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We're deep in winter and you're probably thinking "Man, she loves comfort food and her Crock-Pot." Yep. It's all that gets me through the week sometimes. I can't remember where I found this recipe, but I make it so much I want to preserve it on my blog so I can find it easily. I don't make the dumplings anymore because they seem to take forever to bake. Instead, I bake frozen or from-scratch biscuits and serve this stew atop them.   SLOW COOKER CHICKEN & DUMPLINGS 6 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves (about 1 1/2 pounds), cut into 1-inch pieces   2 medium Yukon gold potatoes, cut into 1-inch pieces (about 2 cups) I get mine from Davis Bros. Farm. 2 cups whole baby carrots 2 stalks celery, sliced (about 1 cup) 2 10 3/4 ounce can  Campbell's® Condensed Cream of Chicken Soup (Regular or 98% Fat Free)   1 cup water   1 teaspoon dried thyme leaves, crushed   1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper 2 cups all-purpose baki...

When Hurricane Sandy roared far inland Oct. 30-31 and stalled over West Virginia, mine was one of the 275,000 households robbed of electricity. Fortunately, we were only without power for 36 hours. There are still people in my community who have yet to get power restored. I was pretty well prepared for the storm as far as food. Here is one way we were resourceful: We baked frozen biscuit dough in a dutch oven on our stove top. I noticed that the package of frozen biscuits I had in the freezer were thawing. We have a gas stove with electric ignition. That means we could light the burners with a match or lighter. But we couldn't light the oven. Well, we COULD but once it reached temperature, it would shut off. So baking was out of the question. We put our cast-iron dutch oven on the stovetop, turned a pie pan upside down to hold the biscuits and turned on the flame. You don't want the biscuits or whatever you're baking to be in direct contact with the bottom of the dutc...

Six inches of heavy, wet snow is forecast for my corner of West Virginia starting tomorrow morning. Maybe you're heading to the grocery store to stock up and you're wondering what warming comfort food you could make for dinner. When it snowed and stuck around last week, I made this divine and easy Crock-Pot meal: Creamed Chicken Over Biscuits. My business partner at Mountain Mamas Retreats , Shelley Miller, shared the recipe (aka Italian Crock-Pot Chicken) after a scrapbooking crop we held at our retreat house. There, we served it with an equally easy Brussels sprouts dish brought by a guest. The flavors of the main course and the side set each other off perfectly. We had more creamed chicken than we had biscuits so we served it over rice the second time. For dessert at the same meal I served vanilla ice cream with hot fudge cake (also made in a Crock-Pot). That recipe is from Taste of Home. You wouldn't think Italian salad dressing mix would be a key ingredient in this bu...

I abhor Hardee's fast-food restaurants. The grease in their food -- even the salads -- is not the only thing that makes me queasy. They concoct the most unhealthful sandwiches -- huge slabs of meat with more meat as toppings. Disgusting. However, every now and then, I crave their cinnamon-raisin biscuits. That happened early one morning back when I was helping on my mom's paper route. I went through the drive-thru. Some employees smoking outside told me that they don't open till 6. It was 5:55 -- you have got to be kidding me. I laid rubber to get home and look up a comparable recipe to do it myself. Who needs Hardee's? I found this online and this morning I finally made it after saving it all that time. The craving had apparently passed. I have been trying to make myself an easy little comfort food homemade treat on Friday mornings just because. This was today's. I think if I make it again I would cut back on the sugar a little. And instead of making drop biscuits,...