Chicken and Dumplings: The Good Kind

There are two basic schools of Chicken and Dumplings: Those where the dumpling dough is rolled out and cut into strips, and those where the dough is softer and dropped into the stew in blobs. The first type is what you would find at Cracker Barrel: Bits of chicken in a bland gravy with broad, slippery noodle-things. I find this type of Chicken and Dumplings to be edible, but unappetizing. By contrast, the recipe below is a slightly creamy chicken stew, rich with vegetables and herbs and topped with fluffy clouds of steamed dough. This is the definition of comfort food. This is Chicken and Dumplings as it should be.

Lemon Blueberry Muffins

I've been making blueberry muffins for a long time, using various recipes over the years. I never had a particular favorite, though. I hadn't made any for a long time, but recently I needed an easy breakfast-y treat for a Meal Train and the idea of blueberry muffins struck. Looking for a new recipe, I checked Smitten Kitchen as I almost always do, and of course she had one that looked just the thing. It included lemon, which is my favorite flavoring for blueberry muffins, and called for yogurt or sour cream in place of the usual milk or buttermilk. Her recipe is an adaptation of other recipes, and so on, and so on .... Here's my take on it; I've even included a variation for Orange Cranberry Muffins.