Mom's Homemade Chicken and Dumplins'

Todd's favorite meal, hands down, is chicken and dumplings. Not just any chicken and dumplings, his mom's chicken and dumplings. Every Christmas, birthday, random Tuesday, you ask Todd what he wants for dinner and this is the answer every.single.time. Growing up this was a specialty in the Coyer house and Barb would spend hours making this for her family. The kicker is Barb didn't just make her chicken and dumplings from scratch, she actually made her own homemade noodles to go with it. Yes, homemade noodles, it bears repeating. Somewhere between 3 kids, a husband, a nursing career, endless boy scout/soccer/wrestling/football/baseball events, she found time to make homemade noodles, the woman is a saint.

Since my last attempt at making chicken and dumplings ended with a perplexed Todd asking where the noodles went ::remembers his sad, confused face:: , I decided to humbly ask Barb is she wouldn't mind sharing her recipe with me and to my delight, she was happy to. :) You know a recipe is good when it is just explained to you without anything written down. Though I know that even following this recipe to a T it could never be exactly like Barb's (moms always add a little something) but by golly I'm going to try to come close.

The Cooking Components

The ingredients

The excited yet nervous cook :)


The tester and his loyal sidekick, Thunder Cat

The Experiment


Boiling the chicken, onions and carrots. I have never boiled a whole chicken before, I was shocked how easy it was.


Chicken done and shredded


My homemade noodles. I'm pretty darn proud of myself. Next time, I'm making them thinner and shorter.

Noodles in!

Chicken and Dumplings in!

Finito!

Time to eat!

The Reviews

Shan: This recipe was awesome. I think this will just get easier and better each time I make this. My noodles were a little thick and a bit too long but I can fix that next time. Thank you so much Barb, we will be making this over and over and over again and passing this along.

Todd: He was very happy. He gave me some tips between mouth fulls for next time to make it a bit more like mom's but he loved this. He ate his whole bowl, half of mine and was last seen hovering over the stove shoveling in the leftovers. I would say he liked it. :)

Thunder Cat: She prefers food of the canned variety and chose not to sample. Her loss. :)

Happy Anniversary Mom and Dad!

Today my fabulous parents celebrate 35 years of marital bliss!

Todd and I are both so lucky to be products of long and happy marriages ::Todd's have been married over 40!:: and we could not have been more fortunate to have both sets as role models.

Hope you both have a wonderful day and we wish you many more happy years! We love you!

cute folks. :)

Goodbyes...

One of the hardest things about the military is that we seem to always be saying goodbye to good friends. There is just a constant flow of awesome people coming in and out of our lives as we all move around the country to where the Marine Corps needs us. The positive thing about this is that the Marine Corps really isn't that big so the possibility of bumping into these amazing people somewhere down the line is always great and welcome. Regardless saying goodbye is rough.

Tonight we had our final farewell to our dear friends, JP and Jennifer, as they packed up their car to head to a new life and duty station in North Carolina. Since these boys have been stationed and deployed together for nearly 8 years, it really is a sad day. Though this is by far not goodbye forever, their departure will not only be a change in their life but also in ours and it will be an adjustment not having them here. We wish you both the best of luck and can't wait to bump into you next time. :)

Rob, JP and Todd doing what they do best.

Jennifer and me.

The ladies and little Miss Mary

Todd and JP

Sunset from the O Club deck. Newport will miss you guys!

Happy 4th of July!!

For as long as I've known Todd, he has talked about the Coy-ay family 4th of July. Started when Todd was just a wee one they have had a tradition of going to a Rainier's baseball game followed by a fireworks show and then on the actual 4th they have a big bbq celebration. Since baseball and bbqing have always ranked high on my list of fun things to do coupled with the fact that I love family traditions, I was hoping one of these years we would be able to go. Lucky me this year the 4th fell on a long weekend and I got my wish. I love Washington and hanging out with the Coyers...we always have the best times.

Hanging out in Todd's hometown, Port Orchard.

Walking around downtown. We had the best weather, 85 and sunny. The best part was no humidity. Isn't Washington beautiful?

Sweet hubs in front of the Port Orchard VFW.

So I had to include these pictures. Though Todd left for the Marine Corps nearly 12 years ago, you would never have guessed it by the looking at his old bedroom. You would have thought he left yesterday. It looks exactly the same! The walls still have all his prom pictures, football pictures, banners and posters that all the cheerleaders had made for him, its awesome. I loved seeing this part of his life.

Yep folks, I married one of the South Kitsap High School star football players. The nerdy high school girl in me is so proud ::blushes::

Todd's Eagle Scout medal ~ I'm still crazy impressed that he did that.

Who are all these ladies? :) Apparently Todd was quite popular on the prom circuit.

Off to the Rainier's Game with the fabulous Sandra

Todd, Sandra, Brian and Barb excitedly wait for the game to start. Go Rainiers!

hello! My sis-n-law Sandra pointed out that we have developed quite a hat collection in the recent years. Invite us to a sporting event and we will probably show up in a corresponding hat. Hey we try.

Dave, Kara and Sandra on the 4th of July at Brian and Sandra's beautiful home.

What is it with boys and firecrackers? Here Brian and his friend Mark are showing us that grown professional men still enjoy risking limbs in the name of 4th of July celebration.

Dave, Kara, Barb and Don watching the fireworks. This was crazy. Brian bought a ton of legitimate mortar fireworks which totally blew my idea of home fireworks (sparklers) out of the water. It was amazing.

It was so hard to go home the next day. Thank you everyone for such a wonderful time!

Greetings from New Hampshire!

Todd and I have never once sat down on our couch on a lazy Sunday afternoon, cracked open a beer and watched Nascar. Not even once, maybe for football but never for Nascar. Just wasn't our sport. Well a couple weeks ago a few friends of ours asked if we wanted to go to a race and for the life of us we could not come up with a reason why not. First of all, Nascar is an American culture which we were all about experiencing and second, when has tailgating with friends at a sporting event ever been a bad time? Yep, never. So this Sunday at 6am, all 7 of us piled in our friends Tahoe and were Nascar bound. We arrived in Loudon, NH around 10am, tailgated til 2pm and then cruised into the race. Unfortunately the rain came and called the race with about 50 laps left but we are now hooked. Nascar rocks, we had an awesome time.

Me and Tif in the car on the ride up. Todd and I purchased quite a few Nascar goodies at Walmart the day before. Here I am in my pretty pink and camo Dale Jr. hat. Go #88!

Cute hubs hanging out in the parking lot. This was his most appropriate Nascar shirt, I believe he wore it in high school and yes his hat says 'Keystone Light'. :)

Since Todd was sporting their logo we thought we might as well drink it as well. This a throw back to my college years, ah good times.

The boys hanging out.

Walking towards the race, miles and miles of RVs and tailgaters

We did not intend to take this in front of port-o-johns, oops.

Ignore my silly face. I decided to support Biffle too. So I changed into his shirt.

Walking by all the vendors

Ladies and Gentlemen, start your engines.

aww.

Go #88 and #16!

Our camera unfortunately decided to walk towards the light after 2 years of mediocre service so all these pictures were taken with my cell phone. I will put up better ones when I get them from our friends. We can't wait to go again, we had so much fun!

Sometimes when you run across a cool picture...

you just have to post it. :)

Looking good.

We are spoiled ladies...

The wives and significant others of this command are very lucky ladies. A few months ago all the Drill Instructors got together and decided that we deserved a night out on the town. They booked the top floor of a dinner cruise, took care of all the arrangements and told us to get out our favorite cocktails dresses. Seriously how sweet is that?

We had such an awesome time, we had a private room with dinner, an open bar and a DJ. Is there anything else that you need? The weather was a bit foggy but we were too busy dancing to care. We have such an awesome group here.

The boys waiting in downtown Newport to board the boat. They looked so handsome in their suits!

Hanging out on the back of the boat

The ladies

The OCS DIs.

The whole group. Master Guns, his wife Sonja and their son are in front. They are headed back to the fleet in a couple weeks, we are so sad to see them leave.

Jennifer, Maribel, Tif and me...love these ladies!


JP, Marty and Todd

PJ and Tif

We like to take a lot pictures. :)

Of course more pictures of the Coy-ays.

Thank you again guys, we had so much fun. I think we could really get used to this! :)