Poppy Seed Chicken and death

I apologize. Right from the start. I will talk to you about Poppy Seed Chicken, one of the South’s greatest inventions. But first, death. In a funny way.

My husband is a lawyer and a few days ago he got a letter in the mail from a company that records your message to your loved ones to be left with your will and “enjoyed years after (your) death.” Really? Is that a good idea? Here’s my message to Mark: Hi, honey. Miss me yet? Have you fed the cats and cleaned the litter? How about the trash? I know you love the tall trash, the kind that spills out of the garbage can in the kitchen. Did you empty it? Are the doors locked? You know my OCD about locking the doors. Are you sure they’re locked? Check again. No, check three times. Hey, I have a great view of the house now and I think I see some cat vomit in the living room. Can you clean that up? Miss me? By the way, the mortgage is due.

So, Poppy Seed Chicken. There is no greater threat to public grooming than poppy seeds. You do not want to eat a poppy seed bagel at an important business meeting. Just as you’re about the seal the deal, you smile. Oh, God. And yet, we love our Poppy Seed Chicken. We serve it at potlucks, funerals and christenings. We just don’t smile much on those occasions.

Poppy Seed Chicken

1 supermarket rotisserie chicken

2 tablespoons butter

8 ounces sliced fresh mushrooms

2 cans cream of chicken soup

16 ounces sour cream

1 tablespoon poppy seeds

1 sleeve Ritz crackers

1/3 cup butter melted

Remove the chicken from the bones and shred it. Melt the butter in a sauté pan and cook the mushrooms until they have released all their juice and they are well browned. Reserve. In a large bowl, mix the chicken soup, sour cream, and poppy seeds. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Add the mushrooms and the chicken.

Pour chicken mixture into a 9-by-13 dish. Crush the crackers and mix with the melted butter. Sprinkle over the top of the chicken. Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.

 

 

 

 

 

Chicken and stuffing casserole

Sometimes you just need easy. You need not feel guilty about pulling out a box of cornbread stuffing (O.K., Stove Top), looking on the back of the box and just letting her rip. I have embellished the time honored recipe of chicken and stuffing casserole on the back of the box. I am sure mine is superior.

And so I will feel better about presenting this, yes, pitifully easy recipe I will give you a couple of tips. First off, almost anything you make except cornflakes and milk is improved upon by adding lemon juice. Lemon juice brightens up vegetables (yes, kale haters, even kale). It gives punch to any pan sauce. It adds dimension to dips. Don’t waste the rind. Grate down to the white part (no white part – bitter!) and add the grated lemon zest to almost anything (not cornflakes).

My second tip is about mushrooms, which are improperly prepared too much of the time. About 90 percent of the constitution of a mushroom is water. And when you put them in a pan over medium heat they will produce that water right in the pan. Do not despair. Work through the pain. Crank the heat up and continue sauteing until all the water is gone and the mushrooms have turned a deep golden brown.

And I have to tell you one of the things I love about my sad, unimaginative chicken and stuffing casserole is that you don’t need to cook the chicken first. The thing I hate about casseroles is that they take so much effort on the front end, prepping all the ingredients, that when you’re done you just want to shoot yourself. This is pitifully easy and it tastes really yummy.

Chicken and Stuffing Casserole

1 box cornbread stuffing

2 chicken breasts

1 can cream of mushroom soup

½ cup sour cream

Juice of ½ lemon

1/2 teaspoon smoked paprika

2 tablespoons butter

8 ounces mushrooms

8 ounces frozen green beans, thawed

Prepare the stuffing according to the package directions. Cut the chicken into bite-sized pieces and mix with the soup, sour cream, lemon juice and smoked paprika.  Melt the butter in a skillet and sauté the mushrooms until they have given up their liquid and are nicely browned. Mix the mushrooms and green beans with the chicken and put it in the bottom of a 2-quart casserole dish. Top with the stuffing.

Bake at 400 degrees for 30 minutes or until casserole is bubbly and chicken is cooked through.

Fire in the hall (and breakfast casserole)

Everything was going according to plan at the St. Paul’s Episcopal Church Fat Tuesday pancake supper. Until the fire department came.

Youth Minister Derek Larson fist pumps a pancake flipper

The Youth started off strong. They were pumping out pancakes like a Ford assembly line. I was proud of them. From pancake know-nothings to masters of the flip. They had it going on. Casseroles were flying out of the kitchen. Syrup was being refilled. The kitchen staff was in full battle mode. We were a well-oiled machine, an Army of the Lord. Until we smelled something burning. I checked one of the ovens. The tiniest bit of a breakfast casserole had dripped on the oven floor. Microscopic, actually. It will burn off, I think, as I shut the oven door.

A few minutes later, I open the door again. A cloud of smoke bellows into the kitchen. Oh, dear. What to do? I don’t know. I close the door again. I can’t see you. I wait several minutes and open it again. Smoke roars out of the oven. I close the door. I can’t see you. And then the fire alarm goes off.

The music minister, Dona Stokes-Rogers, calls the fire department to say that, no, the church is not burning down and they need not pay us a visit. Apparently, they could not hear her over the screech of the alarm. I am told later that Donna is conversant with calling the fire department because the last time this happened the choir was cooking in the kitchen. I feel slightly better.

The next thing I hear are sirens in the distance. Please, please let those be for someone else (not wishing anyone harm, of course). The sirens get louder. Really loud. In fact, they are right outside Otey Hall. Along with the ambulance, that is surely here to carry me away because I am having a freaking heart attack.

Finally, the alarm goes off. The crowd cheers. I slink back to the kitchen. If I chair the pancake supper next year all the food will be cold. There will be no turning on of ovens, there will be no spillage of casseroles. There will be no visit from the fire department.

By the way, we added a breakfast casserole to the menu this year. It was a big hit. If you are a Southern cook, you know this recipe. Everyone has it. If you’re not, here you go. Please take care not to spill any of it in the oven. Apparently, it’s highly flammable.

  St. Paul’s Breakfast Casserole

8 white bread slices, cut into cubes

1 pound bulk pork sausage, crumbled and cooked

1 1/2 cups grated sharp Cheddar cheese

10 large eggs

2 cups whole milk

2 teaspoons dry mustard

1 teaspoon salt

Pepper

Grease 9-by-13-inch glass baking dish. Place bread in prepared dish. Top with sausage and cheese. Beat together eggs and next three ingredients. Season with pepper. Pour over sausage mixture. Chill overnight.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Bake casserole until puffed and center is set, about 50 minutes. Cut into squares.

When teens cook pancakes

Will Wesson earns his stripes. Photo courtesy of Emily Nance.

Lord, help me. The annual St. Paul’s Episcopal Church Pancake Supper is tonight and I’m in charge.

Episcopalians, Catholics and Lutherans are very serious about this time of year. Lent starts tomorrow. Forty days of self-reflection and penitence. We are worms. That is the season. We give up things we like a lot. Many times, I give up hamburgers. That is sacrifice, my friends.

But tonight is Fat Tuesday and St. Paul’s celebrates with the pancake supper, the proceeds of which support the Youth programs. Which is why a few days ago I was teaching teenagers how to cook pancakes.

The mechanics of pancake cooking are fairly simple. You pour the batter. You wait for bubbles to form. You flip the pancake and wait another 30 seconds to a minute. You remove the pancake from the griddle. But you would have thought I was teaching quantum physics.

They gathered around the griddle, staring intently at it as if it would rise up and smite them. “Who wants to try it?” I ask. They continue to stare at the griddle. One brave teen tentatively raises his hand. O.K., good. One volunteer out of 15 or so kids. “Come on, then,” I say encouragingly. “You can’t mess this up.”

He pours. I have miscalculated. There are already bubbles in the batter. He wonders if he should immediately flip this raw mass of liquid goo. “Wait for the BIG bubbles,” I offer. We wait. They appear. He cautiously slips the spatula under the pancake. “Flip with conviction!” I say. The teen regards the pancake as though it were a landmine he was removing from a war-torn battlefield. “FLIP!” I startle him. He flips. He smiles. It is beautifully brown. He has made a pancake.

Thus encouraged, the rest of them step up one by one to attempt the mastery of making a pancake. God is watching over the Otey Hall kitchen at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Franklin, Tennessee. They all succeed. The Lord loves a cheerful flipper.

About 150 people will attend the pancake supper tonight. The ladies of the church have contributed hashbrown casseroles, egg and cheese casseroles, fruit and juice. The Men of St. Paul’s footed the bill for the pancake mix, sausage and bacon. The proceeds will help our Youth go on mission trips in the summer.

And the youth will be flipping fools tonight. Fools for pancakes. Fools for God.

Smothered pork chops

If it wasn’t for Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup, we might starve to death. And I don’t think this is a Southern thing, although we can slap wear out a can of cream of mushroom soup for almost any occasion. Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup is a universal addiction. And it has to be Campbell’s. Spare no expense.

I am not sure I know anyone who eats Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup as just plain soup. I’ve never seen it in a bowl. It is actually a sauce. Somehow heat and the addition of other ingredients transforms the soup into a silky, rich sauce.

And the perfect example is smothered pork chops. This is a busy-night, go-to meal. It takes an hour to cook, but just 10 minutes to assemble.

Smothered Pork Chops

4 bone-in pork chops

16 ounces sliced mushrooms

2 cans cream of mushroom soup

2 tablespoons minced dried onion

2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce

Heat 2 tablespoons of oil in a skillet. Salt and pepper the chops and brown them on both sides.

Lay the mushrooms in the bottom of a 9-by-13 baking dish. Put the pork chops on top.

Mix together the mushroom soup, dried onion and Worcestershire sauce. Spread over the pork chops.

Bake at 350 degrees for one hour or until the chops are tender.

The Women of St. Paul’s (and hot onion dip)

The Women of St. Paul's...before cocktail hour

Oh, my Lord. The Women of St. Paul’s have gone on retreat at the Dubose Conference Center “on the mountain” in Sewanee, Tennessee.

It is late Friday night as I am writing this and I just heard wild hooting occurring down the hallway of Bishops’ Hall where we are staying. Bishops’ Hall, for God’s sake. It is obvious we all needed a break from the quiet, pious lives we lead at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church.

This is our first retreat and more than 50 women arrived this afternoon, bearing chips and dips, Chex Mix, hot onion dip, cheese balls and LOTS of wines. And, bear in mind, we are being fed three squares a day so it’s not as if we will starve.

Cocktail hour was supposed to start at 5:30, but it actually got underway at 4:15. And I cannot tell you how impressed I am that Merida Stearns brought appletinis. I will bet you doughnuts to dollars that the Baptists do not have appletinis at their retreats. And I also cannot tell you how grateful I am that Marida brought hot onion dip, which is to die for.

I’m sorry. I lost my train of thought for a moment. Someone is going up and down the hallway knocking on doors.

We have supper. It’s quite nice – salmon, carrots, green beans, wild rice medley and chocolate pie. Very Episcopalian. Virtuous food chased by pie. Supper was followed by a movie with popcorn and BYOB. So now we have had appetizers, supper and popcorn in the space of three hours.

Some of us congregate in Donna Stokes-Rogers’ room, even though she has gone to the store for Band-Aids (I don’t know why) and has clearly not invited us. We work the crossword puzzle with clues that answer a question about each of us asked before the retreat started: Tell us a surprising fact about yourself. Here are a few. “I can tie a cherry stem into a knot in my mouth, a talent I perfected in high school.” “I used to run a meat-packing plant.” “I won my elementary school spelling bee, but was defeated in the city bee by “feud” because if you say it like a proper East Kentuckian, it sounds like fffuuued.” “I saw Charleton Heston in his underwear” (that was me). Tell me you don’t want to know these women.

The official evening ends with Compline in the chapel. It is moving. The room has high ceilings and our voices echo. We sound like nuns.

It is raining. The rain will turn to snow during the night. There is loud laughter down the hallway. I do love these women. Back in the world, they have come to my aid a thousand times. They have comforted the afflicted, supported each other in terrible times of trial and championed our individual victories.

Morning Prayer starts at 7:30 tomorrow morning. And we’ll be there. Maybe a little fuzzy. But we’ll be there.

Hot Onion Dip (recipe provided by Marida Stearns)

8 ounces cream cheese

½ cup mayonnaise

½ cup grated Parmesan cheese

1 cup onion, minced

Combine ingredients and bake in a casserole dish at 375 degrees for 35 minutes or until browned and bubbly. Serve with crackers.

 

Meat stadium

Well, I just had to smile at this. Barry Martin, my amigo at Char-Broil, e-mailed me about his staff building a meat stadium for the Super Bowl. This is not something I would ever attempt as merely consuming the cocktail weenie football players would send me into a coma. However, I admire the creativity and silliness of the whole thing and was very gratified to see at the end of this video that the staff actually ate the thing. And it looked good. If you’re having massive amounts of friends over for a Super Bowl party, you might want to attempt the meat stadium.

As for me, I will be at the concession stand getting another glass of Chardonnay.

Paula Deen and diabetes

I apologize in advance if I am going to offend anyone, but I am just a little pissed off about poor Paula Deen and all the flack she’s getting for taking money from a pharmaceutical company to peddle a diabetes drug.

Her critics, including Anthony Bordain, are giving her all kinds of grief for promoting fattening food for all of her career and then making money off the fact that she got sick, partially, from being overweight. I watched the interview Al Roker did with her on the Today Show. In the trade, you would call that a softball interview. It almost looked like he was afraid of her. And truth be told, she didn’t come off very well either. She insisted that away from the camera, she eats in moderation. No, Paula, if you are fat you are not eating in moderation. And, in fact, Paula Deen has referred to herself as fat many times. If you’re going to be fat, own it. She also looked defensive and guarded, not like the Paula Deen I’ve come to know and love.

She also said that she’d learned of the diagnosis three years ago. She didn’t explain why she didn’t reveal it until she had a drug deal. That sounds bad. A pharmaceutical contract. But you know what? People are allowed to make money in this country. If Corbett Canyon called tomorrow and offered me a gazillion dollars to shill for their Sauvignon Blanc, I’d be on the next train to Napa Valley.

What has gone largely unsaid in all of this is that what Paula Deen has been doing for the last ten years is not new. Southern people have always eaten fattening food. We just used to have a better way of working it off. Paula Deen did not invent fried chicken or sweet potato casserole or pecan pie. She might have eaten too much of it, but she didn’t invent it. In the South, we love our collards stewed with ham hocks for hours, our green bean casserole with cream of mushroom soup, our squash casserole gooey with melted cheese, and our cocoanut cake, heavy on the cocoanut.

If you think anything with a pound of butter or a cup of heavy cream in it is a crime, then don’t make it. I make fattening things all the time. I just don’t eat a bucket of it. Tonight, I’m making hot chicken salad. It has a ton of mayonnaise and shredded cheese in it and it’s topped with crushed potato chips. So sue me.

I’m using Paula Deen’s recipe. If you want to know what a real crime is, it’s Paula Deen’s magazine, which I subscribed to for exactly one year. If I had to venture where Paula’s gone wrong, it’s in endorsing way too many suspect products and splashing them all over a poorly produced magazine.

But let’s all remember this. There is a 90 percent chance that any Southern cook and maybe cooks everywhere have at least one Paula Deen cookbook. It is also highly likely that they have at least three Paula Deen recipes they make over and over again. Like the hot chicken salad. It’s damned delicious. So let’s give poor old Paula a break. Let’s remember how many years she’s been entertaining us on TV. Let’s not get our panties in a wad over her selling a few drugs. And don’t leave off the potato chips on the hot chicken salad. Don’t make me come after you.

Swedish meatballs

That boy is gone again. Back to college. He did not even look back as he drove down the driveway. He did not even wave one last time. He will not remember to text me when he gets there and I will watch the clock relentlessly to assess what time he should get there, give it another 45 minutes and then call him.

I think I’ll have a drink. Be right back.

There now. Just a wee glass of Cabernet. It’s five o’clock somewhere. Not here. But somewhere. I will get to the Swedish meatballs in a moment. After I wallow a bit more. Such an unattractive trait, wallowing. Parting is such sweet sorrow.

I think I’ll play a little World of Warcraft. I started playing this stupid game because of my boy, so we could communicate while he was away. He stopped (wisely) and I am now addicted to my Night Elf Mage and Dwarf Death Knight. Yes, you all had better watch your p’s and q’s or I’ll send Denholm the Death Knight after you. He’s heavily armed, even if he only reaches your knees. A little gratuitous violence and looting will make me feel better. Did I tell you that Noah once rang up an $800 phone bill calling his friends from World of Warcraft? He said he didn’t realize long distance costs money.

Okay. The wine is mellowing things out a bit. Blurring the edges.  Meatballs. Let’s speak of meatballs. He ate all of them. Noah ate all of them. Actually, that’s not true. He ate all but four of them, which I took to work. Resentment. Maybe if I work up just a little resentment. Over meatballs. How pathetic.

Seriously, I was on a comfort food kick over the holidays and remembered how much I adore Swedish meatballs. With the lingonberry jelly, of course. The recipe I used is from the Food Network Magazine, which published an approximate match to the famous Swedish meatballs at IKEA. Of course, we in backwater Nashville do not have an IKEA so I have no idea why they would be famous for meatballs when they sell furniture. But apparently they are. Here’s the link.

The meatballs and the New Year’s Day pork loin sliders were by far Noah’s favorites over the holidays. The meatballs are seriously addictive. He wanted more to take back to school, but I ran out of time after I made the potato salad, tuna salad, pesto pasta, and meatloaf that he also requested. Maybe I’ll make some now. And send him a photo. Ha, ha. I have Swedish meatballs and you don’t. That’s so immature.

Stop it. I think I’ll go play WoW now. Get into a dungeon group with three anonymous 14-year-olds and just rip it. And watch the clock.

 

Mushroom lasagna

Add to the list of things “never to do again:” Never go to Fresh Market the day before Christmas Eve. Never.

We are having filets for Christmas Eve supper. The Mayhews have completely revamped our Christmas traditions in light of the fact that the boy is almost 20 and life in the twenty-first century is not what it was in the twentieth. I explain this to Noah. Back in the day, people actually waited to ask for presents during certain times of the year. They anticipated that new bike or the cashmere scarf. Now they just go buy it. My mother once waited five years for a Lincoln Continental. It was the car of her dreams and she was well into her 60s before it appeared in our driveway. It never occurred to our parents to make car payments. You saved up. You waited. You anticipated. And the reward was all the sweeter. So because that is just so 1965, we now have scaled back our Christmas to a few meaningful gift cards and a great Christmas Eve meal.

Which is why I am standing at the meat counter at Fresh Market surrounded by, no kidding, 50 other people who are clutching paper numbers as the digital counter flashes behind the butchers. The digital counter. I am 66. The counter is on 48. There are only two ways this can go. I can give in to my famous lack of patience at standing in line and try the Publix. Or I can just shoot myself full of Christmas spirit. And that is what I do. I just mainline some Christmas spirit. 49, 50. I inspect the fish counter nearby. Nineteen dollars a pound for Chilean Sea Bass? You’ve got to be kidding. 51, 52, 53. I sidle over to the bakery section and briefly consider buying an $18 yule log. We don’t even like cake, but I am battling my boredom. 54, 55, 56, 57. A woman shopper is apoplectic that she can’t find champagne mustard to rub on her standing rib roast. I do not tell her that the taste of the mustard actually disappears and that she might as well use French’s. Because I am imbued with the Christmas spirit. 58, 59, 60, 61, 62. The man who is 63 towers over the meat counter and zeros in on the filets. NO!!!!!! He picks four of the prettiest ones. Damn him. My Christmas spirit is fraying at the edges. A half hour later, finally, 66! I casually chat with the butcher as he bags my three almost perfect specimens. “Yea,” he says, “the managers told us that this is the busiest day of the year.”

I check out, briefly stopping to help an infirm older lady behind me slide her $15 cocoanut cake onto the counter. I offer to help her to her car. O.K. I’m good. I leave Fresh Market without wanting to punch anyone in the throat.

So tomorrow it is beautiful filets with baked potatoes and Brussels sprouts. Tonight it is comforting mushroom lasagna, inspired from a recipe by Ina Garten.

Mushroom Lasagna

3 tablespoons butter

1 pound Portobello mushroom slices

1 pound sliced button mushrooms

Salt and pepper

1 teaspoon dried thyme

1/3 cup Marsala

Béchamel sauce (recipe follows)

3 cups shredded Italian cheese blend or mozzarella

No-boil lasagna noodles

Béchamel sauce

1 stick butter

½ cup flour

4 cups whole milk

¼ teaspoon nutmeg

Salt and pepper to taste

Melt the butter in a skillet and sauté the mushrooms until well browned and all the liquid has evaporated. Salt and pepper to taste and add the Marsala. Continue cooking until the wine has evaporated. Set aside.

For the Béchamel, melt the stick of butter and add the flour, whisking for a minute to cook out the raw taste of the flour. Slowly pour in the milk and continue whisking until a thick sauce forms. Add the nutmeg, and salt and pepper to taste.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. In a 9-by-13 casserole dish, put a layer of sauce on the bottom. Top with a layer of lasagna noodles. Add more sauce to cover the noodles, and top with a third of the mushrooms and a layer of shredded cheese. Continue in a like manner for two more layers, finishing with the last of the sauce and a final layer of cheese.

Bake for 40-45 minutes.