to write music and then listen to it.  Well, I guess I'm the Beethoven of the culinary world.