My favorite part of Chicken & Dumplings?

The fact my wife makes that dish, so I get a night off from cooking.

As you know, we love perogies around here.

The last time we made them, we made 92. This time, we went for a record. Okay, not really, but we did have fun making them.

The young chef of the family and I made 100 perogies (36 for freezing to accompany another dinner later this week), and 64 for eating tonight.

After boiling the first 36, and putting them on a baking sheet in the freezer, we continued making the rest of them.

After dinner, 3 perogies survived. Poor perogies. They sure were delicious.

We love pot roast around here. There used to be a time when a pot roast would last two days around here. Now, with the kids growing faster than Oprah on a binge, one pot roast hardly lasts 30 minutes.

The other night, we took the easy way out when it came to making dinner. As our 7 year old was helping me, he said he had a problem. He said the package of fish filets said it had 10 filets in it, but it didn’t. They were wrong.

Over the last two months we have spent a lot of time smashing, squishing, chopping, and milling different fruits to make our yearly supply of jams and jellies.

We made blackberry jam, blueberry jam, watermelon jelly, and apple jelly.

The apple jelly didn’t set. We have no idea why. The balance of sugar and pectin should have been right. Everything else should have been right. Stupid apples.

Look at the pretty tomatoes.

By the way, they were delicious!

I finally did it.

Our kids love chicken nuggets from the fast food places, like most kids. From time to time I try to make chicken with a coating that the kids will eat. Each time I think I have it, I fail, big time. They end up eating some of it, but then stopping halfway through a bite to tell me they don’t really like it.

So last night I tried something different. When the chicken breasts were still a bit frozen I sliced them in long think slices (where they resembled small fish filets).

I “marinated” them in a mixture for 30 minutes, soaked them in a batter and friend them.

“Marinade” Ingredients:

3 eggs
3-4 Tbsp milk
2 tsp minced garlic
2-3 Tbsp soy sauce
1/4-1/2 tsp crushed red pepper
salt and pepper to taste.

Mix all ingredients, and add chicken. Stir until chicken is covered and place the bowl in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.

Batter ingredients:

1 cup flour
1 cup water
1 1/4 tsp baking soda
2 tsp Lowry’s seasoning salt

Remove chicken piece from “marinade”, coat with batter, and drop into 1-2 inches of hot oil in a cast iron pan. Fry for 3 minutes on each side. Oh yeah, about the oil. I didn’t have enough crisco so I added some light olive oil to the mixture.

Success! They loved it. They said it tasted a lot like Long John Silver’s fish. I had to chuckle. They loved it so much, they actually want to eat the leftovers tonight. Amazing I tell you. I have used the same ingredients before, I just didn’t use them in this combination.

A couple nights ago we were kicking back, watching television and I suddenly craved chocolate. Not just any chocolate either. I knew right then I had to have cookies. I asked the wife if she wanted some. At midnight, warm cookies with a glass of cold milk always sound good.

So that’s what we had. Don’t get too excited, there’s nothing fancy with them, and no secret recipe, they were simple Nestle Tollhouse Cookies.

And they were delicious.

I was hoping to have a video that I am working on done by now, but our power went out around 6pm and didn’t come back on until nearly 10.

Needless to say I am still working on the video, and it involves the mixture shown in the pot in the photo. I hope to have it done within the next few hours, but I probably won’t get around to posting it until tomorrow sometime.

Here’s the photo of the blueberries. In fact, I think we have more blueberries than we had blackberries, which means we’ll have quite a few jars of blueberry jam when we are done.