Tag: FAMILY

GREAT GRANS CHICKEN & GRAVY ~ BLOG 366.165

GREAT GRANS CHICKEN & GRAVY

1 tablespoon avocado oil
1 tablespoon butter
1 medium Vidalia onion, FINELY chopped
1 box grape tomatoes, halved
1 1/2 – 2 cups of carrots, small diced
1-2 tablespoon FRESH lemon thyme leaves
1/2 teaspoon sweet paprika (see note)
FRESH ground sea salt and pepper, to taste
2-3 cloves garlic, minced
1-2 cups homemade chicken broth
1-2 pounds chicken breasts or tenders, cut into small bite size chunks

  • In a large skillet melt oil and butter together.
  • Add onions, tomatoes and carrots, cooking for 2-3 minutes until onions are translucent. 
  • Add in the garlic, thyme, paprika, salt and pepper.
  • Add chicken pieces and 1 cup of chicken broth.
  • Turn the heat to medium and simmer for 15 to 20 minutes, or until chicken is cooked through. Keep checking to make sure nothing is sticking to the pan, adding broth as necessary to keep it moist and make the gravy.
  • When chicken is cooked through check to make sure thicken gravy as necessary with corn starch.
  • In a small bowl whisk together a few tablespoons of the pan gravy with a tablespoon or 2 of cornstarch.
  • Mix well, then pour slowly into the pan, stirring constantly until the gravy thickens up and heats through.

NOTES:

  • Paprika comes sweet or smokey. Choose accordingly as it will alter your flavor a bit.
  • If I have some in the fridge I’ll add about 1/2 cup chopped marinated artichokes.
  • You can substitute rotisserie chicken pieces, but if you do, don’t add the chicken pieces until after the veggies have simmered 10-15 minutes and are crisp tender.

Great gran served this over homemade noodles and never used rotisserie chicken. Her chicken was farm fresh and simmered to make the broth fresh. Grams amped up the carbs by serving it with noodles in it and serving it over homemade mashed potatoes, but it’s great without either of those.

FLASHBACK FRIDAY ~ rewind

FLASHBACK FRIDAY @ SEASIDE SIMPLICITY

I am playing along with Martha at Seaside Simplicity with the meme Flashback Friday.   Come join in on the fun and link up your photo.

All our lives Jenn and I loved gathering shells on Galveston Island.  This trip was no exception. We were literally getting blown away, but had so much fun that day!! I’m pretty sure this was March 1998.  This is the last picture of us all together having fun so I keep rewinding to stay in the moment.

FLASHBACK FRIDAY

FLASHBACK FRIDAY @ SEASIDE SIMPLICITY

I am playing along with Martha at Seaside Simplicity with the meme Flashback Friday.   Come join in on the fun and link up your photo.

You can just see the teenage angst in my posture alone.  I started out looking for a picture of a Holly Hobbie dress for Martha to see and have yet to find it, but I now have found so many others I don’t even know where to start. I do remember that the hat I’m wearing and I were never far apart for quite some time.  It looks like I was about 15 and obviously didn’t want to go Sequoia with my parents, kid brother and eccentric grandfather.

FF - 03012013 - hat

 

ROUND ROBIN PHOTO CHALLENEGE

I found this over at a friend’s blog, Martha at Seaside Simplicity.  She inspired the topic for today’s Round Robin Photo Challenge for Saturday, January 26th – Long Ago, Far Away – so I’ decided to join the fun.

Here is your chance to get all nostalgic, photographically! Maybe it’s a photo you took with your first, cheap camera when you were 12 years old. Maybe it’s a photo you just took of a person, place or thing from your childhood. Maybe it’s something from longer ago or farther away than that: a castle or cathedral you photographed on a trip overseas, a dinosaur skeleton, or a distant constellation of stars, the light from which has taken years to reach us. If it was long ago or far away or both, it counts! All I ask is that it be a photo you took yourself, whether it was 40 years ago or five minutes ago.

Happy times!  This is my aunt who recently passed with me and her daughter Jenn at one of our favorite places, Galveston Island.  All our lives Jenn and I would go down there and collect shells off the beach.  It isn’t that easy these days with the weird growth along the shore line, but back then we walk on the sea wall, collect shells from the water’s edge and just basque in the winter water. You can’t see it in this pictures, but we’re barefoot LOL I’m holding my socks. I also still have every shell that I keep in a crystal bowl. Sharon had Parkinsons disease. Her mobility continued to go downhill from here so this is the last picture I have of us having fun. Thank goodness for tripods and timers so we could all be in the picture together.