Comfort Food

I really love cooking for my family.  It has become quite the adventure since Third Son has learned to push a chair around the kitchen to whichever cabinet I happen to be standing at to cook.  I suck it up and play along - not always easy because he always wants to help pour and stir.  A lot of our ingredients end up on the floor, counter, or us.  ;-)

So Third Son and I have been working together to perfect a recipe that I found over at Tammy's Recipes.  I love her recipes because they are usually the kind of recipes that my family goes for.  The recipe that we finally achieved perfection on is called Farmhouse Chicken.  Talk about comfort food.  This one is the best!  After much tweaking, here is our final result:

Farmhouse Chicken

1 c. butter
1 c. flour
8 c. milk
2 lbs. chicken, cubed
3 carrots, sliced
2 celery, sliced
1/2 c. shredded swiss cheese
2 t. salt
1 1/2 t. pepper
1 1/2 t. thyme
12 oz. package stuffing mix

In a pan, melt butter and then add flour.  Stir until bubbly, then cook one minute.  Slowly add in milk, stirring continually to avoid lumps.  Add chicken, carrots, celery, cheese, salt, pepper and thyme.  Cook and stir until bubbly - about 15 minutes.
Pour mixture into 13x9 inch pan (it will be REALLY full!).  Top with stuffing.  Bake, uncovered, at 350 for 30 minutes.

I really increased the size of this recipe because of the size of my family, so if you're interested in Tammy's original measurements, go HERE.  For the 2 lbs. of chicken, I use leftover chicken from a whole, baking chicken that we usually have for dinner the night before. 

I like to serve green beans, homemade applesauce and another recipe I got from Tammy.  Pumpkin Rolls.  Another to-die-for recipe.  It's a big recipe and usually provides enough rolls for 3 meals for my family.  I made some last night, and they are so good, that Second Son claimed the biggest one for himself.  We didn't realize it, but he licked it and placed it next to the cup he had been drinking water from.  I saw the roll as I was bagging them up, so threw it in with the rest.  Then tonight at dinner my husband and I found out what he did.  Of course we told him that was not the way to treat our food, but Second Son kept on and on and on about how he was cheated out of the biggest roll and yadda, yadda, yadda.  Well.  There was one roll left and Second Son asked for it.  My husband is not one to let things just slide, so he licked the roll and passed it to Second Son who said, "You didn't really lick it!"  His timing was off.  I had the roll in my hands, so I gave it a good lick, making sure he saw it!  He is very anti-germ and refused to eat it after that.  We all got a good laugh over that one. 

Anyway, go here to get the recipe.  I didn't do any tweaking.  Although I've been making it in my KitchenAid and the amount of dough is a bit much for it.  By the time the dough was ready to set aside to rise, my poor mixer was starting to smoke from the strain.  I think next time I'll half the recipe.