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Posted by Lisa Eirene

Logan, Stevie, Maya and I drove home from Seattle Tuesday afternoon. I had mixed feelings about heading home. We were ready to go home and be in our environment and routine, but the air quality was still terrible in Portland. The predicted rain kept changing, but in the end I decided to just head home. It WAS nice to be home in our own beds…

The cats were super happy to be home, not quarantined in the bathroom anymore.

Even Bella was happy to see everyone! πŸ˜‰

I had so much to catch up on with work, even though I did some teleworking from Seattle (minimal). So Wednesday was VERY busy for me. Logan was happy to be back at preschool with his friends.

Portland was ATROCIOUS. The air was absolutely terrible. I did not leave the house for several days and honestly, I stayed in the upstairs or the dining room of the house for several days. I don’t know if I mentioned it but our house is a 1920’s bungalow and the front part of the house where the office and living room are, the windows are original. So……yeah….they smelled like smoke.

The rest of the house was better. The upstairs and the dining room was an addition and have newer windows so the smoke didn’t come in. But it was so bad in the rest of the house I could barely breathe. πŸ™ It was such a bummer.

Then on Friday it rained. Like an epic, the clouds opened up, thunder and lightning, the storm of the century rain. Everyone in Portland, I think, woke up at 3am when it happened. I laid in bed listening to the rain and felt so grateful. Friday it rained off and on all day and then on Saturday it was BLUE SKIES. Blue skies and NORMAL AIR QUALITY. I could cry.

I woke up and opened all the windows in the house for several hours. I washed everything. Floors, walls, couch covers, blankets, anything. I just wanted to get the smoke smell out. Maybe I was being paranoid but I felt like smoke was just everywhere.

Saturday afternoon I took Bella for a super long walk. We were both SO happy! It was the first walk she’d had in almost 2 weeks! As we walked I marveled at how the ground was full of orange and red leaves. In a blink of an eye summer was over and now it’s Fall.

Sunday we went for a hike in the morning and it was SO nice being outside.

Then Stevie went to the vet for his last post-op check up and got the green light. No more cone!

It was also our 6 year wedding anniversary. It was such a busy day we didn’t have much time to celebrate. We will do something soon. So we had dinner and shared a piece of German Chocolate Cake.

It’s really nice to be home and back to the “norm”–whatever that means!

Chicken a la King

Posted by Lisa Eirene

Is Chicken a la King a popular thing? I have no idea. It’s something I’ve honestly never heard of until recently and then it felt like every TV show I watched mentioned it somehow. The most recent TV show was the show “Barry”. Which, if you have seen you need to watch immediately, is hilarious and dark and really well written. But Henry Winkler is in it and he’s an aged movie star (kind of a washed up has been) and he goes to the same Hollywood-old school era restaurant with dark lighting and red curtains and every time he orders Chicken a la King.

So I googled it. I’d heard it so many times now I was like, what is this dish?! Basically it seems like it’s a chicken pot pie without the pot pie part?

I had most of the ingredients on hand. I had to buy some pasta because we don’t really have that in abundance (keto and all that). I used some boneless, skinless chicken thighs, which were nice. I am not a mushroom fan at all but I did not hate them in this dish!

I used this recipe. It was a pretty good recipe, no weird ingredients, straight forward and easy to follow. Here it is:

INGREDIENTS

3 tbsp. butter

8 oz. baby bella mushrooms, sliced

2 cloves garlic, minced

1/4 c. all-purpose flour

2 c. milk

1 c. low-sodium chicken broth

Kosher salt

Freshly ground black pepper

Pinch cayenne pepper

1 (4-oz.) jar pimentos, drained and chopped

1/2 c. frozen peas

2 c. cooked and cubed chicken

Cooked pasta, for serving

DIRECTIONS

  1. In a large skillet over medium heat, melt butter. Add mushrooms and cook until soft, 5 minutes. Add garlic and cook until fragrant, 1 minute more. Add flour and stir to coat mushrooms, then add milk and broth slowly and whisk until no lumps remain. Simmer until sauce is thickened, 5 minutes. Season with salt, pepper, and a pinch of cayenne.
  2. Add pimentos, peas, and chicken and cook until warmed through, 5 minutes.
  3. Serve over cooked pasta.

I topped the pasta dish with a little parmesan cheese. Overall it was very good. We both liked it all. Next time I would add more garlic than just the 2 cloves. Always double it. πŸ˜€

Having not had pasta much in a long time (years), this was very good. According to the recipe you can have it with rice or pasta. I bet you can easily make it keto/low carb and use cauliflower rice or spaghetti squash and it would be delicious too.

P.S. We had the leftovers the next day over cauliflower rice and it was excellent!