Pancakes!

Yesterday – as some of you might know – was Pancake Day.  The Christians call it Shrove Tuesday, people from New Orleans call it Mardi Gras or Fat Tuesday.  I call it an excuse to have pancakes for dinner, with people you  love.  It has become a tradition for us to host a Pancake Supper on Shrove Tuesday.  Every year we wind up with 8-10 children and their parents for supper, and we cook up a mess of this delicious breakfast treat.

This year was no exception.

What was different is that it is the last year we will have a Pancake Dinner like this.  Why?  Well, because our impending move to Ajax (28 days and counting!) will make it difficult for our friends to come to our house – on a weeknight – for our feast.  So we made sure to do it up right.  We had 6 lbs of peameal bacon, 2 lbs of sausage, 3 dozen eggs and 5 batches of pancakes.  And a litre of maple syrup too, just to make the experience perfect.

If I do say so myself, our pancakes are among the best you will ever eat.  I cannot claim ownership of the recipe, though it has been our go-to breakfast treat for about 10 years now.  You see, when Mitchell and I got married (10 years ago this coming May) we honeymooned at a bed & breakfast on Bowen Island in BC.  The B&B was on a working vineyard on the island, and was so lovely it was painful to see.  They served us these pancakes, and as a wedding gift gave us the recipe.  We have been using it ever since, and I can’t imagine a time when we’ll discover a better one.  I’m going to post this recipe now, as The Vineyard on Bowen Island is no longer in operation, and I want to share a piece of our journey with you.  Here it is:

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups flour
1 tablespoon baking powder (level not heaping)
1/2 tsp salt
2 tablespoons sugar
1 1/4 cup milk
1 egg, beaten
3 Tablespoons melted butter or margarine
1/8 tsp vanilla

Method

1. In a bowl, combine flour, baking powder, salt & sugar.  Set aside.
2. In a separate bowl, mix together the milk, egg, melted butter or margarine and vanilla.
3. Add the wet to the dry, and cook them on a warm griddle (or frying pan) that’s been lightly greased with cooking spray or butter or margarine.

Additions

• For fruit pancakes, add in 1/2 cup of fruit (like blueberries or strawberries) to the batter before cooking.
• Connor loves it when we add 1/2 cup of chocolate chips to the batter.  And really, who can blame him??
• I love to mash up a ripe banana and add it to the batter.  The mashed up banana gets are caramelized in the cooking process, and wow..  it’s delicious!  Also amazing?  Adding chocolate to the banana pancakes…
• My other favourite alteration to this recipe is apple cinnamon.  Cut up 1/2 an apple into match sticks, and add that to the batter along with 1 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon.  YUM!!

Very rarely to we have leftover pancakes. But when we do, we put them in the fridge and have them as a snack with peanut butter spread on them.  It’s like peanut butter on bread, but instead of bread you use a pancake.  OMG do I ever love cold pancakes – of any flavour – and peanut butter.

This recipe makes about 10 pancakes; it’s enough for my family of four for breakfast.  Now, if you add in the banana, you’ll get about 14 pancakes out of it.  All in all, a fine mess of food.  Enjoy!

Noodle Pie

Oh, dear Reader. I discovered last week that I have been holding out on you. How so, you ask? Well, because the recipe I am about to share with you is one from my childhood. But I forgot about it entirely until it lept out of my recipe file last Sunday afternoon. I made it last week and remembered the depth of my love for this recipe…

I think my parents found this in the Toronto Star’s TV Guide about 20 years ago. They got a lot of great recipes from that publication I tell you! That’s where brocolli pene came from, you know. So you too have had a good recipe from that publication! But I digress. My parents discovered this recipe called Cheese & Onion Pie. Of course, we were children (my brother would have been 8 20 years ago) and so we would not eat anything that had “onion” in the name. So Mom & Dad called it “Noodle Pie”. As it turned out, we didn’t care what they called it, as long as they cooked it and we got to eat it! Yes dear Reader, it is that good. Here’s what you need to make it:

Ingredients

for the crust
3/4 cup flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp dry mustard
1 cup grated cheddar cheese
1/4 cup melted butter or margarine

for the filling
2 tbsp butter
1 1/2 cups onion, sliced
1 1/2 cups cooked and drained egg noodles
2 eggs
1 cup hot milk
1/2 tsp salt
pinch of ground pepper

Method

1. Preheat oven to 350°F
2. In a bowl combine the flour, salt, dry mustard and grated cheese with a fork.  Stir in the melted butter or margarine.
3. Press this mixture evenly into an 8″ deep dish pie plate, making sure to press the crust up the sides of the plate.  Set aside.
4. In a frying pan, melt the butter over medium heat . Stir in onions and cook until soft, but not browned.  Remove from heat.
5. Combine the onions and noodles, and then spread them evenly in the pie plate.  I usually dump the noodles into the frying pan with the onions; it’s one less dish to wash and I’m all about that! 
6. In a bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, salt and pepper.  Once they’re all combined, pour them evenly over the onions and noodles.
7. Bake the pie in the preheated oven for 35-40 minutes.  If you have onions or noodles sticking up out of the egg mixture, you’ll want to watch to make sure these pieces don’t burn.  If they’re starting to brown, cover the pie with a piece of tinfoil.
8. Let the pie stand for 5 minutes before serving.

I like to offer steamed brocolli with this supper.  Or a salad would be great too.  Trust me: no one will care about the sides when this pie on the table.  Connor & Sam both loved it!  I hope your family does too.

Chicken & Dumplings

YUM!

Okay – back story.  This morning as he was leaving for work, hubby asks me if I have any plan for tonight’s dinner.  I said that I didn’t, why?  Turns out that he was craving something “stew-like” to use his words.  I have a great recipe for beef stew, but it’s a slow cooker recipe and the stewing beef was at the bottom of my deep freezer.  Then it occurs to me that I should be able to make a chicken stew…  and there’s stock in the freezer…

I made a quick trip to my go-to recipe site, www.allrecipes.com and found what we had for dinner: Chicken & Dumplings.  When I told my Mom that I was going to make this, she got all wistful, remembering her childhood when her Mom – who’s birthday it is today – would make this for Sunday supper.  I thought then that I should blog about this as a “Sunday Dinner” but once we had it, I couldn’t wait until Sunday to share it with you.  Was it good?  ooohhhh yes, yes it was.  Very good.

I tweaked the recipe from the original.  I will post my version below, and here is the link to the original.  I wanted my stew to be a bit thicker, so the main change is that I added some cornstarch.  Here’s what I did:

Ingredients

for the stew:

1 pound of boneless, skinless chicken (I used mostly thighs & legs, but did include 1 breast)

4 cups chicken soup stock

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon pepper

1/2 teaspoon dried basil

1/4 teaspoon dried thyme

3/4 pound new potatoes, quartered

3 carrots, cut into 2-inch pieces

1 medium onion, cut into eighths

1 cup frozen peas

1 cup water

2 tbsp cornstarch

for the dumplings:

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

3 tablespoons butter or margarine

3/4 cup milk

1/4 cup minced fresh parsley

Directions

1. Cut up chicken into bite sized pieces.  Spray frying pan with non-stick cooking spray and cook the chicken pieces until they are done.
2. While the chicken cooks, heat the soup stock in a large pot.  Once the chicken is cooked, add it to the pot.
3. Add the remaining ingredients for the stew, and allow to simmer until the vegetables are tender, about 20-30 minutes, depending on the size of the veggie pieces.
4. Add the cornstarch to the water and mix until blended.  Pour into the stew to thicken it.
5. In a bowl combine the flour, baking powder and salt, using a fork.
6. Next, cut the butter or margarine into the flour using 2 knives or a pastry blender.  Add the milk and parsley and stir until well combined.
7. When the vegetables are done, use a tablespoon and drop spoonfuls of the dumpling batter into the stew pot.  Allow them to cook, uncovered, for 10 minutes. Then place the lid on the pot and continue to cook for 8-10 minutes or until the dumplings are tender.

Oh my goodness this was so delicious.  I have never before made dumplings, and was pleased at how easy it was to do.  The whole family ate this meal and Connor has declared that dumplings are his new number 1 favourite food!

Oh – as an aside, this recipe totals 53 points for the whole thing; I got 7 servings out of it making it 7 points/serving.  And let me tell you: worth every one!!