comforting.

I wanted to accomplish two things with tonight’s dinner. I wanted to make something appropriate for today’s raw, snowy weather; I also wanted to make something that Mrs. Crappy, who is recovering from a root canal, could eat.

I did them both.

I made this crock pot chicken and dumplings just once before, and it was pretty good. But on my first crack at this very simple recipe, I stuck pretty closely to the instructions. This time I did a few things differently, and came up with something delicious.

What you need:

• Between 1.5 and 2 pounds of boneless, skinless chicken breasts
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 2 cans of cream of chicken soup
• 1 medium to large yellow onion, finely diced
• 2 or 3 carrots, peeled and diced
• 2 or 3 celery stalks, diced
• Chicken stock
• Black pepper, cumin, parsley, seasoned salt
• 2 10-ounce tubes of refrigerated biscuit dough

What you do:

• Toss the chicken breasts in the bottom of the crock pot. Season with the pepper, seasoned salt, cumin and parsley.
• Add the diced veggies, butter and condensed soup.
• Pour in enough chicken stock to cover everything.
• Turn crock pot on high and cook for six to seven hours.
• With 90 minutes to an hour left, add the biscuit dough in nickel-sized pieces.

Other things you should know:

• I put a really fine dice on all the veggies, so Ms. Ouchy Face wouldn’t have any trouble chewing her first solid(ish) meal in about a week. A rougher dice on the carrots and celery wouldn’t hurt.
• The original recipe calls for water to cover all the stuff at the outset. If you like stuff that, you know, tastes good, use stock or broth instead. Always.
• Be careful, however, about how much you use. I poured on all 32 ounces of chicken stock I had on hand. The result was a little soupier than I wanted, even after the biscuit dumplings soaked up a whole bunch of liquid.
• The dumplings will look weird. They’ll float at the top of the crock pot as they cook and expand. I push them down in the mix a few times, just to make sure they’re all picking up all the delicious chicken stuff underneath.
• Using the biscuit dough for the dumplings is the right way to go, at least in my mind. I love the biscuit-y flavor in each bite.

I didn’t want to push too much for Mrs. Crappy’s return to (nearly) solid food; but if I wanted to go all out with this, I would have made some mashed potatoes and then ladled this all over those.

But even without the trimmings, we did pretty well. I got my comfort food. Mrs. Crappy got her first meat and veggies in several days, in a form that wouldn’t make her face hurt any more than it did already.