A Recipe From Mom

UPDATE: Southerners use Hellmann's mayo, but cut back on the lemon juice in this recipe by at least half, since Hellmann's is a vinegary mayo and Cain's is a sweet mayo.

I've been WORKING WORKING WORKING. Last week was a 53 hour week for me. This week should be much more easy going and I'm more or less trapped inside because of the rain. So while Aj cooks his Shrimp With "The Best Shrimp Marinade Ever" I get a second to sit down and blog. The best part is that at the end I am rewarded with grilled shrimp. Sweet.

What I am really here for, though, is to give you a recipe that was my favorite childhood recipe: Chicken Devan. This was the recipe that I asked for when I got to choose dinner. For my birthday, or just a regular weeknight, almost any time I was asked this is what I wanted. And when I moved away to college I kept trying to make it. It just wasn't as good. I went back home and found the old cookbook my mom got the recipe from - it was one of those community cookbooks - a tatty old spiral thing. And I kept making it...but it was never as good as hers. When I moved to New England it started getting worse- almost inedible. I just could NOT figure it out. Finally I had to call my mom and confer with her. Why was it turning out so terrible?! The secret is the mayonnaise.

In the south there is a mayo that my mom uses that you can't get up here (or it is harder to find but I forget the name). Turns out, not all mayonnaise is equal. Miracle Whip is practically a sin against nature. And name brands don't compare. It took me AGES to find the comparable Northern mayo. Turns out it's Cain's mayonnaise. Mayo needs the perfect blind of tang and sweet, and of course it needs to be made with real eggs and oils. So after YEARS (literally) of trying to get this recipe JUST RIGHT....I finally did it. Now it's back on my favorites list and a recipe I would be happy to pass on to family and friends. It's creamy, delicious, easy to make, and just the smell of it makes me happy.

There's one more perk to this recipe: The leftovers are just about better than the dish out of the oven!

It is VITAL that NO ingredients are left out of this or it won't be anywhere near as good.



Chicken Devan

• 3 Chicken breasts - boiled and cubed in small bite-size pieces
• 1 Bag frozen broccoli - cooked/drained
• 1 Can cream of chicken soup (don't skimp, go Campbell's)
• 1 Tsp. lemon juice
• 1/2 Tsp. salt
• 1/4 C. Cain's mayonnaise
• Dash cumin
  
• 1/4 C. Italian Breadcrumbs
• 2 Tbsp. butter, melted
  
• 1/4 C. Shredded cheese (Cheddar or another melty/savory cheese)
  

1. Preheat oven to 350°F
2. Layer chicken and broccoli in a 9x9 baking dish
3. Cover with sauce, spreading it around as needed
4. Sprinkle with 1/2 the cheese
5. Mix butter and breadcrumbs together in a small bowl.
6. Sprinkle all breadcrumbs on top and then sprinkle with the remainder of cheese.
7. Bake for 25 minutes.
   

What Does My Garden Grow?

The weather has been beautiful and I've been in high spirits. Sunshine will do that to you. It's like some kind of happiness drug. The downside is that when it's gone you have withdrawal that can't be ignored. Sometimes even coffee doesn't help (That's when you know it's bad).


I've been gardening this year and it's so much fun to watch my plants grow. Some of them I've grown from seedlings...those are my favorites. Yes, I do play favorites. From seeds I grew bellpeppers, green onions, and green beans. I also grew basil but once I put it outside it keeled over and died from too much exposure to happiness. It was a miserable plant anyway. (RIP) I'm also growing some cilantro ...it seems to be doing pretty well, but it's not from good seeds so I'm not crossing my fingers. From the store I bought lettuce (which is growing quite well!), rosemary (I plan to keep this alive perpetually), mint and strawberries. I also plan to buy a tomato plant. Somewhere deep inside myself (not that deep, actually), I know that I'm a ridiculous whitey who is growing vegetables in their front yard with overpriced soil and that I could have bought all of this crap at the grocery store and it would have been A Whole Lot Less Trouble. (As it were) . HOWEVER...that feeling is combated by the hope that these won't just provide me with food, but with happiness and purpose and an excuse to be outside on sunny days.

I've also been planting some bulbs and annuals. I don't think the bulbs are going to do as well as I hoped because our house gets very little sunlight (except for outside my bedroom window which appears to get an abundance). My neighbor noticed I had been outside gardening (digging around more like) and brought over some of her "chocolate raspberry irises" --- well aside from being disappointed that I can't eat it and it won't bloom for 2 years... I took her advice and made a flower bed in a sunny spot. I thought it was nice of her to take the time to dig up some of her flower bulbs for me. She's probably trying to make up for that time she gave me the cold shoulder one night when I tried to borrow an egg and she told me to go away. Apparently she thought I was casing her house for robbery and didn't recognize me...She ended up giving me an egg when she realized who I was.


In other exciting news...It's Spring! That means that a lot of great foods are popping up in the wild. Since Aj and I have been trying to learn a little more about the part of the world we live in, and have been trying some camping and foraging and "rugged" skills, we know a little about what is "in season". At a job he was on, Aj found us some morels the other day. They look gross...like brains...and not at all like something you'd pick up and say "Oh man those are totally going to be delicious." Miraculously Aj recognized them from our mycology learning and brought some home in his lunch tupperware. He just wanted to show me for shits and giggles, but when I saw that the SCIENTIFIC NAME of these things was morchella deliciosa I told Aj we were absolutely frying that shit up in some butter and eating it. He was extremely skeptical but let's get our facts straight.

1) There is only one other look-alike morel called a false-morel...it is extremely easy to identify because the stem is not hollow and a true morel's is. Also it isn't poisonous...it will just make your stomach hurt so if you're totally blind and mess up it won't kill you.
2) These mofos are like $30-40 a pound
3) They only grow wild
4) Mushroom hunters search lifetimes for these and don't find them
5) They are ranked in deliciousness only beneath truffles
6) They are only in season 2 weeks out of the year.

It's a damn no-brainer. And I did fry them up. And we did eat them. And they were damn good and caused no gastrointestinal stress whatsoever. Points for us!


Also in season right now are fiddleheads...which are fun. I've never had them before, so we're going to go "fiddleheaddin" (I just made that up, but I'm going to pass it off as something New Englanders do) on Sunday. I'll let you know how that goes. Maybe I'll see if I can't find some fiddlehead recipe in my yankee cookbook.

Well...honestly I was going to give you a recipe that was passed down by my Mom, but I think that will have to wait. I've already blathered enough. So I'll meet you back here and we'll get down with some delicious southern chow.