Grandma’s Chicken and Dumplings

A story and recipe to comfort your heart and soul

Bless the food before us, the family beside us, and the love between us. Amen

My sweet granddaughter rolled up the dough before throwing it on the floor. Personal photograph

It was one of those days that required comfort food. It was cloudy, drizzly, and rainy…thank the Good Lord…and we needed something warm and rich to comfort us.

It was the perfect day to make Grandma’s chicken and dumplings.

The only problem was that I don’t really know how to make chicken and dumplings without using a can of biscuits.

You know the kind…the cheap ones that you pop open with a butter knife and then pinch off and throw into the pot of boiling chicken and broth. And I didn’t have a can of biscuits.

But my youngest granddaughter and I needed something good to eat. We also needed something to occupy our time and our hands on this drizzly day.

So I pulled out an old cookbook that was put together by the ladies of the church I attended many years ago, figuring there would be one in there.

Sure enough, my friend Lucy had published her recipe for chicken and dumplings.

And they were the old-fashioned kind of dumplings…made with flour and shortening, salt and baking powder, and milk. They were the kind my mother used to make, the ones she never used a…