Five dishes from a roast chicken

Sometimes, for reasons that are still unclear even now, you end up with a spare roast chicken with stuffing.  (Gluten free stuffing at that, thank you Marks and Spencers!)  At any rate, I roasted off both birds together, with the intent of only eating the one for dinner, which left me with a roast, stuffed bird to do something with.  That week will forever be known as the week of roast chicken…

Starting with the whole bird,

Dinner #1 – of course it was just plain roasted chicken, thighs and legs, which fed four of us with rice, vegetables, and gravy

Dinner #2 – I shredded the two breasts into a salad with potatoes and green beans, and served it with spring lettuce and radishes.

Dinner #3 – I mixed the forcemeat stuffing with an equal amount of cooked oatmeal, flavored it with sage, leek, and garlic, and formed it into patties.  I fried the patties and served them with an onion gravy, mashed potatoes, and a few veggie dishes.

Spread – I shredded the remaining meat off the bone and mixed it with some mayonnaise and other spices.   I served it in lettuce cups to make it slightly fancier, but really it was just meant as a sandwich filling for lunch and snacks.

Soup – Of course I made soup from what was left, and there was enough soup to last all five of us for two days.  It wasn’t a very meaty soup, but since we only eat soup as a starter before the main meal, it did the trick.

Caramel smoothie

Although not a Home front recipe, this was an instant hit at our house.  I stumbled on something similar in a cookbook while at craft time at the library and ran home to make up my own version.  The only thing is, please oh please, do not put your finger or anything else belonging to your body in the caramel until it is cooled.  Sugar burns are nasty and generally require professional treatment.

To make the caramel, put 3 TBL of butter, 3 TBL of brown sugar, and 3 TBL of golden syrup or honey in a medium saucepan over medium heat.  Once the butter has melted, stir consistently until a mess of bubbles starts to form on top of the syrup, then keep stirring until it thickens.  There is no way to get around this step, but once you’ve mastered syrup making, you’ll never need or want to buy anything like it again.  The caramel is ready once it thickly coats the back of a spoon, and you will probably recognize the syrupy consistency.

While you are waiting for the butter to melt above, measure out 1 1/4 c low/no fat milk into a measuring jug.  Once you have your caramel cooked, take it off the heat and splash about 1/4 cup milk into the caramel and stir, stir, stir until it is all incorporated and smooth.  Pour this back into the rest of the milk in the measuring jug, stir again until completely mixed, then top up to 2 cups with plain natural yogurt.  Mix again until smooth and store until cool in the fridge.  This makes 2 cups total, so somewhere between 3-4 servings.

Crispy rice treats

Oh, the horror, when you find out that you can’t have rice krispies because they have barley in them, and then you move to Europe where most of the marshmallows are rolled in wheat starch too.  I’ve futzed around with a number of alternatives, and, so far, this is the best one I’ve come up with.

In a sauce pan, heat 1/2 c of natural peanut (or other nut) butter with 1/3 c of golden syrup.  In a big bowl, dump 3 cups of GF puffed rice* and a tablespoon or two of ground flaxseed, if you have it.  Once the nut butter and syrup mixture is melted and thoroughly combined, pour over the puffed rice and mix all together.  Press into a greased 8×8 dish, flatten, and cool.

*To increase the yumminess, you can also throw in raisins, sunflower seeds, chopped nuts, dried fruit, chocolate chips or candies, or anything else you think might fit.

Devils on Horseback

I am getting the order of my posts a bit turned around this week, but I wanted to share my new favorite treat at dinner parties.  Apparently, they are typically English, these little devils on horseback, and I would have never thought to put the two flavors together…

Basically, you just wrap a prune in half a slice of streaky bacon/regular American bacon, and skewer it onto a bamboo skewer so that it doesn’t unwrap itself.  Once you have as many as you need (we did forty for a cocktail party of ten, but the devils on horseback were gone in about twenty minutes), you bake them in a hot oven until the bacon is cooked through, about 15 to 20 minutes.

Unskewer into a bowl and serve, they are really so good!

Snacks for a little girl’s party

Of course, you cannot have a party without snacks, especially if it is a proper afternoon tea party too.  The traditional solution to this is tea sandwiches, but I couldn’t just leave them as crust-less little triangles.  Instead, I decided to continue the princess theme by using a set of princess cookie cutters to cut out princess shapes like crowns, carriages, and wands.

First, I just made a pile of sandwiches with various fillings, like cucumber, egg, ham, and cheese.  Then I didn’t even bother to trim the crusts, but went straight to making the princess shapes, one sandwich at a time.  I saved the scraps for Husband and Brother-in-Law to eat later on.

Finally, I put them all on a pretty plate and hid them in the oven, because I wanted to surprise Daughter…