For our dear friend Datta S., in India

http://twitter.com/sillyposts

This recipe is from Southern Living: 1982 Annual Recipes

Chicken Breasts Lombardy

6 whole chicken breasts, boned, skinned and quartered

½ c. all-purpose flour

1 cup butter, divided

Salt & pepper

1 ½ cups sliced mushrooms

¾ cup marsala wine

½ cup chicken stock

½ cup (2 ounces) shredded Fontina or mozzarella cheese

½ cup grated Parmesan cheese

Place each piece of chicken between two sheets of waxed paper, and flatten to 1/8” thickness using a meat mallet or rolling pin.

Dredge chicken lightly w/ flour.  Place four pieces at a time in 2 tbsp. melted butter in a large skillet; cook over low heat 3 – 4 minutes on each side or until golden brown.  Place chicken in a greased 13 X 9 X 2-inch baking dish, overlapping edges; sprinkle w/salt and pepper to taste (very little salt is actually needed; especially since I used Marsala cooking wine).  Repeat w/remianing chicken, adding 2 tbsp. butter to skillet each time.  Reserve drippings in skillet.

Saute mushrooms in ¼ cup butter until tender; drain.  Sprinkle evenly over chicken. 

Stir wine and chicken stock into drippings in skillet.  Simmer 10 minutes; stirring occasionally.  Stir in ½ tsp. salt & pepper (taste first).  Sppon about 1/3 sauce over chicken; reserve remainin sauce.

Combine cheese, and sprinkle over chicken. Bake at 450 for 10 – 12 minutes or until lightly browned.  Serve w/reserved sauce.

(The other night I tossed fresh asparagus in a dash of olive, salt & pepper.  Placed in single layer in jelly roll pan and cooked right along side the chicken.  A rich tasting meal & inexpensiveJ)

Here we go, quilters and clumsy ones, one of our fabulous holiday favorites.

A couple of things about this bread.  I have two different recipes and will start with the one I’m using now,  found later, reprinted in a flyer from Krogers.   Since I started using this recipe I’ve been on a quest for perfection….using bread flour, instead of regular; maple flavoring instead of yum (a great twist), and Light Eggnog instead of regular.  It’s too heavy for me with regular Eggnog.   Eggs at room temperature – always a good thing if you ask me; and I also have both eggnog and melted butter at room temperature at well. 

You’ll have to experiment with your oven.  The recipe calls for 40 minutes but there is a tendency for the crumb to start drying on the outside before the center is cooked.  If any of you are true bakers – instead of clumsy ones such as myself – and tweak the recipe to the point of perfection, then please post your comments.  I know you’ll enjoy this in any form.  Happy Saturday!

Kroger Eggnog Bread 

2 eggs

I C.  light eggnog

2 tsp rum or rum extract

2 ¼ C. of all purpose flour

½ tsp salt

1 C. white sugar

½ C. melted butter

1 tsp vanilla

2 tsp baking powder

¼ tsp (I use ½) nutmeg

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease the bottom of a 9 X 5pan (I grease the entire pan).  In large bowl, beat eggs until well mixed.  Blend in sugar, eggnog, butter, rum and vanilla.  In a separate bowl, stir flour, baking powder, salt and nutmeg, then add into eggnog mixture.  Stir just until ingredients are dampened.  Pour batter into pan.  Bake 40 minutes.  Cool 10 minutes in pan then remove to wire rack.

Madelyn’s Eggnog Bread

3 C. flour

1.4 c. sugar

4 tsp baking powder

½ tsp. salt

½ tsp. ground nutmeg

1 egg

1 ¾ C. Eggnog

½ C. cooking oil

½ C. chopped pecans

½ C. golden raisins

½ C. powdered sugar

2 – 3 taps. Eggnog

Mix flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and nutmeg.  Combine egg, eggnog and oil.  Add to dry ingeredients.  Sitr in nuts and rains.  Turn into greased loaf pan.  Bake at 350 degrees for 60 – 70 minutes.  Cover with foil after 30 minutes if it browns too fast.

Cool in pan 10 minutes.  Remove bread from pan.  Cool on wire rack.  Wrap bread, store overnight.  To serve, stire together owdered sugar and enough eggnog for “drizzle consistency.  Drizzle.  Great for Christmas!

The Clumsy Quilter is just as dangerous with can openers as she is with the rotary cutter so be warned:  you need to open up at least four cans for this recipe (stand aside while someone else disposes of the lids).

Here we go Tweeps & Peeps (Posterous subscribers, that is)!  It’s my first, possibly annual (possibly not) year-end recipe countdown.  All year long I cut out recipes and those I try that are worth making again “graduate” from a mere newspaper clipping to an actual photocopy.  From there, a recipe that is duplicated again & again to rave reviews then graduates -- with honors -- and are encased in plastic, protective covering and are filed in a three-ring notebook. 

For the next few weeks I’ll be posting some of these recipes and hopefully quilting in between (and in between that writing and blogging on Women With Cancer -- http://womenwcancer.blogspot.com/.

You’ll notice immediately that the Clumsy Quilter is truly the alter ego of @jodyms, who eats a lot of salads, grapefruit and apples.  The Clumsy Quilter shouts:  LIFE IS SHORT!  ENJOY BUTTER! 

Let me know how these recipes work for you.

The first one was posted on @TheSpicedLife, a lovely chef from Ohio that I met on Twitter.  She posts wonderful curries and stews.  The cake, which she adapted from Epicurious, makes up easily, is moist, delicious and virtually disappears.

Enjoy!

Spiced Pumpkin Bundt Cake
Adapted from Epicurious (Gourmet)

1 1/2 sticks (3/4 cup) unsalted butter, softened
2 1/4 cups (284 g) AP flour
2 t baking powder
1 t baking soda
1 heaping t cinnamon (I used Vietnamese cinnamon for this)
1/2 t ground allspice
1/2 t ground cloves
3/4 t ground ginger
1/2 t salt
1 1/4 cups canned solid-pack pumpkin (a 15-ounce can)
3/4 cup well-shaken buttermilk (I subbed 2% milk w/ lemon juice)
1 t vanilla
1 1/4 cups granulated sugar
3 large eggs

Place oven rack in middle position and preheat the oven to 350 F. Spray a bundt pan with flour/oil mixture, like Baker's Joy. This recipe will fit a 10 inch, 12 cup bundt pan--if you use a 9 inch, 10 cup bundt pan, as I did, also prepare mini loaf pans or cupcakes for the remaining batter (I used a 2 cup batter petit four pan). Set aside prepared pans.

Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a bowl. Set aside. Whisk together pumpkin, 3/4 cup buttermilk, and vanilla in another bowl. Set aside (whisking these while you operate the mixer is a great task for small children).

Beat butter and granulated sugar in a large bowl with an electric mixer at medium-high speed until pale and fluffy, 3 to 5 minutes. Add the spices and beat an additional minute. Add the eggs one at a time, beating for one minute after each addition (beat on medium-low speed for the eggs). Reduce speed to low and add flour mix in 3 batches and the pumpkin mixture in 2 batches,alternating between them and beginning and ending with the flour mixture. Only mix until smooth--I found it easier to mix the last bit in by hand.

Spoon batter into the prepared pan, smoothing the top, then bake until a wooden pick or skewer inserted in center of cake comes out clean, 45 to 50 minutes (remember to reduce the time for a smaller bundt pan--mine took about 40-45 minutes). Cool cake in the pan on a rack for 15 minutes, then invert rack over cake and reinvert cake onto rack. Cool completely before serving with whipped cream.

The International Quilt Festival, the mecca for fabric arts enthusiasts, took place this past weekend In Houston to crowds that felt more subdued than in years past.  Recession plaguing the rest of the country may have rippled into the quilting and its associated industries.

Now celebrating its 35th year, the four-day event is held in awe (and gratitude) by the artists, manufacturers and admirers that make up an industry estimated in the billions.  That is billions, as in way too many zeros to even count.

What was different:

1) Shorter lunch lines.  We all learned from year's past.  Sack lunches ruled the roost.

2) Fewer "big" shops and many of our favorites had smaller booths.

3) More long arm quilt manufacturers.  Everywhere.  We even saw one from The Woodlands that none of us had ever heard about.

4) More "doodad" booths anchoring the aisles.  These are the products you dial 1-800 to purchase....the foot/back/leg massaging chair, iron, brush, etc.  Even more unusual:  tables and chairs set up at the end of the aisles where booths used to be.

5)  Winning "doodad" product:  the ironing board cover with the male pin-up model.  If you ironed his strategically placed towel amazing things happened.

5) Disappearance of specialty booths and items....the thimble booth for one; another that sold nothing but gorgeous indigo fabrics, almost everything having to do with hand quilting.

6) Bigger, faster, more expensive sewing machines. ( We enter the drawings and hope to win).  The huge manufacturers set up their booths with foam padding underfoot so even standing still and staring at the machines is a comfortable experience.

7) Bolts of fabric.  Fewer and fewer -- shipping and handling costs must be prohibitive.

8) Books.  It seemed the booths were smaller and increasingly impossible to even access.

9) Star power on deck.  All at once.  That's unusual:  Fons & Porter, the Gammill ladies, APQS Heidi from Iowa, Alex, Ricky, Eleanor Burns, and Ami Sims.  All in a short period of time.

10) Artistry ruled.  In the exhibits and patterns.  My Favorite was Galloping Pony Studios.  Designer Virginia Cole's collage art, incorporating minature paper-pieced blocks in vintage fabrics and embellishments, packed in shoppers.  Her beautiful work, combined with an encouraging attitude -- "Photographs are Welcome" is what the industry is all about.

One of the many award winning quilts exhibits at the 2009 International
Quilt Festival in Houston. The photo does not begin to do justice to Shiori
Yamada's intricate and subtle application of color and stitches. We stood in
front of this and studied in awe for a long time. The overall scheme of
ivory, taupe and soft dove greys was interrupted in bits by a spark of pink
or coral, almost like a gently falling snowflakes. A glorious work.