Home Repair Yields Cooking Revelation?

Here...Try This Recipe...


So when we moved into this old house in April 2008, while it was in pretty good shape for something made of bricks and wood which was only three years younger than I was, there were still a few nagging little details which reared their ugly heads every now and then...

...and over the past 2-1/2 years I've been playing "Whack A Mole" with them on an individual basis based on the priority and reality of the consequences should they be ignored.

Things that might fall on my head or electrocute me or cause me to drown were top priority, but as the days and months on the calendar have passed us by the list has gotten shorter and now we're down to silly details like replacing Kitchen Oven vent hoods and also most recently, the "Lazy Susan" or "Lazy Susie" or "Lazy Mildred" or even "Lazy Bob"---that turntable thing commonly found under the base cabinets in the corner of the kitchen.

Apparently the old couple that owned our house before we moved in stored a used Datsun Pickup Truck under the counter or allowed their kids and/or grand kids to use the devise as an amusement park merry go round or something...

because the darned thing was cracked and broken several ways and as a result prone to flinging 24 ounce cans of tomato sauce out of the cabinet onto your bare feet or else losing things like raw potatoes back in the neither regions behind the round shelves only to rot and produce lovely odors better relegated to the basement or bathroom than the kitchen.

So any way, a couple of weeks ago I bought a new one on line and managed to cut the old mangled one out of the cabinet and cram the new one into it's place, but the top shelf seems to want to refuse to stay locked to the vertical shaft/pole so early this morning I found myself sitting in the kitchen floor disgorging all of the canned goods out of the cabinet so I could lift the shelf and take a monkey wrench and a sledge hammer and crush the bolt holding the shelf into it's final position.

I'm proud to report that as of this morning it's going to take either a stick of dynamite or a Muslim Suicide Bomber to remove that shelf from my kitchen.

But I digress...

while going through all of the crazy cans of stuff I'd forgotten I'd bought I was stuck with an idea for a late night snack--actually a soup concoction--which worked out pretty dang good if I do say so myself.

Here's the recipe for Virgil's "Creamy Mushroom Chicken Spinach Tarragon Mushroom Soup."

(OK...I have to work on the name a little, but you get the idea...)

Ingredients:

(2) tbsp Bacon Grease
(2) hands full of baby spinach
(1) 7 oz Can Sliced Button Mushrooms
(1) 12 oz Can Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup
(1) 5 oz Can premium chicken Breast (or diced chicken breast leftovers)
1/2 14 oz Can Chicken Stock
1/2 Cup white Wine

dash of sea salt
couple of dashes of white pepper
couple of sashes of black pepper
1/4 tsp of your favorite hot sauce


Putting it all together...

Dump your bacon grease into a two or three quart boiler and get it hot over medium heat.

Drain your canned mushroom slices and toss them in the hot bacon grease.

Give them two or three minutes to heat up, then throw in your baby spinach and cook until the spinach wilts.

Turn the heat down and reserve the mushroom/spinach mixture on the side in a bowl and spoon out your cream of mushroom soup into the boiler and add the chicken stock and kick the heat back up.

Open and drain your chicken breast pieces and pull the leaves off your Tarragon and dice them up real fine.

Add the Tarragon and salt/peppers to the mixture and keep stirring.

When things start steaming and bubbling a little, add back in your mushroom/spinach mix and dump in the white wine and the chicken chunks.

Take a big swig of white wine for yourself now if you want to.

Hey...take two swigs...I'ts your wine...

Simmer everything for about 15 or 20 more minutes, then grab yourself a napkin and bowl and spoon and EAT.

Regards Y'all

The Redneck Gourmet

(For those that don't read my terribly neglected cooking Blog--The Redneck Gourmet -- I will cross post this recipe and thus it is written in the style I use in/on that forum.)