Chicken And Dumplings!

This time of year brings cold nights and brisk chilly days.  I love having gallons of soup, stew or chilli cooking away on the stove all day long.  I stew down a couple of roosters once a week or so, so I can have lots of yummy bone broth to drink and cook with and the meat for making lots of great things as well. 

There are two kinds of Chicken and Dumplings that I have seen mostly over the years.  The kind with biscuit type dumplings and the kind with huge noodle type dumplings.  We make the one with noodle type dumplings.

I cook for a very large and hungry family so I do all my cooking and baking big.  I will just go ahead and tell you what I do from start to finish. 

When I make this recipe I stew down two roosters in one huge stock pot.  Bring it to a quick boil and then turn the temperature down and leave 12 hours on a low setting.(I leave my burner on 3)  Then take out the birds, let them cool and pick the meat off the bones.  Put the meat in a container in the fridge and then I put two table spoons of Braggs Apple cider vinegar in the broth and put the bones back in.  I let that simmer for another 8-12 hours.  Then strain the broth.  I usually put half the broth right back into the pot and put the rest up in the fridge, in jars for later use. 

I add some water to the broth in the pot to get the level back up some and then add the veggies we want in it.  Anything you have really.  Or use a bag or two of those mixed vegetables you see in the store.  Also chop one onion fine and add and a few chopped celery stalks.  

After that cooks on the stove top for a while (few hours) I take the chicken meat out of the fridge and shred (pull apart into small pieces with my fingers) and add it to the soup pot. Once that comes up to a boil I season the soup.  I always use salt and pepper to taste but sometimes I also add Garlic powder, or Braggs herb mix or even some chives too.  Keep adding and tasting and remember you can't take it out once it is in so be careful with the salt.  Soon you will have it the way you want it to taste. (and be careful tasting as it is hot)

So basically you want to make a good flavorful chicken soup to add your dumpling noodles to.  

It is time to make the dumplings.  The reason why you want to season the soup before making the dumpling noodles is  that you want the noodles to absorb and cook in the flavorful soup giving even more flavor to your dumplings.

I love making dumplings as it is one of those things you make, that you can see great change as you knead it and watch it come right together as you mix it with you hands.  Your hands start out a mess and by the time you finish incorporating all the ingredients you have a beautiful dough ball and your hands are clean!

This recipe makes enough dumplings for a very large stock pot of soup.  So half it if making a smaller pot.

4 cups of flour
2 tablespoons salt
1/4 cup softened butter
1 1/8 cups warm water

Mix salt, flour and butter with the tips of your fingers till crumbly and the butter has been well worked thru the flour.  (take your time and enjoy yourself  :)   

Add the warm water and mix with your finger and hands, kneeding till you have a shinny firm ball of dough.

Our dough is made from fresh ground whole wheat flour so is quite dark.
Separate dough ball into four small balls and roll out one at a time.

 Cut into 1 inch by 2 inch pieces.  (about the size of a sweet and low packet)

While the soup is at a rapid boil.  Drop dumplings one at a time into the stock pot.

Once they are all in, stir it once in a while over the next 20 minutes while the dumplings cook. 

All done and YUM!!

It smells delicious and tastes great too.  Makes for a meal you can cook all day on the stove top and have ready by dinner time.  No rush.

Blessings and happy farming.
susan

Apple Cinnamon Millet Muffins

Ahh...fall!  I love all the seasons.  We have a good balance of them here in the North Georgia Mountains.  Now that we don't have the intense heat of summer and things are all put up from the garden, things change gears here and we have a pleasant shift in work load. There is just not as much demanding my time outside on the farm.

Waking up to a chilly house and going out to milk in the barn on these crisp mornings makes me feel like baking.  I don't do a lot of baking in the summer months because I try not to heat the house up very much.  But in the fall and winter I am ready to warm the house up with the smells of crusty home made breads, yummy sweet treats and stock pots full of warming chilies and stews that simmer on the stove top all day long.

As I do some cooking and baking thru the winter I will try to remember to record what I make and share it here on the blog.   Today, I am going to share with you my families favorite Apple Cinnamon Millet Muffin recipe.  If you wish to see why we grind wheat to bake bread fresh or use certain things in our recipes you can look at this post here.

Muffin recipe: 

2 1/2 cups freshly milled flour (I grind hard white wheat for this recipe but hard red works well too)
3 Tbs hulled millet
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp sea salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 cup milk (I use goats milk because that is what we have)
1 egg
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil (or oil you love to bake with)
1/2 cup real maple syrup (honey works well in this or sucanat)
1 apple - pealed cored and chopped pretty well

Topping recipe:

1/8 cup sucanat blended with 3/4 tsp of cinnamon. This is basically cinnamon and sugar.   (if you don't use it all on the tops of your muffins use it up on some butter toast for a few days.  :)

2 table spoons hulled millet



Put all your dry ingredients into a mixing bowl and mix or Kitchen Aide with the whisk attachment and mix on low.

Then add all wet ingredients and mix.

Once mixed, mix in the chopped apples.

Place by spoonfuls into oiled muffin tins.

Take the topping portion of hulled millet and use a spoon or fingers and sprinkle the millet generously over the tops of your muffin batter.

Then sprinkle on the cinnamon and sucanat. (If you don't put the hulled millet on before the cinnamon and sucanat the millet does not stick very well.)

Bake in an oven preheated to 400 degrees for 15 minutes.  

Pop them out to cool.

Then enjoy them!

This is one of my families favorite muffin recipes.  The millet really makes it taste nutty and special.  Sometimes I take out the cinnamon and apple and replace with with banana and use just sucanut and hulled millet as the topper and it is really good as well.  I get kind of creative with it.  I have also used blue berries, cranberries or carrot with great success. 

Blessings and Happy Farming!
susan

Antique Engine and Tractor Show

Last week was the yearly Gordon County Antique Engine and Tractor Show.  It was a pretty day and there was a lot of things there to see.  I thought I would share with you some of the neat and unusual things we saw since this is the farm blog!

Zeke was out of town with Tim when we went so these are my two oldest sons still living at home in front of a Ford.

The blue one was the Ford Feature Tractor.

This one had a cool jump seat!

Old designs are just really cool!

A pink Farmall for the girls complete with fluffy steering wheel cover!  So funny!

Cool engines.  My favorite one was the middle one.

Snapper turtle mower!  See the turtle head on the front!

Antonio loved this little tow cart.

Someone there had the back of their motor home opened up.  It distracted William for a long time looking at the motor and all the parts.  He was REALLY impressed with the size of the batteries. 

 There were a lot of tables set up with old cool engines and motors on them.

This one was really neat.

Love this old truck!

Neat engines...some of them working.

I have never seen a high tractor before like this?

 Or anything quite like this one.

It was a really pretty day to just be out and about looking at all the wonderful ways people used to farm and the equipment they invented and relied on.  Amazing really.

Blessings and Happy Farming!
susan