The Easiest Biscuits This Side of Canned....

I had old fashioned chicken and biscuits for dinner tonight. I had some leftover roast chicken, and plenty of drippings to make a good gravy, so I thought why not?

I thought I'd share my biscuit recipe with you. No, it's not the best quick bread out there, but it's just about the easiest you will find, and requires no cans, mixes, or rolling. And it's good; far better than anything you can get from a can or a mix.

2 cups all purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt

1/3 cup cooking oil (YES, cooking oil)
2/3 cup milk

Stir the dry ingredients together in a large mixing bowl. Pour the oil into a liquid measuring cup. Add milk until the liquid comes to the 1 cup mark.

Make a well in the dry ingredients, and add the liquids all at once. Stir until a dough starts to come together. Put a little flour on your hands, reach into the bowl and knead or squish the dough together for about 30 seconds.

Now here's the easy part. Grab a handful of dough, roll it into a ball with your hands, and shape it into a circle about 1/2 - 3/4 " thick. Cut into fourths, and place on an ungreased baking sheet.

Repeat with the remaining dough until gone. Bake at 425F for 12 - 15 minutes or until golden brown.

Serve hot!

A Quick Macaroni Dish

This recipe tastes much better than you would think, and it's incredibly cheap to make, even if you go a little pricey on the bacon and the olives. An old time comfort food side dish that's a great weeknight supper with a salad and some fruit.

Macaroni Dish

6 slices bacon, snipped with kitchen shears
1 medium onion, chopped
1 cup sliced olives (I use the green salad variety)
1 lb elbow macaroni, rotini, or shells

Cook macaroni in boiling salted water according to package directions. Drain well.

Meanwhile, cook the bacon bits in a skillet until browned. Remove, reserving the bacon drippings.

Saute the onion in the bacon drippings until tender and golden. Add the bacon and the sliced olives and stir until heated.

Toss with the cooked, drained macaroni, and season to taste with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Serve.

Also holds and reheats well.

Hey Music Lovers

Sometimes a song gets stuck in my head, or I want just a few songs from a particular group. If it's just one, I'll pay the 89 or 99 cents from Amazon MP3 downloads.

However, sometimes, there are just a few key songs that I want by a particular group...more than one but not enough to justify $10 - $20 for a greatest hits collection.

Enter the Rhino Hi Five! These are mini greatest hits compilations available from Rhino records (http://www.rhino.com/shop/crossgenre/hi-five) or places like Amazon mp3. The cost for a collection is usually $4-5 and you get the key songs that made the artist famous. Rhino offers high quality mp3's and also offers them in lossless formats so you can create a higher quality CD. However, you do pay more for those, and I find the mp3 to be more than satisfactory.

Check them out the next time you want just a few "old memories."

Sorry about Not Being Online...

It's been a little crazy the last week. My dad passed away last Friday and then my cousin's wife was taken seriously ill (she's 6 months pregnant), so I've had my mind elsewhere. She's doing better and the baby is fine....so we're keeping her in our prayers but things are looking up.

I've been craving comfort food since all the confusion has started, so I thought I'd share one of my old time favorites with you. Nothing imaginative here nothing at all, but it's simple and tasty, and I think it's a far cry better than the recipe on the mushroom soup can.

Quick and Easy Chicken and Rice

4 boneless skinless chicken breasts, thawed
Seasoned salt
Black pepper
Olive oil
1 can condensed cream of mushroom soup (buy the store brand for sauces and casseroles; it's just fine)
1 cup rice
2 cups water with 2 chicken boullion cubes added
OR
2 cups chicken broth
1/2 teaspoon poultry seasoning (salt free variety)

Heat olive oil in heavy skillet. Add chicken breasts and brown over medium heat until golden. Season breasts with the seasoned salt and pepper, and add the can of condensed soup. Stir it around a bit to get it distributed. Cover and simmer for about 30 minutes or until chicken is thoroughly cooked.

Meanwhile, mix water and boullion (or chicken broth) in a large saucepan. Heat to boiling. Add rice and poultry seasoning. Return to boil, reduce heat to LOW and simmer until all the water is absorbed (about 15 - 20 minutes.....about 40 - 45 for brown rice).

To serve, place a bed of rice on the plate, add a bit of the mushroom sauce, and place a chicken breast on top. Very easy and comforting food.

Comfort Food....the Country Fried Steak

I made this for dinner last night, and it's a treat in a comfy sort of way. Nothing fancy, just good eatin'

Country Fried Steak

1 largish round steak, cut about 3/4" thick
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/4 cup vegetable oil
2 cups milk

Take the steak and pound it thoroughly with your meat hammer. Put in a bag with the flour, salt, and pepper, and shake well.

Meanwhile, heat the 1/4 cup vegetable oil until hot in a cast iron skillet

Gently lay the coated meat in the heated oil. Brown meat on both sides, and add 2 tablespoons water.

Cover the skillet, reduce heat to very low, and allow to cook for about 45 minutes to 1 hour. Uncover the last 15 minutes to crisp up the coating. Remove steak from skillet and keep warm.

Add 1/4 cup flour to the drippings in the skillet, and stir until lightly browned. Add milk, all at once and stir constantly until boiling. Use medium heat. Boil and stir for an additional 1-2 minutes and remove from heat. Correct seasoning.

Serve gravy over the steak along with some mashed potatoes on the side. Add some cooked green beans as a veggie, and you're set for a comfort meal extraordinaire.

Beef Stew for the Crock Pot

An easy, cheap, beef stew that tastes better than the canned varieties.

2 lbs beef stew meat (or round steak cut into cubes)
1 can condensed tomato soup, thinned with 1/2 can water (you can also use mushroom soup and a few drops of kitchen bouquet if you don't like tomato)
1 large potato cut into chunks
1 can peas, or 1 small package frozen peas
1 carrot sliced (or a good handfull of baby carrots)
1 large onion chopped
1/2 teaspoon pepper
dash Worcestershire sauce

Mix all of these ingredients in your crock pot, cover, and cook for 8-10 hours on Low, 4-6 hour on high.

Serve with corn bread or hot biscuits.

Cheap Computing

I consider my computer a necessity....not a luxury. I use it to work, play, and communicate.

Like most people, mine isn't the latest and greatest, and I have an older model stashed away. I gave another older model a new lease on life with Linux.

My living room PC is solid, works wonderfully, and is very dated. However, it works just as fast as my office PC thanks to Ubuntu.

What is Ubuntu? It's a variety of Linux....a free operating system developed by the open source community. It's easy to install and configure (it does the work for you in 99% of the cases), runs quickly, and breathes life into an older machine quite well.

I use my Ubuntu box as a multimedia machine. I have a cable running from it to my television and my stereo system. This way, I can download music and play it through the stereo. I can watch TV on Hulu and Youtube, and sit on the couch and chat with friends and family. I can sync my ipod and mp3 players (you still need Itunes to restore an ipod), and I can watch movies stored on my external HD.

Ubuntu is VERY user friendly, and there's a ton of online support in addition to several great, reasonably priced books. Just Google "Ubuntu" for more information. It can also be set up as a file or print server and even comes with OpenOffice.org, an office suite that is very compatible with MS Office.

Why let that computer gather dust? Give it a new breath of life and see what it can do!