easy chicken and potatoes…slow cooker style

This has got to be the easiest thing ever for the crock pot. And it’s also yummy and comforting too.

Just put a package of thawed chicken tenders in the bottom of the crock pot. I seasoned the meat with salt, pepper, garlic powder, dried thyme and some sage powder.

And then cut up several potatoes. I halved and then sliced them about a quarter inch thick..or so. Nothing exact here. I just didn’t want big hunks of potato so they would be done in time. Anyway, I put those on top of the meat evenly.

And then poured two cans of this over the top…

Chicken gravy. This is the Walmart generic version of Campbell’s chicken gravy. I’ve gotten both and the Great Value tastes better, in my opinion.

I also sprinkled a little bit of the seasonings on top of the gravy and lidded it up and turned it on low. The potatoes soak up some of the gravy so it didn’t turn out runny or overly wet. Just really homey and comforting. Great with a salad or steamed broccoli.

*side note: My slow cooker cooks fast so I start mine after lunch and it’s ready by dinner. You mileage may vary. : )

Tennessee vaca Part 3 (Biltmore, Dollywood & Clingman’s Dome)

The next day we got ourselves together for a road trip to North Carolina. Another state I’ve never visited! : ) It’s so pretty there!

But first of all..another photo off the balcony at the cabin. Gorgeous! Good morning, God! : )

We had a slight little unplanned detour as our GPS led us onto a GRAVEL road for about a mile and a half. It wasn’t very wide either. A little bit scary…but the weird thing...people lived down there! We passed houses and the mailman along the way. We were so glad to be back on paved road though!

And tunnels..we don’t have those here..you have to have mountains for that.

And fog…or smoke…since were were in the “smoky” mountains.

But then we arrived…

…at Biltmore Estate. Wow. There just aren’t words for this place. Huge. Opulent. Ok..how about gaudy and a little over the top? It was really hard for me to think of that palace as a house. But anyway..so pretty. And as you can see, the weather was perfect!

The gardens were stunning. Can you just imagine yourself going for a morning stroll when the dew is still on the ground? Sigh…

The next morning I noticed a thermometer on the balcony so I took a picture of it at about 8:15 in the morning….

…because according to my iPod, it was already 80 here at home. UGH.

We headed off to Dollywood first thing. This little church is inside the park and they hold church services every Sunday. I think that is so cool! : )

Saw an amazing birds of prey show. This was one of the smallest birds.

And this is one of the biggest.

Amazing! And we had front row seats…hello off season. : )  They would bring the birds down off the stage on one side and walk across the front isle right in front of us. Very cool. And also..all the birds  are non-releasable for various reasons.

We rode the train.

We had some apple pie…but not that pie..the slices from that pie were HUGE.

This is a replica of Dolly’s childhood home. It’s hard to fathom that kind of upbringing with 13 people in the house..especially the day after going to Biltmore and it was built for 3 people..and ‘guests’.

This was inside the park..I felt like it should have been at the front. Oh well. Very pretty.

We loved Dollywood..it was just a relaxing day. Oddly enough, this is a retiree destination for sure…there was a sign that said “stroller parking” and there was one stroller and TWO scooters. LOL Enjoyed seeing the museum type exhibits in the park and we also took in a few shows..birds of prey, a play about the mountains and a video about the mountains. Loved them all.

The next morning we awoke to bad weather. But isn’t that a pretty sight off another one of our balconies. My girl used to call the sun’s rays God’s light. I think she’s right.

We decided to go to Clingman’s Dome the last day. Even though we knew we weren’t going to be able to see a single thing.  Not sure if we’re persistent or just stupid. They don’t call them the smoky mountains for nothing.

This is from the walkway at the dome. When we looked down we could barely see the path below us..much less any scenery.

I thought I was going to die walking this thing. The air is thin and I was gasping for air. My peeps weren’t having any trouble though. We were a mess by the time we got to the top..wet and very tired.

There was a placard for each ‘view’. This is the one for the northern view.

And this was the northern view.

Hmmm..tell me again why we walked all the way to the top. I guess it was so we could say we did it. Ok, we did it. : ) I met a nice couple from our area on the way up, so we had some nice chats while we made our way.  We took pics of each other at the top to ‘prove’ we made it. But we might as well have been standing in front of a piece of white paper!

This is the balcony on our last morning. I grabbed the camera and took this pic and then put my camera in my backpack for the trip home. You can really see the ‘smoky’ that morning. So pretty though.  Sigh…

We had said to ourselves that we would try to leave around 7 am. I woke up crazy early…that’s another story for another post…so we got moving pretty early. By about 7:15 we were saying good-bye to our beautiful cabin in the woods.  We decided to go ahead and turn our clocks back since we would hit time change pretty fast after we got on the road. So it was like leaving at 6:15am. Sa-weet! We ended up only taking one day to drive home instead of two. We hit some storms and our a/c went out…which made the storms harder since we didn’t have a defroster..not fun driving.

We made some Cracker Barrel pit stops along the way, too.

Yummo. And we pulled in at home at about 9:15pm. We were so glad we didn’t have to get up and finish the drive the next day. We took the van that night to the dealer and it was ready by mid-morning and I finished all the laundry an unpacking by mid-afternoon. 

The End. We had a great time and loved every minute of it. : )

Tennessee Vaca part 2 (Gatlinburg and Cade’s Cove)

We woke up Monday morning itching to get out there and start enjoying some of the sights. Our plan was to shop and generally “piddle around” in Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge as there are a lot of shops and what-nots. This allowed us to stretch our legs after two days in the car and just relax.

We quickly found we weren’t that crazy about Pigeon Forge. There was some sort of car show going on and the congestion on the main road was bad at all hours of the day and night. So we focused our attention on Gatlinburg. It’s a really cute little town with quaint shops. We made our way to this ski lift thing, which we rode to a higher point to take in the sights. It was interesting and fun, if not a little nerve wracking since you just kind of hop in and unlike ‘rides’, there are no belts or harnesses to hold a person in, which bothered the girl a little bit. But she quickly started looking around and enjoying the scenery.

This was just after we left the little station thing and crossed the street. Much prettier than ‘town’. : )

And there go my peeps ahead of me up the mountain.

From the top…so pretty.

We decided after spending the morning piddling around town and looking in little shops, that we had had enough of that. And were itching to see some of the real stuff we came for. So we headed into the mountains. Actually we headed into the base of the mountains. There is a scenic loop called Cade’s Cove in the park system. So pretty. Lots of things to get out and take pictures of and learn about. Log cabins, churches, cemeteries, a corn mill. So that’s what we did.

You can almost hear hymns coming out of those open doors, can’t you?

This is my favorite picture from the whole trip. I really need to photoshop out those two people though! : )

 

Sometimes I think I could have lived back then…I love this cute little house.

Hmmm, maybe not. : )

The mill. Really enjoyed walking around here and going inside to see the corn meal.

At one of the stops..I can’t remember which one….there was a bathroom. And the girl and I needed one. But she was pretty worried since we were ‘out in the middle of no where’ that it might be a pit toilet. I was not too thrilled about the possibility either, but kept my concerns to myself. Well, we walked into the little building that served as the rest area and lo and behold. My girl got the biggest smile on her face when we walked in the door and found FLUSH POTTIES. I laughed so hard! (and was secretly just as happy about it as she was!)

I know this doesn’t look like much. But after driving hither and yon to get to and see everything, it was a day.

Self portrait. : )

After a pretty long day it was so nice to sit down to these lovelies. Those are apple fritters…and they were served with fresh apple butter. I never really thought I liked apple butter much, but this tasted a lot different than the stuff with “Great Value” on the label..I’m just sayin’. This place was called The Apple Barn and Amy told me about it. THANKS, AMY! *waves furiously* I was thrilled when this little place was mentioned on a Southern Plate post I received a link to yesterday. I felt like I’d eaten somewhere famous. And yes, we did buy some butter to bring home..and I’ve almost finished off a (small) jar of it. Soo good! : )

Tennessee vaca part 1 (arriving)

We quickly planned our little trip. I think I ended up with two weeks lead time to get it all together. That’s a record, even for us. (we scheduled our first Disney trip 5 weeks out, which is unheard of for WDW planning)

Anyway, we left Saturday and drove most of the day.  We entertained ourselves with music and the girl read some books.

 

Later in the day we made a little iPod taco in a napkin so it could rest in the cup holder. I had downloaded Skit Guys podcasts and we listened to a few of those as well.

We spent the night in Memphis and got up early Sunday and drove the rest of the way. We really enjoyed the lushness (is that a word???) of the trees since just about everything here is well, dead.

We arrived in the mid afternoon. When we got to Pigeon Forge, we had to navigate the town and find the offices for our cabin. Before long we were pulling up to our cabin.

It was impressive. So beautiful and exactly what you’d expect to see for a vacation rental. Rustic with all the comforts of home. : )

This is my favorite part. The swing. I spent a lot of time out there just enjoying the view.

The kitchen…excuse our junk.

Dining room..again with the junk.

My peeps chilling in the living room.

This is the view ‘up’ from the living room.

The cabin was amazing. There was a sleeping loft upstairs with a huge master bath. And a bedroom downstairs off the living area with another king bed and it’s own bath. The girl took that one. And there was a game room downstairs in the basement. With yet another bathroom. Each level had a balcony looking out over the smoky mountains. It was quite an a amazing view.

See…

I can almost feel the breeze just looking at that pic. Ahhhhh. : )

my framed pepper

Yesterday we decided to go to Chili’s for lunch. They’re still doing peppers this month. Check them out!

We wanted to see if my chili pepper was framed and hung.

It was!

I still can’t get over it that they cared enough about our story to go to the trouble to frame my pepper! So touched and humbled by their kindness.

I didn’t even remember exactly what I wrote last year. Every year I tell a form of the story and hubs draws pics of Landon’s favorite things. And together they tell a sweet little story of his short little life.

Thanks St. Jude’s for all you do! (I took that pic as we drove through Memphis.)

And thanks Chili’s for your kindness toward us and our boy. : )