Lizzy, I think that's an even better idea than chicken on the bone, and here chicken is removed from the bone, added to the gravy and spooned over the waffles, much like your version I'd guess, except the chicken is fried. Many times chicken "strips" or "fingers" are used. Renee, you're right about regional dishes even within a state. Elery moved to Michigan when he was 11, but he spent his childhood in Tennessee and had never heard of chicken and waffles, although I thought it was a "southern thing". He was astounded when I dragged out the sorghum molasses to put on my cornbread, and said that was a southern thing but I've been doing it all my life and I was born here in Michigan. Of course, he claims that Grandma had to be from the south because of the way she cooked, but she grew up in Ohio. A little searching revealed that Grandma's stepmother, who raised her from a very young age and taught her to cook, was from Kentucky. So some of her cooking "migrated" to Michigan with Grandma and my kids grew up eating what is considered by some to be "traditional southern cooking". I guess after a couple of generations, the way people move around, anything can become a regional specialty! As for the chicken and waffles with syrup, I know a lot of people who will cover their sausage with syrup when they have breakfast, so chicken with syrup is no stranger than that, I've just always seen it served with gravy and never for breakfast. Annie

Can't remember where I got this, but it's really good! I add a dash of crushed red pepper flakes to the breading for the steaks AND to the cream gravy, along with a dash of paprika to both Chicken-Fried Steak Ingredients: 1 1/2 pounds of top-round steak 2 cups of flour 3 eggs 1/2 cup of milk or buttermilk 1/2 teaspoon of salt 1 teaspoon of cracked black pepper (can also add cayenne to add more heat). Lard or vegetable oil Method: Cut your top-round steak into four pieces. Pound beef with a meat tenderizer until flattened and almost doubled in size. Place flour in a large bowl and season with salt and pepper to taste. Mix eggs in another large bowl with milk. Take piece of tenderized beef and coat in flour. Dip coated beef into egg mixture and then dip back into flour again. Heat on medium enough oil or lard to fill halfway up the sides of a cast-iron skillet. When a drop of water makes the oil sizzle, it's ready for frying. Take the coated beef and place it in the skillet. When the blood (er, red-meat juice) starts bubbling out of the top of the steak (about three to four minutes) gently turn it over with a long fork (using a spatula can cause the oil to splash out of the skillet). Cook another five minutes and then take the chicken-fried steak out of the pan and drain on a paper-towel-lined plate. Repeat process for remaining cutlets. And while you're frying the others, you can keep the cooked steaks warm in the oven. Cream gravy Ingredients: Two tablespoons of pan drippings, bacon grease or vegetable oil Two tablespoons of flour 1 1/2 cups of milk 1 teaspoon of cracked black pepper Salt to taste. Method: Combine fat with flour in a hot skillet, continuously stirring, cook on medium for a couple of minutes until a dark roux is formed. Add milk slowly to skillet, and mix with roux using either a whisk or wooden spoon (be sure and press out any lumps). Turn heat to low and continue stirring until mixture is thickened, a couple more minutes. Add pepper and salt to taste. If gravy is too thick for your taste, you can thin it by adding either more milk or water a tablespoon at a time. Goes great with mashed potatoes, fried chicken, biscuits, chicken fried steak, grits, vegetables, rice or anything else you can imagine.

This is not a baked chicken dish, but it's quick and easy and fairly healthy. If you're cooking for a bunch of hungry kids, you might note that you can fit a five pound value pack of chicken thighs (cost around $6) into a 14 inch nonstick skillet (available at Sams for around $28) and have the entire batch cooked in 20 minutes. Worth getting a big nonstick skillet just for this recipe. Crispy Chicken Thighs This is more a technique than a recipe. I learned it from a recipe by Jacques Pepin. That recipe involves making a sauce, but the chicken thighs by themselves are tasty on their own even if you don’t want to bother making the sauce. You get crispy ‘fried’ chicken without a batter and with much less fat than regular fried chicken. Quick, extremely easy, and very tasty. From a food-science-geek standpoint, what you’re doing is rendering the fat out of the skin, and the skin fries in that fat, while the flesh side is steamed in the covered skillet by the vapors liberated in the cooking process. You can vary the seasoning if you want; a little bit of smoked Spanish paprika (‘pimenton’) or chipotle powder works well instead of or in addition to the black pepper. Penzeys has a spice mix called ‘Arizona Dreaming’ that works very well on this. So does lemon pepper (Penzey's 'Sunny Spain' salt free lemon pepper is very good on this) Ingredients 4 chicken thighs, skin on salt black pepper Procedure 1. Set the chicken thighs skin-side down on a cutting board. Trim any excess floppy skin. In the flesh side cut a ½ inch deep slash on either side of the thigh bone, parallel to the bone and about ½ inch away from the bone (this helps the thigh to flatten out somewhat). Season the thighs on both sides with salt and pepper. 2. Place the chicken thighs skin-side down on an unheated non-stick skillet. Only then turn the heat to high. When the chicken starts to sizzle, turn heat to medium and move the thighs around to make sure they aren't sticking to the skillet. Cover the skillet and cook for 16 to 18 minutes. Check the chicken occasionally to make sure it isn’t sticking. If the skin is browning too much after 10 minutes, then turn the heat to low. If after 18 minutes the flesh side doesn’t look quite done, flip the thighs and fry them flesh side down for a minute or two, uncovered. When done, serve.

interesting challenge. Adult chicken fingers. I would think any good fried chicken recipe would work. Tossed in fresh herbs like thyme, rosemary, garlic, then some buttermilk for an hour...then the breading. A bit of parmesan in the crumb. I have to toast in a low oven my homemade frozen bread to get it dry enough to make crumbs. I always have panko in the freezer as a back-up. Very handy to have. We don't fry at home or ever breading and bake since we have it out and about...just sometimes a tiny bit of crumb after steaming and under the broiler a minute for a crisp herb and bread crumb toping. I made chicken fingers, fish sticks and veggie rice/grain balls a few years ago for kids and adults. (baked) My niece and nephew were tiny so that is over ten yrs ago, (time flies). The only thing that made it kid food was the ketchup bottle. Homemade tarter sauce for the adults. And a sesame soy ginger sauce as we grilled non-breaded seafood and shish-ka-bobs. I remember trying to avoid the hot dog and burger diet so common. Funny we are back to perfecting and embracing the burger and dog for weekend get-togethers. With many more veggie sides than the past.