Gone with the wind.........

I had decades worth of recipes written on scraps of paper and 3 x 5 cards that I had been gathering since my teens, my Mom's, and Gramma's, wonderful family recipes of all my favorites ... my Mom's Chili Verde, her amazingly easy, flavorful Chop Suey, Granny's Chicken and Dumplings, desserts, salads, and of course, recipes for those marvelous soups and stews that warmed us on the cold blustery days... anyway, I had always intended to put them all into a book, or to at least digitize them so that they could be saved and shared. I loved those scraps of paper and never got around to it. Those grubby bits of paper and card stock, spattered by ingredients, creased and worn, soft from years of being refolded after use, and smelling oh so faintly of spices, felt real to me. tangible and homey. My mothers familiar scrawl, her funny little notes........Pulling out those handwritten treasures was almost a form of therapy, certainly they were a touchstone for me. They lived in a beautiful wooden and metal scrollwork box on a shelf in my dining room.

We found what was left of the box after the fire, we kinda recognized a bit of the metal scrollwork... my son pried it open while we held our breath, hoping that the once lovely box had somehow protected those vulnerable pages......
Once he peeled back the burned layers of what was left, a few charred edges of my treasured "receipts" fluttered out, then they just disintegrated and disappeared on the breeze.

So my mission now is to piece together those recipes, add in more that I find along the way, and get a cookbook published for my Mom. I think she would have loved that.

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Monday, February 8, 2010

Cheaters Arroz con Pollo (Mexican Chicken and rice)

I stumbled into this soup quite by accident. I had been working all day and the boss had brought us lunch of a Mexican Chicken bowl from the El Pollo Loco. I was hungry, but oh so tired, and decided to take it home for dinner. The kids were all supposed to be out for the evening and it was just going to be me for dinner. When I got home, I found that my youngest sons' plans had fallen through and he was in for the night. He was starved and I was just too tired to go out and pick up something for him. Out of sheer laziness, I decided to stretch my lunch to feed both of us. It was great! We loved it and it was ridiculously easy to make. Now it is a staple in our house, especially on a work night.

I mixed Chicken bowl from El Pollo Loco (usually rice, beans, diced chicken and salsa)
2 tbl chopped cilantro
2 tbl chopped onion
1/4 cup fresh salsa
(all of these can be had at the salsa bar while you wait for your chicken bowl)
4 cups chicken broth

Add contents of bowl and the broth to a saucepan and heat. After it has simmered for about 5 minutes, add other ingredients to taste.

It is just that simple.

A wonderful, spicy, hearty soup... you will be hard pressed to make a better Arroz con Pollo soup from scratch.

Ole!
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