Herbed Chicken and Dumplings

With the economy in the dumps and the weather beginning to cool, this comforting recipe welcomes fall and helps to pinch pennies (it uses the 2 cheapest veggies at the store). And not only that, it is healthy...about 300 calories per serving, 5.2 g fat, 35g carbs, and a healthy 25g protein. For those non-chicken eaters out there, I suppose you can substitute mushrooms (portabella?) for the chicken. This recipe is inspired from Cooking Light, with a few personal touches...the original recipe serves 2, but I tweaked it to serve 2 for dinner with seconds for the hubby, with a small amount of leftovers for 1 lunch...so that is the serving yield for this recipe.

Herbed Chicken and Dumplings
cooking spray
12 oz. skinless, boneless chicken thighs, cut into bite-sized pieces (this amount is not exact, if you want chicken, use more)
1/4 cup vermouth or white wine
1 cup diagonally cut celery (1/4in.)
1 cup diagonally cut celery (1/4 in.)
3/4 cup chopped onion
3 parsley sprigs
3 rosemary sprigs
3 cups fat free chicken broth
1 cup flour
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup non-fat milk

1. Heat a large saucepan over medium high heat. Coat pan with cooking spray. Add chicken to pan; cook until brown on all sides. Season with salt and pepper. Remove chicken from pan; keep warm. Spray pan again with cooking spray (or add a bit of oil). Add onions, cook 2 minutes, then add celery and carrots. Saute 5 minutes, until veggies are tender. Season with salt and pepper. Add vermouth or wine to deglaze pan. Add parsely sprigs, rosemary, and chicken to pan. Cook 1 minute. Add broth, bring mixture to boil. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer 30 min.
2. Combine flour, chopped parsley, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl. Add milk, stirring just until moist (do not add milk until you are ready to cook the dumplings). Spoon by heaping teaspoonfuls into broth mixture; cover and simmer 10 minutes or until dumplings are done.
Discard parsley and rosemary sprigs before serving.
Enjoy!
We enjoyed this meal with a spinach, walnut, and dried cherry salad, and Morning Fog Wente Chardonnay (it was served at our wedding)

Phish

As many of you know, I married into a phamily of Phish phriends. Phish is Scott's PHAVORITE band, he has attended 44 shows. Our phirst dance at our wedding was a Phish song covered be Dave Matthews. Unfortunately, they disbanded in 2004. Scott and his phriends phlew to the east coast in '04 to tour with the band one last time, which culminated in a big, muddy, rainy, pharewell phestival in Vermont. I, on the other hand, have only been to 1 show, and I watched their phinal concert from the comfort of a luxury movie theater in Irvine..I'm not so much into the camping in the mud...
So for the past year or so, there have been rumors hinting that Phish may return, we were thinking they would possibly come back next New Years (09-10), so we were thrown for a loop when they announced a three night concert block in Virginia in March! Supposedly they will tour as well, but none of that has been announced yet. There was not even a question in Scott's mind if we were going to attend or not...so now it looks like we are going on vacation in March to Hampton, Virginia. Thank goodness this is not a camping phestival show...we get to stay in the comfort of the Embassy Suites.
This morning the tickets went on sale. We had to buy 6 tickets...2 tickets for each of the 3 shows. They went on sale at 10am eastern time, which meant we had to get up at 6am on a Saturday...seriously, that's how much he loves this band! Now, Phish tickets sell PHAST, like all three shows sell out in seconds! Our phriend Chris sent us some secret tips on navigating ticketmaster to make sure we got tickets...tips like calling ticketmaster a whole hour before the onsale time just to make sure you are in the automated system and not dealing with a busy signal...you know, things you really want to do early in the AM. We went to my parents house this morning to use our 2 cell phones, parent's land line, our laptop, parent's laptop, and parent's desktop computer to try to snag some tickets. We carefully phollowed all our secret tips, and low and behold, I got through on my phone and was able to buy tickets for all 3 shows for the two of us! We phailed to get any on all 3 computers and the other 2 phones. That's how hard it is people...I pheel very blessed to have gotten through! A few hours later, we checked out ebay to see how much the tickets were selling for...get this, we paid about $350 TOTAL for 6 tickets...on ebay today, 6 tickets are selling for $2,500!

Ok, ok, I'll update!

I've gotten a few urges from family and friends to update about what I've been up to in the Bay Area...so here it is!
Job:
I still love my therapy job. I last left everyone with pictures of my inner city schools, but I had not seen any kiddos yet. Now that I've been seeing them a few weeks, I realize that I really enjoy speech therapy more than teaching. I get students in groups of 1 or 2 for 30-45 minutes at a time. We work on producing sounds such as "s", "r", and "f", or some need to work on sentence formation (correct verb tenses, plurals, pronoun usage.) I don't have any social skills students, but that is also under the realm of speech (teaching HOW to have a conversation...turn taking, eye contact, etc.). I have impressed myself in the past month by actually conducting a few therapy sessions in Spanish! Here's a link to my company's website, and if you scroll down there is a little blurb about me (remember, I work for a private clinic, and they placed me in Oakland School District)...Communication Works Therapy
Fun:

I've been up to a few things around the Bay Area lately. Andrea and I spent a music-filled day in San Francisco a few weekends ago at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in Golden Gate Park (it was a free concert). There were probably 20,000 people there, and amazingly, you were allowed to bring your own alcohol to the park...so Andrea and I enjoyed a nice bottle of wine in my Sigg water bottle =)

Andrea, me and Andrea's roommate Susie

A while back, Scott and I visited Muir Woods with Kelly and Levi. We figured the redwoods were a NorCal must-see, and they were beautiful!Sister-in-law Kelly and I

Last Saturday I finally had the opportunity to dine at Scott's new workplace. I enjoyed oysters and zentinis with my parents, Auntie A, her boyfriend, Uncle D, and Aunt K. Scott sent out some tasty Peruvian-style mussels for us. Oh, and gotta comment on the zentini: a vodka martini with a ginger syrup and mint....can't go wrong there (especially when the waitress accidentally brings you a second one!)

My mom and oysters...mmm

The family at the Yacht Club

So there you go, I hope this quenches your unending thirst to learn about my life =)