Sunday Miscellany

I've had several things I've been meaning to write about and others that I need to update, confirm, deny, etc so today I thought I'd get it all out. Hang on, it could be a bumpy ride.

•  I'm trying this "jump break" thing in blogger in draft for the first time. Has anyone used it yet? It wasn't up there on Friday when we did Happy Hour. We'll have to see how it works out. Hopefully it's not totally screwing up my post.
• When I was at Blog Camp Reno I mentioned my Chicken Apple Chili recipe and several people asked me to post it. I should have mentioned that it is a Rachel Ray recipe from the very beginning, but I didn't think about it. I tried looking for it online and couldn't find it anywhere, so here it is right from the magazine:

Ingredients:
1/4 c EVOO
2 lbs chicken tenders, cut up bite size (I buy them already cooked and chopped to save energy)
4 tsp chili powder
2 tsp ground cumin
salt and pepper
2 apples, cut into cubes (I've used both green and red... I think green worked better)
1 onion, chopped
4 tbsp butter
1/4 c flour
2 c chicken broth (of course I use Sweet Sue)
3/4 c milk
2 15oz cans white beans (I usually use Bush's baby butter beans)
2 c shredded jack cheese (I usually use colby-jack)
tortillas for serving (I use crusty bread instead)
chopped scallions for serving (eh, sometimes I do, sometimes I don't)

Directions:
In a large Dutch oven, head 2 tbsp olive oil over med-high heat. Add the chicken (even if you used pre-cooked like me), chili powder and cumin. Season with salt-n-peppa and cook stirring, for 5 min.
Transfer to a medium size bowl.

In the same pot, heat 2 tbsp olive oil. Add the apples and onion and cook, stirring, til softened (~6 min). Add to same bowl as chicken.

In the same pot (don't you love that?) melt the butter over med-low. Whisk in the flour for 1 min. Whisk in the chicken broth and milk until thickened (~3min). Stir the chicken-apple mixture back into the big pot, stir in beans, bring to a simmer to heat it all back up. Stir in the cheese. Serve and enjoy and send me some too cuz it is t-a-s-t-y!

• A few people have asked me about my name, Bambi, and how I got it. I wrote about it in an earlier post, but that wasn't all there was to it, so I thought I'd just tell it in a nutshell. First of all, my Mom, although she is an Outrageous Older Woman, did NOT name me Bambi. Not even because of my big brown eyes. When I was an undergrad at UNR my best friend was named Sue. We both worked in the basement of the chemistry building in the Physical Chem Dept. Let me just say here that you have to be nuts to be a physical chemist. I'm just sayin. The basement was usually pretty quiet. It was just the profs office, a few labs, and a big computer room (an SGI 10,000 mini-super computer... if you care). Our lab worked on super-critical fluids and in order to run the experiments we had to use a laser, therefore the room had to be dark. Pitch black except for the lovely green glow of the laser. Add that to the quiet hum of the computers and the warm conditions and soft music (ok usually it was hard rock cuz that's what the grad student liked), it made for ideal nap times. But I digress, that actually has nothing to do with it. Anyway, for a long time we were Sue-1 and Sue-2, but our prof (remember, a little nuts) said we needed nick names cuz that'd be easier. I immediately said I'd be Natasha (you have to say it with a Russian accent). Well, as well as I fit the name, Sue-1 wasn't really a Boris. So either the prof or student suggested Bambi. Sue-1 was happy with Thumper, and the rest is history. Or would be. Bambi and Thumper worked in the P Chem lab, but didn't really work well in the rest of our classes. Unfortunately the alias slipped under a rocked for a while. Fast-forward 10 years, both Sues are pharmacists (although working at opposite ends of the country). I started working at a Medicine Shoppe where everyone has nicknames (Hanky Doodle, Goose, Norm) and they all said I needed a nickname as well. I told them that once upon a time I was known as Bambi. Everyone agreed that was a good name for me, and here I am. If you ask why it's good, my answer is because of my big brown eyes.
  

 

Which one do you think fits better??