With COVID and retirement, I've had more time to take care of myself and learn some cooking. Most of my cooking experiments have been American comfort food, June Cleaver type stuff.
Slow cooker chicken sausage gumbo. I think this was Crock Pot Chicken, Sausage, and Shrimp without the shrimp.
I like the slow cooker - you cut stuff up in the morning and put it in, then clean up and putter around all day while the smell fills the house. The slow cooker's also good for pulled pork sandwiches, spare ribs, chicken burritos.
Spicy chicken stew. I've made this one a lot, it's like hearty lumberjack food and another slow cooker recipe.
Now I lean toward curly noodle chicken soup though.
Blueberry pie and whiskey.
Chicken pot pie. The recipe suggests a store crust but I make it with the same double crust from the blueberry pie.
Roasted sausage and potatoes. It's easy - mix the stuff together, bake at 450 for 20 minutes, then at 500 for 20 more minutes, mixing occassionally. Perfect with scrambled eggs or an omelette.
Creamy ham and potato soup. One surprising thing I learned here is, there's such a thing as too much ham. Don't double the ham.
Ham bone soup. This one photographed well, but the taste was disappointing. I made a ham and bean soup like this one that was better, the flavor and the texture from the beans get into the broth.
Coming up I want to do more soups - corn chowder, seafood chowder, wedding soup, better chicken stews - and good homemade breads and hot sandwiches to go with them. I also want to learn some Indian cooking and pho.
