Chicken and Dumplings and Old Fashioned Sandwiches

Several times a week, I take some time to make my kids and their significant others food.  They are all so busy that if I don't feed them, they end up not eating very well. I always ask them if they have requests and more often than not the answer is, surprise me.  I think I surprised them with these sandwiches.

 First I made them chicken and dumplings because seriously, on a cool Autumn day what's better than a big bowl of steaming chicken and dumplings?  I start with a pot of stock I've made from roasting chickens for Teddy because I make sure to feed all of my children very well!  I added a couple bay leaves and some celery from my garden.  It has such excellent flavor. Season the stock with salt and pepper and some bouillon for added flavor.  Add some diced cooked chicken.

 The dumplings are so simple. Pour 1/2 C. of oil in a bowl with 1 tsp. pepper and 1 tsp. salt.  Add 3/4 C. water and 2 eggs and whisk this all together.  Add 3 C. of flour.

Mix this together and add some chopped parsley if you like.

Dump it out on some flour and roll it to less than 1/4 inch thin.

Cut it into strips with a pizza cutter.  Drop the dumplings into the slightly boiling stock and cook until they float.  The flour on the dumplings will help to thicken the stock.

Mmmmmm!

I made more telera rolls which I showed recently on the blog.  They are most excellent for sandwiches.  Smear on some mayo and whole grain mustard.

I added a bit of good smoked ham I bought recently at a smokehouse.  It's so smokey that a little goes a long way.

Then I added smoked turkey.

But the surprise was, I added a bunch of old fashioned lunch meats.  I hadn't even thought about these in years.  This one is a pickle and pimento loaf.

This is olive loaf.

And this one is actually called 'Old Fashioned Loaf.  Basically they are flavored bologna's which are actually just American versions of German leberkase.  These were popular when I was a little girl but all of our stores still carry them.  I don't think my kids have ever seen them let alone tasted them.  Hey, watch out when you ask me to surprise you!  At lease I didn't add headcheese which is known as souse around this area.  I'll save that for a future surprise.

Next I added graaskaas cheese, crispy lettuce and some pickled fennel I made recently.  This time of year I add my oven roasted tomatoes to sandwiches because the fresh tomatoes are tasteless.  If you roast them, it concentrates their flavor and they have very good taste.

The sandwiches were wrapped up.                                                                                                                                           

The soup was put in containers.

And it was all delivered and put in their refrigerators ready for when they arrived home from work. The Blog Tech immediately texted me after biting into his sandwich asking what the surprising but welcome flavor was on his sandwich.