Wine Pie

Oh, dear blog, how I've missed you. I have no good excuse for why I've been away (except maybe Candy Crush Saga). As I was scrolling back through pictures in my "Cooking Blog" photo folder, I saw these and giggled and thought it would be perfect, albeit probably not very helpful or interesting or even entertaining to anyone except Jen.

In 2011 Jen and her family came and celebrated Thanksgiving with my family at my mom's house. It was a blast. This past Thanksgiving it turned out her family was going to be alone again, so they joined us for 2012 Thanksgiving as well. We were both taking a side dish and pie. Neither of us are bakers, and the husband had plans to go out with a friend the night before Thanksgiving, so Jen came over here and we threw back a few bottles of wine and made our pies together. I don't remember what hers was...something with pudding maybe? At some point (maybe because I had an extra crust?) we had the idea to make a pie with random ingredients and see how it turned out. Wine Pie was born.

We started with taking any potential pie ingredients out of my pantry, fridge, and freezer. I'm not sure if the Goldfish were out as a consideration or had been left out after my kids had a snack. And maybe Jen's pie was pumpkin of some sort, hence the opened can of pumpkin.



We systematically went through the ingredients to figured out what was realistic to use and what wasn't. By process of elimination, this is what we ended up with. Cool Whip, Nutella, Bananas, Puffins cereal, Teddy Grahams, chocolate chips, pudding mix, Cookie Butter (although I don't see it in this picture), almonds, a Toblerone bar. I think that was it. Oh, I think we dug through my kids' Halloween candy buckets, too.



Now, how to proceed. A layer of cookie butter spread on the crust. By the way, if you haven't tried Cookie Butter, I'm really torn on whether or not to advise you to try it. Crack in a Jar is what it could easily be called. My brother bought it when he was here for Boy #2's birthday, and we all ate it by the spoonful. And it's vegan! Or at least I assume it is because my brother is vegan. It's the consistency of peanut butter but tastes like cookies.



Cookie Butter was topped with another crack-like ingredient, Nutella.



Lovely Jen layering on some bananas. The bananas were a delicious addition to Wine Pie, but the husband and I had to run to the store the next morning to get some for fuel before a seven mile run. Oops. We were a couple bottles deep at this point.







Next: vanilla pudding.



Topped with Cool Whip...because what's a pie without Cool Whip on top?



And to really show off how drunk we were, the toppings. Mini chocolate chips, sliced almonds, crumbled Puffins cereal and Teddy Grahams, and to make it really festive: candy corns.



So, the verdict? This pie was AWESOME. Seriously, it was so good!! So don't let the lack of an official recipe for something hinder your kitchen creativeness. Great things can come from randomly combining ingredients you have on hand!

And the last picture...the pie after having been cut into on Thanksgiving:

Cap'n Crunch Chicken and potato salad

Alright, I'm back on track!! Posting the same day as I made something...are you shocked? Did you fall out of your chair? I almost did. Not really. This was one of the things I was going to make last week but then never did. I was going to make it Friday but realized I had no oil to fry the chicken, so the boy and I ran to the store after his nap, and I got oil. Unfortunately it was almost 6:00 when we got home, and I hadn't gotten out the chicken to defrost yet. Oops. So the husband stopped and got pizza for us on his way home. I heart my husband. :) He was way bummed we weren't having this, so I made sure it was first up this week.

This recipe was in the cookbook put together by members of a parenting message board I frequent. I first came across the recipe when I was in college, and used to make it every now and then. I think it was one of the first things I made for the husband when we started dating, but I haven't made it in FOREVER. We were really excited for dinner tonight.

I went to the Phoenix farmer's market on Saturday morning (don't you love farmer's markets?!) and got some red potatoes and some fresh dill. I'm a sucker for fresh dill. I love the smell of it, the taste of it...I just love it. I went to trusty allrecipes.com and searched on "potato" and "dill" (but not pickle...at first all the recipes had dill pickles) and salad. The below recipe sounded good, and I had everything for it. I found one on the FOod Network website but was missing a couple ingredients.

First...the chicken!

Planet Hollywood Cap'n Crunch Chicken
2 cups Cap'n Crunch cereal
1 1/2 cups Corn flakes
1 egg
1 cup milk
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon onion powder
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
chicken breast tenders
vegetable oil -- for frying

Coarsely grind or crush the Cap'n Crunch and Cornflakes. Set aside. Beat the egg with the milk. Set aside. Stir together the flour, onion and garlic powders and black pepper. Set aside. Dip the chicken pieces into the seasoned flour. Move around to coat well, then shake off excess flour. Dip into the egg wash, coating well, then dip into the Cap'n Crunch/Cornflakes mixture, coating well. Heat oil in a large heavy skillet to 325°F. Drop coated chicken tenders carefully into the hot oil and cook until golden brown and fully cooked.

*****

I put the cereals in a gallon size Ziploc bags and crush them (actually I had the boy help me...he loved it!) and then put the coated chicken tenders in there and shook them around to coat. Super easy! I also used two sets of tongs...one for moving the chicken pieces through the coating process and one for frying. This was super yummy!! We all really liked it. Now that I have the recipe somewhere (instead of a loose piece of paper floating around my kitchen), I hope to make it more often.

Now the potato salad...

Dill Potato Salad (I renamed it)
6 red potatoes, cut into chunks
3/4 cup mayonnaise
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard 1 tablespoon dried dill weed
1 teaspoon celery salt
salt and pepper to taste

1. Place potatoes in a pot with enough water to cover, and bring to a boil. Cook 15 minutes, or until tender. Drain and cool.
2. In a bowl, gently toss potatoes, mayonnaise, red wine vinegar, Dijon mustard, dill, celery salt, salt, and pepper. Cover, and refrigerate at least 30 minutes before serving.

*****

I mixed up the dressing while the potatoes were cooking. Some of the reviews said the dressing made too much, so I mixed it up in a separate bowl to add in to the potatoes. I tasted it after making it per the directions (except I used fresh dill and a lot more than 1 Tbsp...and I didn't have celery salt), and it tasted way too mayonnaise-y. I chopped up more dill, but it still tasted off. I added garlic powder, onion powder, salt and pepper but still off. I added another Tbsp or so of Dijon mustard, and it was getting a little better. I had some Pampered Chef dill seasoning, so I added that in and it FINALLY tasted right! The salad was really good...super easy (once I got the dressing right) and fast to put together. Oh, and I only used about half the dressing I made, and it was PLENTY.