One word: CHOWDER

Clear Springs Cafe has an amazing Jalepeno Crawfish Chowder. I am in LOVE with it. I want to make it home but can't find a recipe for it. (anyone that works there feel free to share it with me!!!) It's spicy, it's a little sweet, it has chunks of crawfish in it... I'm thinking some corn too. It's SOOOOO good. I get it every time we go. Of course, everything I have had at Clear Springs has been good.

I found a recipe on The Pioneer Woman's blog for Corn Chowder with Chilies. I had hopes that it would remind me of my chowder from Clear Springs... just minus the crawfish. It didn't. But it was good! Spicy, corny, creamy... a little "bacony"... and hot...perfect for today!

Bacon, onion, and butter! It has to be good!

It called for two of these but I chickened out and went kid friendly with only one. With these and the green chile's... it was just spicy enough.

Throw in some corn and the peppers...

Add chicken broth and heavy whipping cream, masa/water mixture and simmer.

I added some cilantro for garnish and served with warm flour tortillas. DELISH!

Warm me up kinda food

Today would have been a good day for a nice hot bowl of chicken and dumplins... but we already had them twice this week! Honestly, I could eat them every day that it is below 50 outside but James and the kids would get bored.

When I made these, I didn't have a whole chicken on hand so I used a bag of boneless skinless breasts. It is NOT the same but it works. I boiled the chicken with a couple cloves of garlic, half an onion (left whole so I can take it out), salt, & pepper. When the chicken is done, just shred or dice and add back to the pot. For the dumplins, I used 2 cups bisuick, 2/3 cup of milk, 1 tbsp of salt, 1/2 tbsp of garlic powder, 1/2 tbsp of pepper, 1/2 tbsp dried sage. Mix it up, and drop clumps in the boiling chicken broth, put a lid on it and wait 10 minutes.

They are soooo delicious! We ate all the dumplins up! I had to make more the next day to go with the rest of the broth and chicken. Tell me, how do you make your dumplins?