I make this differently every time, so feel free to experiment.

Chicken and Dumplings
Serves 4
Time: 20 minutes of prep and 2+ hours of cooking time with a store-bought roast chicken. Add 10 minutes of prep if you’re using raw chicken.

Ingredients for the Chicken
1/2 of a store-bought roast chicken or 5 raw chicken thighs or 2 chicken breasts
Chicken broth
1 clove garlic
1/4 c. diced onion
1/2 c. diced cooked or frozen carrot
1 c. frozen peas
1/2 c. flour
1/2 c. milk or half-n-half

Ingredients for the Dumplings
1 c. flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 tbsp butter
1 tbsp diced fresh herbs: thyme, marjoram, parsley, etc.
1/3 c. cold milk

Whether you’re using cooked or raw chicken, put it in a large pot, cover with 1/2 water and 1/2 chicken broth, and set it to simmer for about 2 hours. You could easily do this in a crock pot, increasing the time to 4 hours on high. When the chicken is falling apart, remove it from the liquid with a slotted spoon and separate the meat from the bones and skin, if there are any. Shred meat.Taste the liquid and add salt if necessary.

Return shredded chicken to the cooking liquid, along with diced carrot, peas, onion, and garlic. In a small cup, mix together milk or half-n-half with flour. Drizzle this into the liquid while stirring. Cover the pot and let this simmer to thicken while you mix the dumplings.

In a medium mixing bowl, combine flour, salt, and baking powder. Using a pastry blender, two knives, or your fingers, cut in the butter until the mixture resembles crumbs. Add diced herbs and milk, stir lightly until just combined. The dough should hold together but still be rather dry. Turn dough out onto lightly floured cutting board, dust flour over the top, and pat gently into a 1/4-inch-thick rectangle. Slice rectangle into 1-inch strips, and cut strips into 2-inch lengths.

Drop dumplings one at a time into the thickened, simmering chicken mixture. Cover. Let simmer for 15 minutes, or until dumplings are cooked through. Serve hot.

To make up for the horrible picture of the food, I give you Abbey, sulking because Lily has taken her bed.

A visit to Ranch 99 this weekend yielded two pounds of gorgeous shrimp, so I whipped up an enchiladas de mariscos recipe for them. Incidentally, isn’t that just the most quintessentially American thing to do? Make enchiladas with shrimp purchased at the Asian grocery store. I love this country.

These enchiladas are super tasty, with tender whole shrimp, rice, mild sauce, and flaked tilapia. Even though they feature seafood, they aren’t fishy at all. As always, the recipe is on Tasty Kitchen.

The recipe can be found at Tasty Kitchen, and the progress shots are below.

One of the pizzas I made was roasted chicken/ mushroom/ mozzarella. It was fantastic.

And that’s all there is to it.