Inside the Mind of a Freelance Writer: Various and Sundry thoughts

Tammy Curry Freelance writer

Various and Sundry thoughts

So many topics to cover by request. I think I am going to set up to do a specific top for each day of the week. Mondays gardening issues, Tuesdays Recipes, Wednesdays Frugal Tip of the Day, Thursdays Writing update, Fridays Homeschooling, Saturdays Happy News Briefs, Sundays General Life Ramblings. This looks like an excellent plan of action. I really want to go back to blogging in the mornings when I am more coherent. I will have to mark all this on my calendar so that I do not forget which days has been assigned what topic.

I had originally planned on taking the kids to celebrate Dr. Seuss' birthday at the local university, however everyone has been slightly under the weather and it is raining and dreary outside. Not wanting to push our luck and have icky kids are on our hand we will do our own little celebration tomorrow.

Since today is Tuesday, I might as well post my recipe for the week.

This week's new recipe was of my own making, pear, walnut cornbread stuffing.

The roasted chicken itself was not special other than the seasonings I used. I used a bit of teriyaki sauce, sprinkled with ginger and place crushed garlic cloves under the skin. For the stuffing I made fresh cornbread.

Cornbread recipe:

2 cups cornmeal

2 cups milk (you can use water or buttermilk)

2 teaspoon salt (salt can be cut in half)

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 tablespoons of shortening

The oven was preheated to 350 degrees. I unceremoniously poured all the ingredients into a large bowl and mixed it together with a fork. Lumps are not an issue for cornbread.

I have a wonderful cast iron skillet that I use for making cornbread. I heated the skillet on the stove and melted the shortening, making sure to coat the inside of the entire pan. Then I poured the batter into the skillet and placed it in the oven. 40 minutes later voila fresh cornbread.

I removed it from the skillet and placed it in a bowl to cool. I then hid the bowl so that no one walked by to pick at it and eat it all before dinner.

Once the chicken was seasoned and ready to go I set it aside, in the fridge. The giblets (heart, liver, neck and I add wing tips) were tossed into a small sauce pan with half an onion, a cup of sliced carrot and some basil, oregano, sage and majarom. Covered it all with water and let it come to a boil. The mix simmered for about a half an hour.

Ingredients for the stuffing:

Crumbled cornbread loaf

1 Bartlett pear

½ medium onion

1 cup walnut pieces

2 cloves of garlic

1 stick of butter

1 cup of chicken stock

2 eggs

I peeled and cored an over ripe Bartlett pear. I cut the other half of onion into quarters and peeled the garlic cloves. Mixed the walnuts, pear, onion and garlic into a bowl and added a little bit at a time to the mini chopper, making sure that everything was finely minced.

The minced items, hot stock and melted butter are poured over the crumbled cornbread. With a large fork I mixed all of this together then added the eggs. Once everything is thoroughly mixed I stuff it into the chicken. What doesn't fit goes into a bread loaf pan.

The stuffed chicken and the loaf pan go into the preheated oven (350 degrees) for at least one hour.