Dech’s easy peasy chicken and dumplings

It’s a quiet morning today.

My wife and kids all either at work for the day, or off to classes. I, on the other hand, had the day off.

A perfect day to get some quality WoW time in on my Hunter.

Well, Elune was apparently displeased with me, so my WoW client was busted when I got up for the day. I was planning on making a nice post about leveling leather working and such, but that will have to wait.

Instead, you lovely folks are stuck with me reminiscing about cooking while I watch the download slider inch towards the yellow.

Not the first time I have done that here, but such is life. In the past I have shared recipes for my pulled pork, and a few other odds and ends. Today it’s easy comfort food. For my family that means chicken and dumplings.

Mmmmmm…. chicken and dumplings.

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Da mats:

2.5 pounds of chicken leg quarters

3 ribs of celery, chopped

1 large onion, chopped

2 chicken bullion cubes

2 bay leaves

1/4 teaspoon pepper

1/4 teaspoon garlic powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 can (10 3/4 oz) cream of chicken soup

2  1/4 cups of bisquick (or other baking mix)

2/3 cup milk

Da method:

Chicken Phase:

Place the chicken, bay leaves, salt, pepper, garlic powder, bullion cubes, celery, and onion in a stock pot with 4 quarts of water over high heat.

Once it comes to a boil, drop the heat to a simmer and hold it there for about 40 minutes.

Remove the chicken from the pot, and set it aside in a bowl. When it cools off enough to not burn yourself pull the meat off the bones. Toss the skin and bones. We only want the meat, and we want it kinda shredded.

While you are in the neighborhood, pull out the bay leaves and toss them too. No sense biting into one of those later =P

Put the torn up meat back in the pot, add the can of cream of chicken soup, and bring it back to a simmer.

If the stew part ends up a bit to thin for your taste, add 2 tablespoons of cornstarch to about 1/4 cup of water and whisk it in before going on to the dumpling phase.

Dumpling Phase:

Make your dumplings according to whatever baking mix you bought. If it’s Bisquick you’ll use 2 1/4 cup mix and 2/3 cup of milk. Pull it out in large spoon fulls, and add to the simmering stew.

Gently spin the pot so that the dumplings sink down a bit and are fully covered, but don’t stir after you add the first one.

Keep simmering until the dumplings float and aren’t all doughy any more, about 4-5 minutes.

Da servin:

I like to use warm bowls for this, it just seems to work the best. I just put a stack on the stove near the pot for the last half hour or so and it keeps everything nice and warm while its getting served.

Hope you all enjoy it as much as my family does!

A golden opportunity

Since my work hours and environment changed I have noticed something. I spend about 30 to 40 minutes a day on my phone. You know, the thing I’m writing this post on…
Ill be sitting on break, or on lunch, and just start goofing around. I check on my auctions in WoW, though I can’t do anything with them without my authenticator.
That takes all of a minute or so, and then I’m playing app games on my phone like Plague inc. or Oregon trail.
Sometimes I will pop into guild chat, though every time my screen saver engages the silly app logs me out.
There are several ways I think Blizzard could make their app experience better.
First would be to have chat with realid/battlenet friends available just like guild chat is now, preferably with a way to leave a message for those not currently online. That would be awesome.
Second, and a potential gold mine for Blizz, would be to create an app that would allow me to work my farm, or possibly fish, or even both, from my phone.
I’d actually pay good money if they put an app in my App Store that would let me fill in the downtime I have in my day with a little bit of WoW mini-game action.
Am I alone?
Anyone else see giant dollar signs above this idea?

Oooooo! What does this button do?

Meet Lidocane.

Death Knight who loves to pick flowers.

Tank who’s never tanked an instance.

Long time banker for team Dechion.

Once upon a time I decided I wanted to make a fortune as a scribe. I would pick flowers and make glyphs. I wouldn’t be making a lot on any one glyph, but if I kept a good variety up for sale I’d slowly make enough money to get by.

Making enough, that’s a good title for another post. Brb, jotting down the title.

Alrighty, I’m back sporting a fresh cup of coffee and ready to go.

Where were we?

Ah yes, Lidocane.

You see, I started this Death Knight exclusively to be a money-maker. I played thru the starting zone, and then flailed away at a few quests in Hellfire Peninsula (the zone I love to hate). The moment I hit level 60 I dropped all my quests, trained flight, and proceeded to pick flowers all the way to 85.

With that huge stockpile of inks I made enough money that I had enough to get by for a good couple of years.

The point is, when I decided that I really wanted to level Lidocane the right way, questing my way from 85 to 90. I’m having a blast actually, wondering why it took me so long to actually play this character.

So there I was, in a set of level 85 PvP blues that I had a friend craft for me to replace my Hellfire greens staring at my screen wondering how the hell I was going to do this.

I quite literally said “Oooo, what does this button do?” like the idiot sister from Dexter’s Lab.

I’m probably still doing it kinda wrong, since I didn’t study rotations or anything along those lines. I just divided my buttons up into 4 groups.

Group 1: Buttons that hurt things.

Group 2: Buttons that make me harder to kill.

Group 3: Buttons that heal me.

Group 4: Everything else.

I put groups 1, 2, and 3 on my action bars and commenced to flailing away at the bad guys in the Jade Forest.

Yep, I’m doing it wrong. My spec isn’t optimal, my gear is a mess, my UI would probably make a veteran DK player cringe. Guess what?

I don’t give a rats ass.

I’m noobing my way thru this and having more fun than I have in years!

It took abandoning every class I have ever seriously played to remind me that I don’t have to play seriously.

The key word is play, not seriously.

It’s a game, I’m playing, and I’m having a blast.

That, my friends, is what actually matters.

Spring cleaning

So, I have returned to the game. I’ve also returned to blogging. Probably not to the extent I once did, but I’m back.

I went thru and updated my blog roll to some extent, purging it of sites long since dark and quiet. I haven’t gone thru and added new ones yet.

Any suggestions would be welcome.

I also updated my character links with the ones I’m actually playing now days. At some point I should add my twitter info and my battle tag as well.

Anyhow, I have a few posts cooking, but certain things are hard to put together when I don’t have access to all the content to test things.

One I am working on, and thinking a lot about, is how to start over financially. Another is likely a gear list for my Hunter and Death Knight, as I need to make them anyway.

Anyhow, most of the cobwebs have been cleaned out. Soon actual posts with like content and stuff will be rolling thru.

A quick post (on the right blog)

This is going to be a short one, as it’s mostly a heads up to those that still follow this site.

I’m coming back, I will be posting.

I have also realized that I really need to revamp the site.

That will happen over the course of this week, and there will be new posts coming about new content.

See you soon.

*tosses up “under construction signs”.*