New Recipe!

Butter Baked Chicken and Gravy

From Cooking with Paula Deen, Mar/Apr 2009

I had mine with white rice.

Chris had his with potatoes.

We had leftovers and he had it with rice tonight, but he said he liked the potatoes better.

Butter Baked Chicken and Gravy
Ingredients

1⁄4 cup butter, melted
1 cup all-purpose flour
1⁄8 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 (15-ounce) can evaporated milk, divided
1 (4 1⁄2-pound) chicken, cut into pieces (I used 6 boneless skinless Chicken breasts)
1 (10 3⁄4-ounce) can cream of chicken soup
3⁄4 cup water
Hot cooked rice (optional)
Asparagus (optional)


Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350˚.
2. Pour melted butter into a 13x9-inch baking dish.
3. In a shallow dish, combine flour, salt, and pepper.
4. In a separate shallow dish, add 1⁄2 cup evaporated milk. Coat chicken pieces with evaporated milk; dredge each in flour mixture. Place chicken, skin side up, in prepared baking dish. Bake, uncovered, for 35 minutes. Remove from oven, and turn chicken.
5. In a small bowl, combine soup, water, and remaining evaporated milk; pour over chicken. Return chicken to oven, and bake for 35 minutes longer. Remove chicken from baking dish; whisk gravy in baking dish until smooth. Serve chicken and gravy with rice and asparagus, if desired.

We really enjoyed this recipe. We wouldn't change a thing. Paula always says follow the recipe the first time, make changes to your taste the second time.

Finally!

For Christmas 2008 Mom surprised me with this purse from Suzanne at Just Another Hang Up. I loved it. I love the style, the shape and the colors.

This year Mom got me another 'Just Another Hang Up' for Christmas. I told her that I really liked one of the purses Suzanne had posted on her site, so Mom checked to see what I was talking about. The purse had already sold, but this one was still available. It is just about the same except for the circle material around the top. I like this one much better.

Mom and Hubby both told me I shouldn't carry it until Spring. So I waited and waited for Spring to get here. I changed purses one day before the calendar said it was Spring. I love the new shape Suzanne is making now. Once you carry a 'Just Another Hang Up', no other purse will compare to it.

Bloomin' Tuesday!

Not much Bloomin' around here yet, but we do have some signs of blooms to come.

Primrose

Tulips

Bachelor Button

One lonely bloom...

We took these 2 pictures of Wintergreen while on our nature hike last Saturday.

To see more of Bloomin' Tuesday, click HERE.

Spring Walk!

It was a beautiful first day of Spring here, so instead of wasting the day sitting in the house, we decided to go for another walk in the woods.

Chris took me on some different trails today. I got to see more of the area where my brother and Chris hunt.

This is one of the ravines about 3/4 of a mile into the woods. The water really wasn't that deep considering all of the snow that has melted in the past week.

They seem to see a lot of deer in this area during hunting season. We only saw one deer (well at least it's white tail) on this trip, but did see countless turkeys running through the woods.

Thought this broken tree stump was neat.

Liked this tree too.

The big pond was still partially frozen, but it still looks nice with the blue sky in the background.

We were surprised when we got back to the truck that we had been in the woods for over 2 hours.

What a great way to spend the first day of Spring!!!

So Exciting!

After I remodeled the kitchen a couple of years ago, we weren't sure what to do with the back-splash. A recent trip to Lowe's for supplies to paint the living-room gave us the answer. One type of tile that we had been looking at was on sale for less than 1/2 price. They are 5/8 inch tiles preset in 12x12 inch squares.

I started by sanding the paint off the walls to rough them up. I put on a thin layer of mastic and let it dry. I wanted to make sure that I had a good surface for the tiles to bond to. I worked on the area above the sink on Thursday.

On Friday, I worked to finish up the area under the cupboards and finished up the rest of the sink wall.

The tiling is done. Now I had to wait 24 - 48 hours for the mastic to cure.

On Monday morning I mixed the grout and got started working on that.

The first of 6 times that I wiped the tiles down.

I got the electrical all put back together yesterday and put the cover plates back on.

I also cut the pencil molding and got it glued in place. I still have to seal the grout, fill a couple of nail holes where I removed a piece of trim board and touch up the nail holes, but other than that the project is finished.

Hopefully the HDMI cable I ordered for the TV in the living-room will be here this week so I can get that hooked up and patch the hole in the wall. Then I can get the painting done in there.

Nature!

We always bring our camera with us no matter where we are going. You never know when you are going to see something to take a picture of. When we went to Lowe's the other day, we had the camera. Chris took a couple of roads we don't usually go down to see if we could get some pictures.

I thought this was a pretty neat picture with the snow in the back ground.

This guy was trying to find food under the pine trees.

I think this is what Chris and my brother usually see in the woods when they are hunting. =)

Chris tried to get some pictures of this group of deer, but they started running after the first picture.

Winter Walk!

It is a beautiful day here in Western NY so we decided to get outside and enjoy the weather. We drove to where Chris and my brother Kim go hunting.
Usually the parking lot and this trail are plowed, but for some reason they aren't this year. We had to follow snowmobile tracks so we didn't sink into the snow.
Here are a couple close ups we took.
The snow was so deep in some spots that it came up to Chris's knees.
We had a nice walk but didn't go into the woods as deep as we normally would have. It was just too hard to walk. It was still nice to get outside and get some fresh air.
We went to one of the ponds and this was the only spot that wasn't frozen over.

Still Remodeling!

This is what our lamps have looked like for 16 years. My Grandmother bought them for us as a wedding gift. We weren't sure if we wanted new lamps or if new shades would do. On Monday, we went to The Home Depot and Big Lots to look at new lamps. We didn't find any we liked.
Yesterday we decided to drive to Warren, PA and go to Lowe's to see what they had. We saw a couple of lamps we liked, but they were really close to the ones we already had. We really liked this lamp shade, so we decided to buy two and bring them home and see what they looked like on our lamps. We decided that we like them.

Now it is time to pick a paint color. We have picked up paint chips from Wal*Mart, Home Depot and Lowe's.
Who knew that there were SO many different colors of tan and brown. We thought we had it picked out, then we brought more home yesterday. We went through them again today and we think we have it picked out. Chris is probably sorry he brought me with him to Lowe's because now he has a bigger "honey I would like you to do list." =)