Category Archives: Recipes

Chicken Stew (and an Anniversary!)

I made this chicken stew in the last week of October, two pots of it, and everyone loved it. There were no leftovers. When I made it again – repeat.

This stew is easy and once you’ve got your prep out of the way, it only takes about forty minutes to cook. I made it on the fly, I winged it…the only thing that stopped me from posting it sooner was getting the measurements down. Once upon a time, I used to measure spices with teaspoons and sometimes tablespoons but now I rarely do unless I’m following a written recipe. Most days I just eyeball the amounts. (Eventually I’ll start eyeballing the amounts for those written recipes, too, if I make them enough times to know the recipes by heart.)

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Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies

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I love oatmeal cookies, and especially chocolate chip oatmeal cookies. Like all cookies, and particularly the one of chocolate chip persuasion, there are countless variations but I think the one that everyone should have up their sleeve is a classic chocolate chip oatmeal cookie. There are countless variations and recipes for this also but the general consensus remains: a classic is the one that is essentially no nonsense. It’s just plain and simple, yet also the one that practically asks to be had with a glass of milk. It’s buttery and has just the right amount of sweetness without hurting your teeth and when you make it – it’s just right. It hits the spot.

With that said, I’m pleased to say that I’ve finally got an oatmeal cookie on Z’s Cup of Tea.

This perfect classiness I found when I made a gluten-free version of these chewy oatmeal raisin cookies on Smitten Kitchen and made a few other slight changes, like upping the vanilla a little bit and deciding to add baking powder after A LOT of trepidation. (I don’t make these kinds of decisions lightly. After being forgotten for a spell, I found again my baker’s notes on my iPod.)

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Chicken or Turkey and Beans Chili

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Cold weather is setting in, the days are getting shorter and even on the sunniest of days, one still needs to bundle up. This is the weather that requires tucking into a warm bowl of soup or stew after coming in from the cold. Thanksgiving comes earlier in Canada, we celebrate it a month earlier than Americans, and last week we made a chicken chili instead of having the traditional turkey. (We would have used turkey, but my Mum didn’t have her readers on when she went to pick it up. To be fair, though, the chicken and turkey (both ground) were close together.)

This will have been only the second recipe for chili I’ve made so far, and it’s a good one. It was an instant favourite with my family – there were no leftovers – and it has the traditional chili flavours with bacon and ground turkey (or chicken, which is tofu-like in that it absorbs the spices and flavours of the ingredients) and the addition of cocoa powder gives it depth and a subtle flavour of its own. (I had not used cocoa powder before in chili and despite my doubts, I was pleasantly surprised and happy I went along with it.) We also used red and white kidney beans in celebration of Canadian spirit.

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