Easy Chicken Dumpling Soup

I know that we are all in the Christmas spirit and chicken dumpling soup sounds strangely out of place with all that holiday cheer, however, I have had a sick husband the past couple of days so I quickly (as quickly as you can make chicken soup) stirred up a pot for myself and the Grinch. Not to mention that I don’t need much of an excuse to make this soup, it’s one of our favorites.


Soup Ingredients:

1 whole chicken

2lbs carrots - chopped

3 large celery stalks -chopped

1 onion, diced

Chicken stock

Seasoning

To start out, I thawed a 4lb chicken in cold water in the sink. After removing the innards (please don’t forget to do this! If my sister Olivia is reading this, this advice is for you) I placed the chicken into a stock pot 2/3 full of boiling water. I added a TBSP of Herbs de Provence to the pot and boiled the chicken for 30 minutes.


When the chicken had cooked, I removed it from the pot with tongs and placed it on a platter. I added the carrots, onions, and celery. Next I added 3 TBSP chicken stock and a healthy dose of garlic salt.

I proceeded to boil the veggies in the stock while picking the chicken clean. After I had added all of the chicken to the pot, I boiled the soup until the carrots had begun to soften. Nobody likes mushy carrots, so I try to catch them before they get to that point. When the soup is theoretically done, you will want to check the seasoning. You may need to add more garlic salt or chicken stock to taste.

Into all this yummy goodness, we must add dumplings. No chicken soup is complete without them. My husband is totally the dumpling maker in our family, but as I mentioned, he was sick so it was up to me. I persuaded him to give up the recipe and I must say, I think I got it right the first time. Ten points for me.

Dumpling Ingredients:

1 egg

1 cup all purpose flour

¼ cup cold water



First I added the flour to the egg and stirred it together with a fork (apparently using a fork is important because I started out with a whisk and got told). Then add the water and mix it all together. When it is the consistency of oatmeal, maybe a little thicker, drop it by the forkful into the pot of boiling soup (soup should be brought to a rolling boil prior to dropping in dumplings). Add a lid to the pot and let them cook for 10 minutes or so. I will confess that I had to double the batch of dumplings…there are just never enough to go around!

So, I am off now to enjoy this wonderful soup du jour, alone, on my couch, while my husband is quarantined. How about you guys? Made any delicious soups lately? Battling any gross bugs? Any good ideas for disinfecting? Let me know, I’d love to hear from you!

The Good Life :)

I really have been trying to update my new blog regularly. Since it’s still just an infant, I would love to be able to post daily until it develops some kind of theme! As you probably figured out by now, I’m just hoping that it will do that on its own. But, if it does continue to be all over the place, it’s just following in my mental thought patterns footsteps, so it’s all good.

Anyway, for a quick explanation of why I haven’t been blogging regularly, here are some photos of what is currently occupying my time.

They look so innocent when it's just one....however there are ten!

6 weeks old today! I can’t believe how fast the time has gone. I also can’t believe how fortunate I am that 9 out of 10 of them are sold. Thank the heavens.

One more, just because I know you can’t get enough. I can’t get enough and I live with them.

So, my goal is to keep going as much as I can and after these babies are gone (sniff, sniff) in a few weeks, I’ll have even more time on my hands right? Right. That’s what I am going with anyway. Hope you are all having a great Tuesday. Anyone else have any cute puppy pictures to share? Stories from raising a litter? Fill me, I’d love to hear from you!

Chocolate Peanut Butter Pucks

In my holiday baking madness, I have decided this year to try several new recipes. The first one I decide to experiment with was Chocolate Peanut Butter Pucks. I cannot even explain to you how insanely easy these are to make. I got the recipe from the Joy of Baking and tweaked it just a little bit.

First, I softened ½ cup peanut butter and 2 TBSP butter in the microwave, then mixed them together.

Next, I mixed in ½ cup powdered sugar and ½ a crushed up graham cracker. In hindsight, I could have crushed the whole graham cracker. I mixed that up well and left it sit.

Then, I chunked up 18 oz of chocolate, milk and semi sweet. I added 1 TBSP (a big spoonful) of shortening and melted that in the microwave. My microwave has a “melt chocolate” setting; thank you Samsung, but if yours does not, I would stir it every 30 seconds or so.

To make the cups, I added muffin cups to my cupcake tins, I did 24.

I ladled a spoonful of chocolate into each tin and coated the bottom of the muffin cup.

Then I dropped a ½ spoonful of the peanut butter mixture into the cups (This might also be the spot where I sampled the peanut butter mixture).

Finally, drop the remaining chocolate over the peanut butter into the cups. I may have used a little too much chocolate on the bottoms, as I did not have enough to fill all 24 cups, I only managed 21.

Finally, place the pans into the fridge until they firm up.

Pure deliciousness.

I froze mine in their paper cups for holiday parties.

 Here is the recipe.

Combine ½ cup peanut butter with 2 tbsp softened butter. Add ½ cup powdered sugar and 1 crumbled graham cracker. Set aside.

Melt 18 oz. chocolate ( I mixed semi sweet and milk chocolate) in a microwaveable bowl with 1 TBSP shortening until smooth. Stir at least every 30 seconds, if the chocolate becomes sticky, add 1 TBSP honey to thin.

Line 24 cupcake tins with muffin liners. Add ½ spoonful of chocolate to each liner. Smooth around to cover the bottom of the liner. Drop in 1 spoonful peanut butter mixture to each liner. Use remaining chocolate to cover the peanut butter.

Place pans in the refrigerator until firm. Freeze or serve!

So, other than my super holiday sweet obsession lately, I’ve been so busy getting ready for Christmas? How about you? Anyone all ready for Christmas? Anyone else on a food kick? I’d love to hear from you!

I linked to a few Monday parties, show them some love!

Bringing in the Holiday Spirit

I found an awesome holiday wreath here at The Southern Summer. I thought she did such a great job with hers that I would try to make one too.

I was lucky enough to score a wreath form for .99 cents at Goodwill. I also picked up some red yarn from Wal Mart.

Super simple steps here, if I can do it, so can you! I started by wrapping the wreath tightly with yarn.

It took quite awhile, I  had Harry, Ron and Hermione on ABCFamily’s 25 days of Christmas to keep me company.

I finally managed to wrap the whole wreath one time over. It looked a bit shabby.

There were gaps in the back, not good enough for me, and I'm not even close to a perfectionist. 

So, I wrapped it again (By this time we were almost done with The Chamber of Secrets).

With a much better result after the second layer of yarn, I continued. I had some snowflake ornaments (actually I have hundreds) left over from our wedding, so I grabbed a few of those and a few fuzzy red accent balls I also had from the wedding. I believe I got those from JoAnn Fabric in the floral department for pennies. I love reusing things I already have laying around! Makes me feel super crafty, which is ridiculous. I also purchased two large silver bells from the Dollar Tree the other day (score!) and a red and silver wire edged ribbon I also grabbed from there.  I used the ribbon to hang both the wreath and the bells and glued on the accents.

Here it is hanging on the door, 

Not sure if I love the bells? Is it too much? They would be super easy to remove. The verdict is still out, we’ll see. Other than that dilemma, I love the wreath. I think it turned out even better than I expected and it was very easy. I think that I will easily be able to change it up for next year too.

My first Christmas craft of the year has made me pretty happy. I can’t wait to move on to the next one. So, what do you think? Bells or no bells? Been working on any crafts of your own lately? I’d love to hear about them!

I've linked to a few online parties...check them out!

Travel Time

This morning I am waking up in a hotel. Usually, that is totally a drag. I'm not a huge fan of traveling; I like my house, my things, my people, my pets, and traveling usually interrupts our flow. However, I'm staying at a new Holiday Inn and it is pretty fantastic!

My room was spotless and stylish, the employees have been friendly, and it's a "Travel Green Hotel" so it is super earth friendly and economical.

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So, even though Holiday Inn did not pay or perk me to write this blog, my personal and unedited opinion is that they have done a fantastic job revamping their image. Love the new look and the great service!

Although travel is not my most favorite thing, I am hoping that the rest of this week whips by pretty quick. Friday will be super busy with getting all my hunting gear together for the Wisconsin gun deer opener on Saturday. It takes a lot of food and entertainment to spend all day in the woods!

How about you? Anyone traveling? Had a good experience with a Holiday Inn? Going hunting?? Let me know!

A Blog about Blogs

What makes a good blog? Why do I read the blogs that I do? How do I find the blogs that I love? All very good questions, with many many answers. First, I have to say, I’d like to give a shout out to the blogs I love the most.  My friend Nicole first got me into reading blogs by introducing me to younghouselove earlier this year. Is it the quirky sense of humor or the get it done attitude? Not sure, but I love these guys. They combine humor with home improvement and for some reason it just works. Real people doing real things. Not to mention, both have pretty great writing style.

As for humor and the get it done attitude, from John and $herdog I moved on to BowerPower. Katie Bower just cracks me up. She is my daily dose of humor and great ideas. So far we’ve got humor, attitude, home improvement, good writing…what else?

Well, I am also completely infatuated with the Pioneer Woman. Ree Drummond is a hoot. I want to cook like her, photograph like her, and live on a ranch in the middle of nowhere. Who’s with me? The only thing I wouldn’t want of hers is the cooking show…I’m level enough to know I’ll never get there. Me and cooking have too many issues…namely the whole measuring and exact timing thing….but that’s a whole different post.

Finally, my most recent read of the day is IHeartOrganizing. I am totally inspired by the way amazing stuff that Jen comes up with. It makes me want to go home and organize everything and anything. Love it.

So, what do all of these blogs have in common? They are created by real people experiencing real life. They are not fluffy or written from the world smells like roses point of view. They are not political or demanding of me. They are well written and humorous. They inspire me. Blogs like these are the reason I want to write a blog.

Are these the only blogs out there? Nope. There are millions. How do I find blogs? By reading other blogs. Whenever a blog is mentioned in something I am reading, I check it out. If it looks like something I am interested in, I will subscribe to it for awhile. If it’s not my thing, I unsubscribe, if I’m lucky, I’ll love it and keep it. Not much to that. It takes time, but I like to consider blog reading (and now writing) my “me” time. I do it when I have a free moment, when I feel stressed, when I need some motivation. Is it a huge time drain? Not really, not unless I get hooked into pinterest while I’m doing it. Pinterest is amazing, but I could spend far too much time perusing around on there. The problem with pinterest is that it doesn’t actually require you to do anything, but, once again, that’s a whole different post. If nothing else, I’m getting lots of ideas for future posts today!

What about you? Read any great blogs lately? Share them with me, we can blog hunt together! Written any great blogs lately? Let me know, I’d love to read them.

Welcome

Hello everyone! Thanks for checking out my new adventure, NorthernMoon. I am super excited to become a member of the blogging universe. I have to be completely honest with you, I have absolutely no idea what this blog will become. I have some great ideas for future posts, but it could become something about everything, or nothing at all. I appreciate you stopping by to check things out.
I am creating this blog because I have set goals for myself and my family that I would like to accomplish and what better way to track them than to let the whole world cheer me on. No pressure. A few of the most important goals that stand out for me, and the main things that I intend to chronicle here include the following.
1. Building our house. My husband and I recently purchased land to build on (hopefully) in the very near future. I can’t wait to share every heartbreaking or triumphant moment with you, and most things in between.
2. Continue to remodel and update our existing house, then sell it. Self explanatory.
3. Finally create some of the projects I have had on my to do list for ever. There are too many to list at this point.
4. Continue to enjoy the great northwoods and all it has to offer. I intend to continue to fish, hunt, hike, and enjoy the oudoors. I’d like to go Salmon fishing on Lake Michigan, catch walleyes in the Menominee River, hunt Moose in Canada, and advenure to Glacier and Yellowstone National Parks, just to name a few things.
5. Become a better cook. I love food. Basically any food. I’d like to get better at preparing it.
6. Continue to work at living a more sustainable lifestyle. Isn’t it every country girls dream to own cows and chickens and have a 1 acre garden?
Everyone needs a place to start, right? Once it’s in writing, it has to be done, right? I guess we’ll all see together!