Happily, my chicken and dumplings came out great. I started with a cut-up chicken and make a great broth while stewing that with a little onion and carrot. I added the deboned chicken back to the broth and then mixed up the dumplings.

I dropped the batter into the simmering broth by generous tablespoonsful and ended up with maybe a dozen nice, puffy dumplings. Theoretically, the recipe serves four, but when my husband and 14-year-old son are among those being served, it only served three. (The younger kids declined to sample it–their loss.) I seriously need to consider doubling it next time.

And I do need a next time, since I feel compelled to test a couple more recipes before I post mine. Here I was, patting myself on the back for my tasty chicken and dumplings, when I noticed that my dumpling recipe is different from most others I looked at.

There’s no butter or shortening at all in mine. Hmmmmm.

Most other dumpling recipes I’ve come across use at least a small amount. Wonder why mine doesn’t? It’s just flour, baking powder, milk, salt and egg. Would it be even better with the addition of shortening?

I’ll have to find out.

It’s suddenly colder now than it’s been for most of the winter, and I find myself wanting chicken and dumplings. Not that it’s a problem–I have a great dumpling recipe. When I was growing up, my mom made chicken and dumplings all the time. And I used to make it a lot before we had kids. But our kids never seemed to take to food that’s all jumbled together–they don’t really care for casseroles or stews or one-pot meals.

I can’t blame them, really. I didn’t either when I was a kid. I used to peel the crust off a piece of bread and use it to corrall the various things on my plate. You know, to keep the green bean juice from seeping into the mashed potatoes.

My husband, however, likes his food mixed up. I eat a pot pie in the little pan it comes in; he dumps his out, upside down onto a plate. One of his favorite meals is meatloaf, corn and mashed potatoes with gravy, and he’ll put the corn on top of the potatoes, then put the gravy over everything. I honestly had not seen anyone do that till I had dinner at his folks’ house when we were dating–his dad does the same thing.

Since our kids took after me in this regard, and never took to chicken and dumplings, I haven’t made it in years.   

So when I mentioned to our oldest that I had a taste for chicken and dumplings, he asked what kind of dumplings I meant. I explained that I didn’t mean the little stuffed dumplings you get at a Chinese buffet.  The dumplings in chicken and dumplings, I said, are like soft, doughy balls that you cook with chicken in broth.

Oh, he said. Like matzoh balls.

I was suprised at the comparison, since I’ve never made chicken soup with matzoh balls, but he was exactly right. Yeah, I told him. Dumplings are a lot like matzoh balls. I thought so, he said, explaining that he’d had matzohs at a friend’s grandparents’ house.

How cool is that? Makes me want to make chicken and dumplings even more. I bought a whole cut-up chicken this morning at the grocery with visions of dumplings dancing in my head.

I think I’ll make chicken and dumplings Monday evening–it’ll give our two younger kids another chance to see what they’ve been missing, and our oldest can compare my chicken and dumplings with matzoh ball soup. I’m looking forward to hearing what he thinks.

And we’ll all end up with a pot of comfort food at its finest.

I was reading about chocolate tasting kits in the New York Times last week and decided I’d like to taste a few of these premium chocolates the author was writing about. I figured I’d buy one of the chocolate tasting kits mentioned and broaden my palate beyond Hershey’s Special Dark.

Unfortunately, our Trader Joe’s didn’t carry the kits mentioned in the article. Neither did Sur la Table, although the nice lady at the store said it sounded like something they would stock. So I just bought a bunch of chocolate bars and started tasting. A good gig, even though, if given a choice of treats, I’d probably choose a bag of potato chips over a chocolate bar (better still, potato chips and a chocolate bar). 

Mostly, the bars I bought tasted like chocolate (some tasted like really, really good chocolate), but one varietal bar from Chocovic, from its Unique Origin line, stood out. It really had the notes listed on the wrapper: wood, tobacco, dried fruit. Very cool. But my favorite was a semi-sweet bar by Valrhona–56 percent cocoa.

But what it inspired me to do was get out the espresso maker. We hadn’t used it in ages–I’m not sure why–but we cleaned it off and made espresso for a recipe I was trying. Since it’s Olympic time, and since a reader nicely tipped me off to Turin’s famous coffee drink, “bicerin,” we gave it a try. It’s a layered drink of equal parts espresso, melted chocolate and steamed milk. I don’t know how authentic my recipe is, but it tastes absolutely wonderful. (I’ll post it on the Recipes page.)

 So here it is. The blog. The place you can “find out what’s for dinner at foodiemom.com.”

It was the question, “Hey, mom, what’s for dinner?” that started it all. It seems like somebody starts asking that at about 3:15, and I don’t even open the fridge to start trying to answer it until, oh, about 5:30. We tend to eat late around here, so no one really expects to see signs of dinner until 7 at the earliest. 

But I’m trying to plan a bit more these days, to avoid problems like the one I have now: baked squash sounds good (and now that I think of it, so do baked potatoes), but we’re out of butter.

Not much of a problem, really, but lately it seems like I’m always at the grocery store. To be expected for a food writer, I suppose, but maybe a little planning could cut out at least a few trips.

I’ll let you know how it goes, though honestly I don’t expect much to change. I’m not much for planning meals, like those people who do all their cooking on Sunday and then just pop a lasagna in the oven on Tuesday.

If I want lasanga on Tuesday, then I have to go to the store on Tuesday, make the sauce, put it together…you can see why we eat late around here.

But I do have a great lasagna recipe; I’ll try to get it posted soon on the recipes page.