Learning Chicken and Dumplings in the Dairy Section

MUHAHAHAHA!  It is time!  Time to open the Crock of Pot.  This was a gift from my mother-in-law who didn't quite know what to get me.  She said that my brother-in-law (The Everfantastic Brian) had told her about my existing Crockpot which was way little and had the knob broken off by one of the cats.  (Don't ask me how).  Now I have the Big Mamma one, the Serious Church-Goer one, with the snap-on lid that has room enough for at least three chickens.

Yesterday in the dairy section of Kroger (thank God we have a Kroger, we didn't have one in Gulfport and it was miserable) I met an old black lady named Dorothy who taught me--right then and there--how to make proper dumplins. I had told her I made the White Trash Way (bird singing, angels sighing) with canned biscuits, but I had been wanting to make them  by hand. 

Here's my current method:  boil your chicken (whole) until it's very well cooked.  You can add chicken bullion to the water for extra flavor.  Keep all of the stock--that fat is valuable.  Then roll out canned biscuits, roll them out, cut them up with a pizza cutter, and cook them in the stock. They cook up nice and flat, and taste wonderful.

Here is Dorothy's method:  flour, salt, and cooked in condensed milk with cream of chicken soup.  That I have to try.  So the chicken cooked down in the Crock Pot most of yesterday and I will be rolling out the dough tonight once I'm done.

I'm rather shy about blogging other people, but meeting Dorothy and her friends (they go shopping in threes) was a treat.  They taught me how to make instant chicken pot pies in a muffin tin and all sorts of little things.  They attend Beaver Creek Baptist Church.  It's all I can do not to go out on a Sunday and just sit and learn, to happenstance on a potluck--that would be glorious.  Sometimes I wonder if I should collect all I can about the cuisine of the Free State of Jones and let it roll.

I think that's what I'm going to do.

 

So you know you have a bad case of the domestics when you're this delighted to get a Crock Pot for Christmas.  My dear mother-in-law was told that my last Crock Pot (too tiny to cook a chicken) had a busted knob.  I had to ask my brother-in-law to turn it down when we went to get our wedding photos and he spilled the beans on my sad state of Crockpottery. 

Here, inronically, is a picture of me today. 

It's fate.  Stay tuned.