On the menu for today

Cruising can be overwhelming, and the last thing you might feel like doing at the end of a long day sailing (or motoring the ICW like today), is to fix a good meal. With a little planning and preparation, you can have good, hot meal on the table. Tonight we had chicken and dumplings and poached pears with cream cheese and candied walnuts. Sound hard?  Not so. The chicken was cooked in the pressure cooker in 7 minutes with vegetables included, and the dumplings are a quick mix and drop on the boiling stew and steam for 10 minutes. The "poached" pears? Canned pear halves with a dollop of cream cheese and topped with candied walnuts. Candied nuts are the easiest thing in the world to make and add a lot of panache to any side or dessert. Just melt a tablespoon of butter in a skillet, add a spoon full of brown sugar, a 1/2 tsp of cinnamon and a drizzle of honey. Stir in a cup of any nuts and stir constantly on low heat until crisp and fragrant. Cool and chop or use whole. The dumpling recipe will be forthcoming but I'm just about out of laptop batteries so it will have to wait!