Fried Chicken, Mashed Potatoes, and Biscuits (Recipes 13 and 14)

Yikes. I have slacked off on writing. My excuse (which I think is a good one) is that our home still does not have internet (hopefully today though!). However, excuses or no excuses, it's about time I write. I've made a few new recipes since I last wrote. There is a sad lack of pictures though because I got too engrossed in cooking and completely forgot to document the process. Whoops. Also, making fried chicken is a hard process to document... let me just explain.

Thursday we decided to invite some friends over for a little house warming meal. I've never had a house warming party and really don't know what it's for except to tell people, "Hey! This is where we live now. Come visit... please!"

I was trying to decide what to make for dinner that night and realized how much I rely on the internet to find new recipes. Usually I'll go on to the food section of Pinterest and scroll through the pages until a recipe pops out at me. However, the lack of internet left me sitting on the couch surrounded by stacks of recipe books. I flipped through page after page looking for something...anything to cook.

And then it came to me. Of course! A house warming dinner should be some sort of comfort food. And what better comfort food is there than good ol' fried chicken and the works!

I found a delicious recipe for homemade biscuits that called for five ingredients! I'm always a little leery of recipes that call for few ingredients. But after reading outstanding comments about the recipe I decided to give it a go. And I'm glad I did.

The Recipe:

• 2 cups Flour
• 1 tablespoon Baking Powder 
• 1/2 teaspoon Salt 
• 1 tablespoon Sugar
• 1 1/2 cups Heavy Cream (I just used Half&Half)

Simply mix all the ingredients together...

Then roll the dough out to about 1/2 an inch height. And cut with a round object (I just used a glass). 

 Place on a baking sheet and bake at 425ºF for 12-15 minutes. 

After the biscuits came the chicken. Ohh fried chicken. It is easy to whip together, but a pain (literally) to cook. 

The Recipe: 

• 2 cups Flour
• 1 tablespoon Dried Thyme 
• 1 tablespoon Paprika 
• 2 teaspoons Salt 
• 1 teaspoon Pepper 
• 1/3 cup Whole Milk 
• 1 Egg 
• 2 tablespoons Lemon Juice

Mix all the dry ingredients in one bowl and all the wet ingredients in another. Then, dunk the chicken in the wet ingredients, then the dry, then the wet again, then the dry one more time and then stick in a pot of boiling oil for about 8 minutes on each side. (I had my chicken marinating in buttermilk the night before to keep it moist). 

There were a lot of hot pots on the stove!

(Yes, Damarise documented the process of the chicken frying...it got a bit hectic and I forgot about taking pictures). 

Vwala. The chicken frying. And a word of warning... boiling oil is HOT! And the chicken will spit boiling oil at you. Beware! I didn't realize how far it would spit and got a nice sized droplet of oil on my left foot. It has left a scar in the shape of Antarctica on my foot for forever more. (But it makes for a cool story!). 

The chicken fried nicely, the potatoes were mashed, the gravy was tasty, the biscuits were warm, and dinner was served! 

The lovely eaters for this meal were: Faith, Damarise, Micah, Jimmy, Matt, Sonya, Megan, and Janessa. We had a full table with lots of laughs and a great game of FffBasketball and sprinting afterwards. There were also leftovers for days which is always nice. I'd definitely make this meal again. Although, I'll cook the chicken a bit longer. Some people ended up with their chicken a little raw. Whoops. But, it was a fun and simple meal to prepare and a perfect house warming meal.