Time is running out!

Today is the last day to enter my cookbook giveaway over at my new review blog, Dawniemom Reviews.  OF course, I can’t remember if I even told you about it here or not, but in any event, get over there and enter! :)

Cristina Ferrare’s Chicken Pot Pie with Cornbread Crust

I watched Oprah last week when she had Cristina Ferrare on, talking about how to stretch your dollar in today’s lousy economy.  She prepared this and it just looked so good, I had to try it.

Filling:

• 1 Tbsp. olive oil
• 1 Tbsp. unsalted butter (I omited this, but used more olive oil)
• 1 medium Onion , chopped
• 1/4 cup flour
• 2 cups chicken stock
• 2 cups chopped Roasted Chicken (I used roasted boneless chicken breast)
• 1/2 cup frozen sweet petite peas
• 1 potato , diced and boiled
• 1 1/2 cup chopped, cooked carrots
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• Cracked pepper
• Dash of Tabasco® sauce (I omitted this)

Crust:

• 3/4 cup white or yellow cornmeal
• 3/4 cup flour
• 1 Tbsp. baking powder
• 1 1/2 Tbsp. sugar
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 3/4 cup milk
• 1 large egg
• 2 Tbsp. canola oil

To make filling: Preheat the oven to 400°. Spray a 2-quart casserole with cooking spray. In a large sauce pan, heat olive oil and unsalted butter together. Add onion and sauté until tender, about 4 or 5 minutes. Add in flour until blended. Slowly stir in 2 cups of heated chicken stock, whisking well. Cook mixture over medium heat until thickened and bubbly, about 4 minutes. Stir in chicken, peas, potato, carrots, salt, pepper and Tabasco®. Pour into a 2-quart casserole dish coated with cooking spray and cook until heated and thickened. Spread eventy into an ovenproof dish. 
To make crust: In a bowl, stir cornmeal, flour, baking powder, sugar and salt. Stir milk, egg and canola oil until well combined. Stir wet ingredients into dry ingredients. Spoon the batter evenly on the filling. Bake until the top is golden brown, about 22 to 25 minutes.

My finished product.  In the prep, I had to use more than 2 cups of broth – and then, after it was baked and spooned out into the bowls, I found that the corn bread had absorbed virtually all of the “gravy” , so I thought it to be kind of dry.  Everyone else loved it.  I’m not sure how else I’d fix it to make it better though.  I will say, though, that it was extremely satisfying to make something completely from scratch!  No canned veggies, no boxed corn bread. Everything fresh!  It’s much cheaper too.

More linky love

So, as I mentioned, I went to BlogHer Boston and heard these amazing women talk about cooking and blogging and the food blogging community. They mentioned a few sites that they enjoy and I've just finally gotten a chance to take a look at some of them, and O M G. You've GOT to check them out - just don't get zapped licking your computer screen.

• Food Gawker - their tag line is "feast your eyes" - and it's SO true!
  
• Photograzing - similar to Food Gawker - another delicious resource.

The main idea of the Social Media Can Save Dinner is this: The food blogging community is both huge and generous. So getting traffic to your blog is entirely possible when you start visiting AND COMMENTING on other people's blogs - it's the same basic concept for any type of blog. I didn't use to have a lot of food blogs on my blog roll because I'm a google girl. When I need help with a recipe, I google it. Of course, if we ALL did that, no one would have any kind of traffic on their blogs, and we'd all just sit here getting depressed at our stats and lack of comments. So I'm going to try to get to more food blogger blogs, introduce myself, try your recipes and make some new friends :)

So - tell me - who are your favorite food bloggers? Leave me your link and their link in the comments and I'll be by!

Thanks!!

Good news!

I've been doing product reviews for several months over at my other blog, Coming to a Nursery Near You. However, since I've been doing more than even I'd want to read instead of actual news, I've begun my own review blog, Dawniemom Reviews (original, right?). So the GOOD news for you guys is that I'll also be doing giveaways there and from time to time, I'll post here when there's a giveaway over there. How's that? I'll also post here when I review a food product over there. So go take a look, perhaps add me to your feed reader, or just say hi :)

Also, I went to BlogHer Boston earlier this month and it was SUCH an incredible experience! One of the sessions, "Social Media can save Dinner" caught my eye specifically, and through that, I was introduced to some more food bloggers, which is ALWAYS cool! Kalyn's Kitchen, The Perfect Pantry and Nika's Culinaria all feature mouth watering recipes AND photos. I'm sure you'll love them as much as I already do.

Lots of good stuff! (edited)

I haven’t been doing much of making up my own recipes, but I figured that since I haven’t updated here in a while, I thought I’d share with you what I’ve been making.

THIS bread recipe is INCREDIBLE! I’ve never made my own bread other than in the bread machine, so I wasn’t so sure how it would do – but it was AWESOME! And it’s so much cheaper than buying bread! - (Sorry, had the wrong link in there. LOL)

I also revisited my OMG THIS IS SO GOOD apple pie, and this time, cut both of the sugars by half and it still turned out fantastic!

Because we were still working on the apples we picked last MONTH, I even bought this candy apple mix and made them!

I will probably finish the apples off by making some more apple sauce – if I can find a better way to sweeten it without it tasting like a jarred applesauce.

So, what have YOU been cooking?

Going Pink for October

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month - please support this important topic by educating yourself about breast cancer. Similarly, join the "movement" and pinkforoctober.org. Finally, do what you can to donate to the Susan G. Komen foundation, or ANY that raises money to help fight this horrible disease.

Thank you.