Sunday, January 24, 2016

Comfort foods and craftiness

I've tried a few new recipes this week - mostly inspired by Pinterest.  All were hits so I have saved my versions to my Recipes blog.  I rarely use a cookbook any more - just my blog or a search on Pinterest when I need a recipe.



My Crescent Chicken is a combination of 2 recipes I found on Pinterest.  I had some shredded chicken in the freezer that I used and it was okay.  I think I would like it with large chunks of chicken.  I would also add some more seasoning to the chicken mixture next time - chopped onion and poultry seasoning maybe.    I used the Jumbo Crescents (had never seen those before - are they new?)   You could use regular crescent but would have to use less filling and would need more crescents. 
I used Parmesan cheese on top and I think next time I will use cheddar.  Might add a little cheddar in the filling too.




Tonight I made Tuna Casserole.  I have to confess, my tuna casserole is usually a box of Kraft Mac N Cheese, a can of tuna drained and a can of mushrooms drained.   Mix up the Mac N Cheese according to directions and add the tuna and mushrooms.  This recipe was worth the extra effort.
I found the original recipe here. That recipe only called for 8 ounces of noodles - half a bag - but I went ahead and cooked the whole bag thinking I would save half to use for buttered noodles some day this week. But when I got the sauce mixed up it just looked like way too much for half the noodles so wound up using them all. 


Another dish was one I made up as I went along, Mushroom Skillet Dinner. It is similar to a beef stroganoff and is like making hamburger helper - but from scratch. Tom really liked it - he ate it for supper the next 2 nights.  I love making large casseroles so we have leftovers for a few nights - just add a salad or some veggies and maybe some fresh fruit.   He likes it too since there is less clean-up in the kitchen. 

Tomorrow night we are going to a local barbecue place.  They are having a fundraiser and it's a good excuse not to cook - right? 


I have also been busy crafting - finished up this guy -



he will be going to Love Quilts Brazil by way of Quilts for Older Children and Adults. 
And I have doing some knitting - a new project is a temperature afghan.  I knit a row for each day of the year and the color I use is based on the high temperature for that day.   I got the idea here.  I used some different colors and assigned them for every 10 degree interval from 'below 0' to '101 and above'.   Probably won't need the below 0 since we rarely have a high in that range but just in case, I planned for it.


Mine is knitted rather than crocheted.  I looked at several ideas and the crochet ones were all overly long - some were about 12 feet long - 365 rows.   I found a stitch gauge that would be about 6 feet for 366 rows (leap year) and I added a navy border.   It will be interesting to see the colors.  I will give it to my husband on New Year's 2017 - so if you know him, don't say anything around him.   I am using his recorded daily high temps since he is such a weather nut. 
The brighter blue is for 0-10 degrees and the golden row is for 51-60 degrees.  You can see we had a day of 51-60 and then 2 days later we had 0-10 - only in the Midwest :-)  And the bright orange row is 61-70 degrees.  Quite a variety already.  Some have a row done that marks the end of each month.  I am debating about using the navy for that so between Jan 31 and Feb 1, I would do a navy row.   I think that might give it more meaning for him. 

1 comment:

Jamie said...

Can't wait to see that finished temperature afghan! I think he will love it!