We're-Out-of-Food Soup and Pillsbury Got Something Right.

So, in the week preceding the move to a different state (where there are hopefully more jobs, especially given the fact that something like 400 people were rendered jobless in this area because of tropical storm Irene), I've been lamenting my food situation. For the last time, I hope.
Having been without power for a few days, I got a chance to do a lot of stove-top cooking. There were some seriously messed up fajitas (I went crazy with the rooster sauce), some aaaawesome applesauce (best eaten warm), and this:
Carolyn and I had been talking about making a chicken soup for a long time, but couldn't agree whether to have noodles or not, and whether or not potatoes should be included. Ultimately we decided to use penne (which, as it turns out, are the perfect noodles for soup), and no potatoes. The potatoes were lamentably mushy. As experimental as this was, I feel that it turned out wonderfully.

Power Outage Chicken Soup
Serves ~8 (we managed to get three meals each out of this, but they were big bowls)

2 chicken breasts, thawed (in the brief time that you DO have power) and cut into small pieces
2 onions, diced
4 stalks celery, halved and diced
4 carrots, sliced into disks
1 box chicken broth (its SUPPOSED to smell like dragon farts, I've been told)
1 cup water
1 1/2 cups dry penne
oregano
basil
black pepper
butter

Directions:
1. Stomp around angrily wondering what the hell to eat.
2. Decide you're going to make chicken soup. With noodles. And utter kickassness (shut up, it's a word). Dice veggies and chicken!
3. Melt butter in the bottom of a sauce pan, adding chicken bits and stirring occasionally to cook about 3/4 of the way through.
4. Add onions and allow it to sweat for a few minutes before adding broth and water.
5. Add carrots and celery and herbify as desired. (I opted for 2 parts basil, 1 part oregano, and 1/3 part black pepper.)
6. As carrots soften slightly (I don't mean mushy here. I just mean not raw), add noodles.
7. Stir occasionally until noodles are fully cooked and remove from heat immediately.

As odd as this may seem (and I'm sure others have noticed this too), this soup is waaaay more awesome when it's been refrigerated for a few hours. It's sweet, and subtle, and mild. It isn't at all pretentious or overly bold (like beef stew, which I feel should ALWAYS punch you in the face like an angry Irishman), it's just right for a quiet day when the whole world seems like its about to drown. And don't worry about having extra broth, the noodles will drink it up and then you'll worry about having too little liquid.

Okay, so. Power comes back on after that, doing the infamous on and off thing, just as I become confident that it will stay on. Eventually it does actually stay on, so we opt to bake (because we made mom buy butter... because we wanted to bake).
This recipe is from an old Pillsbury cookbook that belong to my grandmother. As much as I hate Pillsbury's products CURRENTLY, I adore this cookbook, and it gets a lot of action in general baking in this house. I'm pretty sure my mom has made these cookies before, but we hadn't had them since, and I wanted cookies.
They're pretty damn glorious, by the way.
By this point, things seemed fine at home, and I had no idea what the rest of the state looked like aside from rumors from mom, and videos she showed us on her iPhone (via Facebook). So cookies felt like a big victory dance. Yeah. Victory didn't last long.

Pillsbury Drop Butter Cookies (pg. 157)
Makes 45-48 cookies

1 cup sugar or firmly packed brown sugar
3/4 cup butter, softened (Ignore them when they say margarine.)
1/4 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla (I did almost double this, and it was AWESOME)
1 egg
2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp salt

Directions: (verbatim)
Heat oven to 375°F. In large bowl, combine first 5 ingredients; blend well. Stir in remaining ingredients; blend well. Drop by rounded teaspoonfuls, 1 inch apart onto ungreased cookie sheet. Bake at 375°F for 9 to 12 minutes or until lightly browned. Immediately remove from cookie sheet.

Okay, so there are just a few problems with this. Firstly, these are delicate cookies, and there is a very fine line between perfect and overdone. My recommendation is to cook these cookies for about 10 minutes on a rack placed in the center of the oven. Also, don't worry too much about the size of the drops you put on the cookie sheet (or in my case, parchment paper), they don't spread out much. If you make them too big they won't cook nicely.
Anyway, here is what I got:Light, fluffy, golden brown bundles of buttery joy. My little sister described them as "sugar cookies, just better." I disagree, as they are distinctly buttery (though I'd say not buttery enough to be called a butter cookie. Shortbread is buttery enough to be called a butter cookie.) with lovely hints of vanilla.
This recipe has a lot of potential for modification. For instance, I adore rosemary shortbread cookies, but I'm not fond of hard cookies. I do like my cookies to be fluffy and slightly moist. As this cookie does have a lot in common with shortbread, I am inclined to say that it would welcome the addition of rosemary, lavender, or any other herb you chose to pair with it.
These cookies didn't even survive 12 hours in this house. Carolyn and I went crazy and ate 2/3 of the batch (and that's a conservative estimate), leaving the rest for mom and dad.

Rainbow Mock-Fajitas

There are few foods that comfort me the way fajitas do. It's a meaty dish full of color and flavor, that keeps your stomach feeling warm for hours (and I promise it's not acid reflux). It's comforting on rainy days and sunny days alike.
Like most people in North America, my primary exposure to "Mexican" food was through Old El Paso salsa and flavor packets. This was such a hit and miss experience for me that I wasn't sure if I loved or hated Mexican food. I still don't know, because my exposure is still severely limited (we still use those stupid flavor packets and salsa, and all I can tell you is that I HATE tacos).
Those flavor packets were, to me, the equivalent of mystery meat. You don't know what's in it, but you're not sure if you even want to know. The fearless masochist that I am, I wanted to know. To be fair, there's nothing really bad in it. They're free of MSG, as far as I can tell, and their worst ingredient is silicon dioxide (sand). However, this doesn't change the fact that I want to control what goes into my mouth and how my food is prepared. I'm a control freak like that.
The two foods I feel the need to control the most are spaghetti and fajitas. Spaghetti will be addressed some other day, as I'm currently basking in the glory of something fajita-esque. There is nothing traditionally Mexican about these fajitas, but they taste to me as I think fajitas should taste. So, probably not like fajitas. In other words, this is my interpretation of fajitas.

Rainbow Mock-Fajitas
Serves 4 or so

2 chicken breasts
1/2 green bell pepper
1/2 yellow bell pepper
1/2 red bell pepper
2 small yellow onions
1/2 cup water
2 tbsp paprika
1 tbsp ginger
1 1/2 tbsp Dijon mustard
1 tbsp Sriracha chili sauce (this is mostly to taste, mine wasn't hot)
grapeseed oil


Directions:
1. Cut chicken breasts into pieces of a desirable size (I like them fairly square and large). Cook in a large, preheated stainless steel pan with grapeseed oil. Be careful not to brown your chicken, you're just looking to cook it all the way through.
2. DICE THE VEGGIES! Or cut them however you want, I'm a dicing freak.
3. Once chicken is cooked all the way through, but still somewhat soft and moist, add all your veggies. Yes, all at once.
4. Add water (so that the Dijon and spices don't stick to the pan), and then go wild adding all spices and condiments. Timing isn't really too important in this recipe. Stir until everything is incorporated.
5. Allow to cook and reduce until you have a light sauce, or do what I do and just wait until the veggies are cooked and coated and then serve.

This recipe is, admittedly, a little heavy on the Dijon and may, in the future, be a little heavy on the ginger side. Anybody who has a homemade fajita recipe of their own, feel free to share! I'm always looking for better fajitas. This is just a little starter.
Enjoy!