Best Chicken Salad Ever

I recently decided to try my hand at chicken salad.  I had been buying the cranberry chicken salad at Celebrity Bakery and figured that it might be cheaper if I made my own.  I combed the internet for recipes and finally had looked at a enough recipes that I adapted various ones into my own rendition.  Honestly, I think it is the best chicken salad ever and you can feel free to disagree.

Ingredients:
2 chicken breasts
1/2 cup dried cranberries
1/2 cup pecans
1 golden delicious apple
3/4 cup mayonnaise
A dash of sugar
Olive oil for cooking

I like to start by doing all of my cutting.  I begin by finely chopping the pecans and putting them into a large bowl for mixing.  I then take the cranberries and give them a rough chop (so that I am taking the original cranberries and cutting them approximately in half).  Then I cut the golden delicious apple into tiny matchstick shapes.  I recently found a tool at Williams Sonoma that did it for me a lot easier (although I can't remember what it is called but it works like a cheese slicer or a zester).  Next I cook the chicken in a pan on the stove until done on the inside.  After the chicken has had a moment to cool, I cut it into tiny pieces (and I mean I spend a lot of time to cut it into tiny pieces).  I think roll those tiny pieces between my hands as I drop them into the mixing bowl.  Next I add the mayonnaise and the dash of sugar (you can use more mayo to get the right consistency).

I think this recipe made a nice, sweet, tasty meal and is best served with crackers.

Fun with Baking

Over the last couple of months, I have tried my hand at baking various things.  I will admit that absolutely no recipe is my own and I have borrowed quite heavily from those websites that I am listing here.  When I have added, improvised , etc. I have listed the source.

The very first thing that I toyed with over this past summer were cakeballs.  I learned a lot by going to this website:  http://www.bakerella.com/red-velvet-cake-balls/

Above is a picture of a cakeball that I made recently for Thanksgiving.  Some recommendations that I have in addition to the ones that you will find on the bakerella website: 1. If you are going to use white chocolate, make sure it is good white chocolate.  I like to use the Ghiradelli white chocolate chips and it makes things rich and creamy.  I have tried using the colored baking chips that you can get at places like Joanns, but they just do not taste as well.  2.  If you are going to make chocolate, make sure that you use a blend of semisweet and milk chocolate chips.  This will give you a nice, rich chocolately color.  3. Make sure that you put vegetable oil in the chocolate.  If you skip this step, the chocolate can be very hard to roll the cakeballs in.

Above is a picture of some Christmas cookies I made recently.  I follow Alton Brown's sugar cookie recipe and a Better Homes and Gardens icing recipe.  They are pasted here:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/sugar-cookies-recipe/index.html  If you follow these directions, the dough is a little dry so I add in one extra tablespoon of milk.  For the icing recipe, I use this website: http://www.christmas-cookies.com/recipes/recipe288.powdered-sugar-icing-i.html    For this recipe, I put just a little more water and a little more vanilla extract (I actually use the french vanilla flavor). I do that just so I can spread it easier.

Paper Turkeys

I made this turkey using the Accent Essentials cartridge for the Cricut machine.  This was my very first craft using the cricut machine and I have to say that I am very pleased with the results.  Below is a step-by-step account of how I cut the shapes to later assemble.

For the body of the turkey:  Cut a 3 in. shape using Accent 31s.  Cut 2 of these for each turkey (one is for the front of the turkey and one is to be glued onto the back of the turkey after the feathers have been added).

For the feathers of the turkey: Cut a 4 in. shape using Accent 26s.  Each one of these shapes will yield you four feathers.  I used a cutting board to cut the shape into 1/4ths.  I made enough feathers to have one of each of five colors of feathers for each turkey.

For the eyes:  Cut a 1/2 in. shape using the Accent 1s.  You will want 2 of each of these for each turkey.  For the pupils of the turkey, I drew on black circles with a pen.


For the nose:  Cut a 3/4 in. shape using Accent 29s.  Cut this shape in half on a diagonal.  This will yield two triangles which then become noses for 2 turkeys.


For the tongue:  cut a 2 in. shape using Accent 25s.  Cut each tendril off the shape.  This will yield 6 tongues.


For the message in the mouth: Cut a 1 1/2 in. by 1 in. rectangle using a cutting board.  The Happy Thanksgiving message is written in by hand.

After all of the shapes were cut.  I then went about gluing the shape together using glue dots.  First, I glued the two outside sets of feathers together and then joined the two sets together by gluing on the middle feather.  I then glued the set of feathers to the back of the first body piece.  After that, I glued down the back side of the body.  Then it was just a matter of gluing the face together.  One key is to make sure that the tongue is secured under the Happy Thanksgiving message.