Photo of the Day: A Southern Staple-Chicken 'n' Dumplins

A chill in the air sent Mother Smith to the kitchen to stir up a childhood memory: chicken and dumplings ... with a twist.

This time, with all the "I can't eat this and that" swirling about, I went to whole wheat dumplings and even thickened the broth with whole wheat flour. No difference--at all--in taste, but the texture was a little courser. And I can eat it without so much guilt (chicken 'n' dumplins is not guilt free; can't get there from here).

Here's the closest I get to a recipe:

Boil about a pound of chicken (you pick the body parts), trimmed of fat and skin. Sprinkle in about half a teaspoon of cinnamon, a teaspoon of curry powder, half a teaspoon of oregano, and finish off with some sea salt and pepper. Take the chicken out of the water after about 10 minutes of boiling and grate into the broth a carrot. Chop in a medium onion and about two stalks of celery. Let the chicken cool and then dice it back into the broth.

Meanwhile, you've made your own biscuit recipe dough, substituting whole wheat flour for the bleached variety and you've rolled it out and sliced it long and thin. (If you don't want to go through all that, get some canned biscuits and roll them out. Cover them with flour and they roll easier.) Drop them into the slowly boiling broth and they'll plump up in about five minutes.

My experience with C 'n' D is that it never has enough salt and I don't even like salt, so go a bit overboard if you dare.