Filled Noodle Soup

Um. Hello. It's been a long time. So how ya' doing? This is a little awkward. So I think I'm just going to pretend that there hasn't been a break and that we're just picking up as if I had all along been blogging. How's that?

Filled Noodle Soup

So today is January 1. The bright, clean start to another year. I really love the start of a new year. There's so much optimism. And I don't know about anyone else, but I usually spend January 1st eating all the chocolate so that it's out of the house. Blows the lets eat healthy resolution right out of the water, but I'm full of chocolate and pretty satisfied. I can't say all of the chocolate is out of the house though because somehow between the Brain and I we managed to receive 3, one pound bags of M&M's. We got a one pounder of dark chocolate M&M's (yay me!) We got a one pounder of peanut M&M's (yay Brain!) And we got a one pounder of peanut butter M&M's (I've only recently tasted them and they're all right.) So with all that chocolate (and chocolate from the stockings at my mom's and chocolate from a hostess gift), I know you're wondering what chocolate I actually feasted on. I feasted on the open bag of candy cane Hershey Kisses that I had in the house to make these fantastic cookies. Seriously the cookies were delicious. I only wish they didn't leave so many leftover kisses...

We've been getting a little snow, so after lunching on some leftover egg tomato curry, I put the princess down for her nap. Did I mention there's a princess now? Isn't she lovely? She's my joy.

The Princess!

Oh, where was I? Right. The princess went down for her nap and I fired up the snow blower. I love firing up the snow blower. But by the time I was done, I was cold and I wanted some serious comfort food. Like something my grandma would make. My grandma is 96 and doesn't cook anymore. My mom is much much younger and doesn't cook anymore either. Hooray for my step dad or she would starve! ha ha! I was texting Super G and she gave me the idea of having Filled Noodle Soup like Grandma used to make. Filled Noodle Soup is delicious and comforting and filling and perfect for a cold snowy day. The only problem is that I didn't have a recipe. Super G texted me some fairly loose instructions. Something along the lines of make a pasta dough, spread some hamburger on it and then boil it in beef broth for about 20-25 minutes. I called Mom and she said not to brown the hamburger ahead of time and to add an egg to it. She used to cook a long long long time ago.

Cutting the filled noodles.

We had it for dinner tonight and the princess loved it. I made an egg noodle pasta dough, added some garlic powder to the hamburger and I added some tomatoes to the broth. And I am writing this recipe down. So that someday when the princess asks for the recipe I will have it. 

And then I took one for the team and ate all of the available Candy Cane Kisses. Phew! Thank God that's taken care of.

Yummy leftovers!

Filled Noodle Soup
An original Shazamer family recipe

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1/8 tsp of salt
4 tsp cold butter
2 egg yolks
3 eggs
1 pound ground beef
1 onion
1/2 tsp garlic powder
salt and pepper
8 cups beef broth
1 (15oz) can diced tomatoes

Stir together the flour and the salt. Then using a pastry blender, or your fingers, or a fork, cut the butter into the flour mixture so it looks like crumbs. Then make a well in the flour mixture and pour in 2 eggs and the yolks. Stir with a fork until it comes together and then knead it for about 7 minutes until the dough is smooth and elastic. Roll the dough into a great big rectangle. Try to roll the dough as thin as possible. Don't worry if the dough is thick though because it will just taste more dumpling-y. Cover the rolled out dough with plastic wrap while making the ground beef mixture.

Mince the onion and stir into the ground beef with the garlic powder, salt pepper and remaining egg. Sprinkle the beef mixture evenly over the rolled out pasta dough. Then starting on a long end, roll up the pasta and beef like a giant cinnamon roll. Pull the noodle tight as you go. Once the pasta is all rolled up, cut off the ends to make them even. Then cut the dough into 16 pieces.

Combine the beef broth and tomatoes in a large soup pot over medium heat and bring to a simmer. Then carefully drop the filled noodles into the broth. Stir once or twice to make sure the noodles aren't sticking to the bottom and return to a simmer. Set the timer to 20 minutes. Stir occasionally. 

Enjoy! 

Potage Veloute aux Champignons

SO, I know I didn't post last week. See, because I don't work during the day at the jewelry store I mostly end up working on Sundays. Although last Sunday I was in Michigan for a wedding reception for a wonderful cousin of mine. No problem you could say, why not cook these Julia Child recipes during the week? Well, I'm still in school. So two days a week I'm observing and sometimes teaching. This week, I'll be subbing for two and a half days. And really, if I just make the soup on Sunday night, if I were to make the next recipe on Monday I'd have multitudes of leftovers. Oh who am I kidding. I made the french onion soup on Monday. see? I did it anyway.

In the spirit of being in school, let me give you the cliff notes version of me making the soup.

Monday:

Me: So what's the next recipe?

Super G: I've been eyeing the cream of mushroom soup for a long time so I pick that one.

Me: Hmmm. okay. That sounds good.

Tuesday:
Me: Crap. My course advisor wants to come observe me teach again. Okay, let's do it next Tuesday.

Naughty Obnoxious Boy! You are getting a detention!

Secretary #1: So you know, Naughty Obnoxious Boy came in to speak to the principal about how you pick on him.

Me: (poof brain exploded!)

Wednesday:
observe observe observe

Sell big piece of jewelry. Sell another big piece of jewelry. Yay!

Think maybe I should get started on this soup.

Thursday:
Bake cake for teacher I'm observing. Think about getting that soup started. Finish the french onion soup leftovers. yum!

Friday:

Stomach flu and dizziness hits. Whhhheee.

Saturday:

Still recovering from the Friday fun. Sleep most of the day. No desire for cooking.

Sunday:

Yay! feel human again! Work a full day selling a little bit of jewelry. Race through Meijer on the way home and pick up some mushrooms and heavy cream. Throw some tequila marinated pork kabobs on the grill. Eat dinner with the Brain. Chop mushrooms and get the Cream of Mushroom soup started. CRAP!!!! I'm out of eggs (and to be discovered later, cash). Race through WalMart. Grab eggs. Count out a ridiculous amount of change and make mental note to stop at the bank tomorrow. Get back home just as the 20 minutes of simmering is done. Finish the soup.

And yes. There are two kinds of cream of mushroom soup. There's the kind you make tuna noodle casserole out of. And there's this kind. Silky, decadent, delicious. If only I didn't have a mountain of dishes to do before I get to go to bed....

And I welcome any tips on getting soup made lade at night to photograph well!

Check out how Tracy and Super G did!

Soupe á l’Oeuf, Provençale

So I picked this weeks Mastering the Art of French Cooking recipe, Soupe á l’Oeuf, Provençale or Garlic Soup with Poached Eggs. I guess I felt the potato leek soup was a little too easy in a book I have always pictured in my mind as tres difficile (very difficult). So yesterday, I strapped on my pearls and my very girliest of aprons and tackled this recipe.

Really it is two recipes in the same challenge. In order to complete the Garlic Soup with Poached Eggs, I figured I probably needed to learn how to poach some eggs first. Well really simultaneously as I was making the garlic soup/ broth and making these oh so delicious apple cardamom cupcakes with the carmel frosting.

The cupcakes turned out delicious.

The eggs that I simply poached in water following the directions on page 116 were the best poached eggs I've ever had. Really. I've been a lifelong, hard-core dieter, and I can tell you poached eggs tend to be fairly watery and gross. These poached eggs were different though. They were downright decadent.

As for the soup, it's made from garlic, water, and your standard pantry herbs, thyme sage, bay leaf, etc. In the introduction, Julia says, " Enjoying your first bowl of garlic soup, you might never suspect what it is made of. Because the garlic is boiled, its after-effects are at a minimum, and its flavor becomes exquisite, aromatic, and almost undefinable." She is 100% spot on. I don't know how to describe the flavor of this soup. It's delicious. It's savory.

Trying to describe what it tastes like though is like trying to describe the color orange. Maybe Tracy or Super G will have a better description.

Potage Parmentier

So like many many people I saw the movie Julie and Julia. And I liked it. And I was happily surprised (although it wasn't really a big surprise) to see a girl I went to elementary school with was in several scenes with Meryl Streep.

I also have a long standing love affair with the idea of Julia Child. She was a bigger and not terribly dainty woman (like me). She smoked (like I used to). She was madly in love with her husband (like I am). She was close, as an adult, with her sister (as I am with mine). Who happened to be taller than her (I'm the only family member nowhere close to 6 foot tall). And when asked by her husband what it is that she really like to do, she responded "eat" (ok the parallel here is obvious).

And she had such joy in her life. I want that.

So, when my much taller sister Super G, approached me and asked me if I would cook my way through Mastering the Art of French Cooking (volume 1 although I have both), the first thing I said was "not in one year." She explained that she had heard that this was how good cooks got to be great was cooking their way through Julia's cookbook. I think it sounds like fun so I hopped aboard.

This week Super G picked the very first recipe in the book: Potage Parmentier or Potato Leek Soup. It was delicious! Boiling it for 50 minutes seemed like an eternity, but I was stunned that potatoes, leeks, water, salt and some butter could taste so absolutely delicious! I'm not going to be posting the recipes because we're going to cook all of them and it wouldn't be right. But Super G, her friend Tracy, and I are going to rotate picking a recipe every week and blogging about our results on Sundays.

If this first recipe was an indicator, this will be a very fun and delicious experience.

Lentil Soup (the non-Crock Pot version)

I have finished the first week back to school and I have come to the conclusion that although I think I usually plan things pretty well, I need to plan better. Apparently, substitute teaching all day and then driving an hour and taking graduate school courses at night leaves very little time for much else. Like making dinner. Or eating it. I think basically this week I lived off of this bread. (Which will be included in the weekly Yeastspotting over at Wild Yeast, seriously check it out, there's always a mouthwatering yeasty roundup over there.)

So, although getting paid for today would have been nice, I can't say I was disheartened to find out that I'd gotten the call at 5:30 this morning that school was cancelled. Actually, I was snoring loudly at 5:30 this morning and the Brain is awesome because he took the call and let me know there was no school when I did wake up. The nice thing is that this makes a 5-day weekend then. See, tomorrow is a teacher-in-service and I stayed late yesterday to grade all my exams so I don't have to go. And then Monday is Martin Luther King Day. And this 5 day weekend is going to be followed by a great and rewarding day. My birthday. Which I will be celebrating with a school double header. Whee. And a BIG HUGE blog giveaway. Make sure you check back here on the 20th to see what's going on.

Today was spent cleaning the house. Because once the house is clean, THEN I get to play. And I have loads of projects to play with. And it wouldn't be a frigid cold winter day at home without my brain turning to soup. Yummy lentil soup. It started off as a Cooking Light soup, but I got way sidetracked. Overall, it's pretty yummy. And yeah, I'm hoping it makes up for skipping Legume Wednesday. sorry.

Lentil Soup

a sort of original recipe

6 servings

2 Tbsp olive oil

1 large yellow onion, chopped

2 large stalks celery, chopped

2 carrots, peeled and chopped

1 small bulb fennel, chopped

1 tsp dried thyme

3 garlic cloves, minced

1 bay leaf

1 1/2 cups brown lentils

4 cups fat-free, low sodium, chicken broth

1 cup water

1 (15 ounce) can petite cut tomatoes

the juice of one lemon

1 tsp salt

1 tsp pepper

Heat the oil in a large soup pot over medium high heat. Add the onions, celery, carrots, fennel, thyme, garlic, and bay leaf and saute for 12 minutes. Add the lentils and cook for 2 minutes stirring constantly. Stir in the broth, water, and tomatoes, and bring to a boil. Cover the pot and reduce the heat and simmer for 40 minutes until the lentils are very tender. Remove from the heat. Discard the bay leaf, add the lemon juice, salt and pepper and stir to combine.

Barefoot Summer Borscht

Tonight I do my first peer teaching. Pretty exciting. Nerve racking really. I've created a worksheet. I've thought about what I'm going to say. I've found a nifty SOHCAHTOA video. I've got the Mt. Sohcahtoa poster all finished. And although I'm only teaching for 10 minutes, I'm nervous. Do I have too much content for 10 minutes? What if it all goes over my classmates' heads? What if I get a smartass in class who decides to ask questions that I don't have the answer for? I'm sure it will be fine, but these questions have me nervous.

Unfortunately, I can answer what black bean soup tastes like when you add cinnamon instead of cumin. It tastes like dirt. So there will be no black bean soup recipe posted today. Instead, I give you a delicious soup I made this summer instead. It's Ina Garten's Summer Borscht as printed in her cookbook The Barefoot Contessa at Home. I checked the book out of the library and now I understand what all the fuss is about the Barefoot Contessa. Ina's recipes were easy to follow and totally delicious. I'm adding this particular cookbook to my Christmas wish list, but I'd be happy with any of her cookbooks. Hint. Hint.

And because it's such a beautiful pink color I'm entering it in Cilantro & Lime's Baking For Breast Cancer, even though it's not actually baked. I believe it was so hot outside when I made it that I was baking, but that's a stretch really. But seriously, breast cancer awareness is important to me. I just spent part of the weekend at a party for a close family friend who is now a survivor of breast cancer. The good news is that when breast cancer is detected early then there is a 98% 5-year survival rate. So remember to give yourself a breast self exam at least once a month! (I got my information from the National Breast Cancer Foundation, Inc.)

Summer Borscht

adapted from Barefoot Contessa at Home

Serves 6

5 medium fresh beets (about 2 pounds without tops)

kosher salt

2 cups chicken broth

16 ounces sour cream

1/2 cup plain yogurt

1/4 cup sugar

2 Tbsp lemon juice

2 tsp cider vinegar

1 1/2 tsp black pepper

1 English cucumber, seeds removed and diced

1/2 cup chopped scallions, white and green parts

2 Tbsp chopped fresh dill

Place the beets in a large pot of boiling salted water and cook uncovered until the beets are tender, 30 to 40 minutes. Remove the beets to a bowl with a slotted spoon and set aside to cool. Strain the cooking liquid through a fine sieve and also set aside to cool.

In a large bowl, whisk together 1 1/2 cups of the beet cooking liquid, the chicken stock, sour cream, yogurt, sugar, lemon juice, vinegar, 1 Tbsp salt, and the pepper. Peel the cooled beets with a small paring knife or rub the skins off with your hands. Cut the beets in a small to medium dice. Add the beets, cucumber, scallions, and dill to the soup. Cover with plastic wrap and chill for at least 4 hours or overnight. Season to taste and serve cold.

Country Lentil Soup

I've decided to bring it back. It's Legume Wednesday! See I got to thinking. Part of the reason I was doing Legume Wednesday was to show how easy and versatile legumes are. For example, I think the entire prep time for this lentil soup may have been a whopping 5 minutes. It would be less if you are speedier at chopping 1 onion, 2 carrots and 2 celery stalks and used dried herbs. I was out of thyme. Oh the irony! And seriously, there are so many people out there who are far busier than I am and they're still blogging regularly, and besides they might appreciate an easy and hearty bean meal.

Ergo. It's back! SO today for Legume Wednesday, I brought out the kickass cookbook, 1001 Best Slow-Cooker Recipes. I have to admit this is the first recipe I've made out of this cookbook, but it was so easy and delicious that I'm sure there will be more. And the Brain can tell you that I have a bunch of cookbooks that I haven't cooked anything out of. Or maybe only one or two things anyway. It's his prevailing logical argument against me buying more cookbooks.

So yeah, this is a delicious Country Lentil Soup. Super easy to make. I mean really, there's minimal chopping and then it all just gets thrown into the slow-cooker and 8 hours later you have some really yummy soup. What better way to enjoy a rainy day in fall?

Country Lentil Soup

adapted from 1,001 Best Slow-Cooker Recipes

6 entree servings

3 cups vegetable broth

2 cups water

1 cup dried lentils

1 can (14.5 oz) petite diced tomatoes, undrained

1 medium onion, chopped

2 medium carrots, sliced

2 stalks celery, sliced

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 tsp fresh thyme, chopped (or 1/2 tsp dried)

1 tsp fresh marjoram, chopped (or 1/2 tsp dried)

1 tsp fresh oregano, chopped (or 1/2 tsp dried)

salt and pepper, to taste

6 Tbsp grated Parmesan cheese

Combine all ingredients, except salt, pepper, and Parmesan cheese, in 6 quart slow-cooker; cover and cook on low 6-8 hours. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Sprinkle each bowl of soup with 1 tablespoon cheese.

Butternut Squash and White Bean Soup

OK, I know I said I wasn't going to be focused on Legume Wednesday on Wednesday anymore. But this Wednesday I happened to make this really great Legume dish and so I'm going with it. I think I'll clarify the whole Legume Wednesday to be Mostly Legume Wednesday. Or should that be Sometimes Legume Wednesday? Oh I don't know.

I can tell you that I had my first exam yesterday. In Adolescent Psychology. And it just figures that the test, like adolescence, was pretty much taken up by puberty. And I can also let you know that having to write letters to my imaginary son and daughter about what will happen to them in puberty as I desert them for the next five years was almost as painfully awkward as puberty itself. I hit the bare facts and then told my imaginary son to go ask his dad. I know, not all kids have active and involved dads, but as long as we're dealing with imaginary kids, I thought it perfectly reasonable to have this imaginary kid have a good imaginary relationship with the Brain. I also imagined that they were gifted children with an extensive vocabulary. I mean of course my imaginary children are brilliant. Geniuses really. Socially adept, popular, well behaved geniuses anyway.

Today in school we sang songs about means and averages. I'm not kidding. Yeah, this is graduate school. I'm not sure how to handle it all to be honest. But every day I drive down to the next county through rolling hills of farmland. The farmers are starting to plow the crops under. The corn is ready to be harvested and there are some huge golden soybean fields. Even the cows are starting to look furrier. Sooner rather than later it's going to be fall. I'm so ready. I love fall. And I think my drive is going to be beautiful when the leaves change colors. I just hope I'll be able to get that song out of my head by then.

SO in honor of fall, I made this healthy and delicious squash and white bean soup. It really took very little time. I mean I wouldn't beat out Rachel Ray and her 30 minutes business, but I don't think it took an hour and she has a prep team so that's just not fair. But the soup was mighty tasty and the bacon added a delicious smokiness to it. If you're a vegetarian you could probably substitute some fake bacon or just leave it out. There were some surprises too. Adding such a little bit of cream still made it so wonderfully creamy and it's not a sweet soup as most squash soups tend to be. This was a really flavorfull warmly spiced soup. It was a great lunch. Happy Wednesday.

Butternut Squash - White Bean Soup

lightly modified from Cooking Light

3 bacon slices

1 medium onion, chopped

4 stalks celery, minced

3 garlic cloves, minced

1 (1/2 pound) butternut squash, peeled and cut into 3/4 inch cubes

1/4 cup dry white wine

4 cups fat-free, less sodium chicken broth

1 tsp ground cumin

1/4 tsp ground red pepper

1/8 tsp ground cinnamon

1/8 tsp ground cloves

1/4 cup whipping cream

1 Tbsp chopped fresh oregano

1 tsp salt

1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper

2 (15 ounce) cans Great Northern beans, rinsed and drained

Cook bacon in a Dutch oven over medium heat until crisp. Remove bacon from pan, reserving 2 tsp drippings in pan. Crumble bacon and set aside.

Add onion, celery, and garlic to pan. Cook 3 minutes or until tender. Add squash and cook for 3 more minutes. Add wine and cook until most of the liquid is evaporated. Stir in broth, cumin, red pepper, cinnamon, and cloves. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 5 minutes or until the squash is tender. Stir in the cream, oregano, salt, black pepper, beans and bacon. Bring to a boil and then remove from heat.

Yields 6, 1 1/2 cup servings.

One Chicken, Many Meals

The price of food is on a lot of people's minds. It's high. And now it's time to do some creative budgeting. SO to give you an easy way to stretch that grocery dollar, let's talk about chicken. Yes, chicken. Roasting a chicken for dinner is a really easy and comforting thing to do. There are seriously tons of interesting and tasty ways to roast a chicken and it really doesn't matter which way you do it.

I roasted mine with a handful of fresh parsley and a cut up lemon inside of it, after I sprinkled the cavity and under the skin with a combination of cracked black pepper and kosher salt. I then tucked the wings under the body, stuck it in a pan and placed it in a preheated 425 degree F. oven for an hour while I went off and wrote a paper. (I should indeed be writing 2 papers right now, but that's another story.) And here's my finished bird.

When I got home from school, the Brain had eaten his half the chicken and I sliced some off to eat that night. We will count this as meal 1. I then pulled any remaining meat off this carcass and made a light and delicious chicken salad. Again, any chicken salad will do, but I wanted to try a Curried Chicken Salad with Grapes that sounded interesting and that's the one I went for. It was pretty good and provided meals 2 through 6. The Brain didn't have any of the salad, and the amount of leftovers and meals you can make with leftovers will depend greatly on how many people are eating them.

Then I took the chicken carcass that had been picked clean of edible meat and threw it in a pot with some water, half an onion, a couple stalks of celery cut in 3 pieces each, a cut in quarters carrot and a handful of parsley. I let that boil for about 2 hours. Then I strained it and stuck it in a bowl in the fridge. When I got back from school, the grease from the chicken had coagulated on top. It was pretty gross. That grease gets thrown out. But now I had some golden chicken broth. Which I packaged up in my favorite ice cream container and stuck in the freezer for later.
I took some more of the yummy golden broth and heated it to boiling with a carrot, nicely chopped, a stalk of celery, nicely chopped, and about a cup of fine egg noodles. And voila! I have chicken soup. Perfect for a rainy afternoon like today! And that's meal 7 and probably 8 and 9 out of that one little chicken. I'm telling you chicken is a real money saver.

For more ideas on stretching a dollar, try checking out Mrs. W's Kitchen and The Cheap Chick.

Blushing Cream of Cauliflower Soup

Sometimes I just want something soothing and comforting. Like a hug. It may be 60 some degrees outside and sunny, but I'm still fairly much on house arrest until we can get the swelling down. I did sneak out to Meijers over the weekend and filled my tiny little cart with an assortment of vegetables. I've discovered that husbands, although they have many spectacular qualities, cannot be trusted to grocery shopping by themselves. It's all nitrite laden meat and no veggies. blecch. well the 3 packs of bacon in the fridge is weirdly comforting. But otherwise blecch.

I am a veggie girl. I have been craving veggies. So even though I've had a lot of very good soup over the last 3 weeks, I thought of my Soup & Bread cookbook and the Blushing Cauliflower Soup recipe and loaded my cart full of cauliflower and red peppers.

This is some serious good soup. It's comforting. It's filling. It's fairly nutritious (the full cup of heavy cream keeps me from saying it's totally healthy). Cauliflowers are a cruciferous vegetable so it has cancer fighting properties. It's also super high in Vitamin C. The red bell peppers are high in both Vitamin C and Vitamin A and provide help against anti-oxidants and free radicals and may help protect against heart disease. It's not the easiest soup ever. It does take 2 pans. But overall I think it's worth it. I really liked the combination of flavors of the nuttiness of the cauliflower, the cooked red pepper and the crunch of the raw red pepper. Yummy.

Blushing Cream of Cauliflower Soup

from the Dairy Hollow House Soup & Bread Cookbook

1 large head cauliflower, broken into florets

cooking spray

1 Tbsp butter

1 Tbsp olive oil

1 large onion chopped

1 carrot, peeled and diced

1 rib celery finely diced

3 red peppers, stemmed, seeded, and diced

6 cups chicken stock

1 cup dry white wine

4 fist sized all purpose potatoes, peeled and diced

1 Tbsp tomato paste

1 tsp dried basil

1/2 tsp dried thyme

1 cup milk

1 cup heavy cream

salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Steam the cauliflower over boiling water until barely tender, about 5 to 7 minutes.

Spray a large skillet with cooking spray. Add the butter and oil and heat over medium heat. Add the onion and saute until wilted about 2 minutes. Add the carrot and celery and saute 2 minutes more. Add 2 of the bell peppers and saute another 2 minutes. Scrape the sauteed vegetables into a soup pot.

Add the stock, wine, potatoes, tomato paste, basil, and thyme to the soup pot. Bring to a boil, then turn down the heat to medium low and simmer until the potato is done and the cauliflower is quite tender, about 20 minutes. Let cool slightly.

Using an immersion blender, puree the soup until it is smooth. Reheat, then stir in the remaining sauteed vegetables, the milk, the cream, and about three quarters of the remaining bell pepper. Season with the salt and pepper. Heat the soup through, being careful not to let it boil. Serve hot garnished with remaining red pepper.

Booze Soup!

The night before the Brain and I left on our honeymoon, a week after the wedding so we could relax and sleep and get all those thank you notes out, his parents took us to a restaurant by the Cleveland airport for dinner. There we were, grateful the wedding was over, ready to start our lives together, fairly exhausted from the wedding planning and execution, excited to go on our honeymoon, and ready for some quiet time. The weather was beautiful and sunny, a dramatic change from the snow on our wedding night (in APRIL). Yes, winter never ends here. Anyway, poised on the beginning of adventure, there we were at this really good restaurant, and I had the beer soup.

I'd never had beer soup before. I think on some level I mourned the 35 years of my life that went by without me having tasted it. Kind of like how I feel about sauerkraut balls and fennel and other such delicious things I grew up not knowing about. It was delicious and cheesy and tasted definitely of beer. And up until now I've simply lived with the memory. The Brain doesn't do so well with dairy.

But then a couple weeks ago, my sister in law handed me a cookbook with this recipe marked. It is the Dairy Hollow House Soup & Bread cookbook. The recipe was the Tomato and Potato Cheddar Soup with Beer. She had thought it looked like a good recipe, but her terrific kids happen to be mighty picky eaters and the cookbook just had more elegant tastes than the kids would eat. I happily took the cookbook off her hands and decided that I would make the soup (or my version of it) and eat it for lunches while the Brain was off with the older men on Thursday afternoons, and during Rotary and times like that.

Well now, the Brain looks at my soup and I keep telling him, "no no no, you can't have this soup". It's mean of me. I know. But this soup is REALLY good. And it would make his tummy REALLY hurt. And I did, after all, make him Manwiches *shudder* for lunch today, so it's not like I don't cook what he likes to eat. In fact we've had so much pizza and Chinese and spaghetti and more pizza this week, that I really have to apologize that I didn't try anyone else's recipes this week. I barely made enough to blog about. Sorry, it's been a lazy lazy week.

Tomato Potato Beer Cheddar Soup

adapted from the Daisy Hollow Soup & Bread Cookbook

1 bottle Ale

6 large potatoes, unpeeled, cut into 1/4 inch slices

4 cups chicken stock

3 bay leaves

1/2 tsp dried basil

1/2 tsp dried oregano

4 Tbsp (1/2 stick) unsalted butter

1 large onion chopped

1 rib celery chopped

1 carrot peeled and sliced

5 cloves of garlic crushed in a garlic press

1 15oz can petite diced tomatoes, undrained

1 Tbsp soy sauce

2 tsp Worcestershire sauce

2 Tbsp flour

1 cup heavy cream

1/4 tsp Tabasco sauce

1/2 tsp dry mustard

12 oz. extra sharp cheddar, shredded

salt and pepper to taste

fresh flat leaf parsley for garnish

1. Pour the beer into a heavy dutch oven. Add the potatoes and stock. If the potatoes aren't covered add enough water to cover them. Add the basil, oregano and bay leaves. Bring to a boil, then turn down the heat to medium low and simmer for 30 minutes.

2. Meanwhile in a large skillet, melt the butter and saute the onions until they begin to soften, about 3 minutes. Add the celery, garlic and carrot and saute about 5 minutes more. Add the tomatoes, Worcestershire, and soy sauce, and cook, stirring frequently, for 10 to 20 minutes until the liquid evaporates. Sprinkle the flour over the mixture and cook, stirring constantly for 1 to 2 minutes. Gradually add the cream and stir while cooking until the mixture thickens. Add the dry mustard and Tabasco. Transfer the entire mixture to a food processor or blender and process until smooth.

3. Stir the cream mixture into the dutch oven.Turn down the heat so that the liquid barely simmers. Add the cheese and cook, stirring frequently until the cheese melted and the potatoes are falling apart, about 20 minutes more. Once the potatoes are falling apart, blend the soup with an immersion blender until smooth. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Let sit for about an hour to let the flavors develop and then bring back up to temperature and serve garnished with parsley.

Channeling Julia

Sometimes when it's cold and raining or snowing I just want soup. Maybe a sandwich, but for this post let's just say I want soup. Unfortunately, when I'm at my mom's and I'm elected to make dinner and it's cold and raining, I not only want soup, but I don't want to go to the grocey store.

Although let me interject here that I LOVE going to my mom's grocery store. I often will go there and get all sorts of things that are, shall we say, hard to find in Nowhere, Ohio. This trip I picked up ground lamb, Halloumi, ricotta salata, garbanzo bean flour, quinoa, almond meal, and 2 tubes of tomato paste (so much more convenient than opening a can for 2 teaspoons of tomato paste). My mom's grocery store is one of those upscale suburban grocery stores in an upscale suburb. They have all sorts of fancy and wonderfull ingredients.

But sometimes, I just don't feel like going out in the cold. In fact, Mom and her husband are off in the wilds of Arizona right now just because they don't feel like being cold anymore. And my stepdad for all his very odd little quirks (He prefers canned vegetables. Strange.) has been trying for years to convince my mom that they should relocate to the Southwest. He loves, with a burning passion, New Mexico. He says the dryness of the heat makes the difference. Ok.

This is my stepdad's favorite soup. There is a different Julia Child recipe on my to do list, but I thought I'd start out with something more straightforward and less complicated. This is Julia Child's French Onion Soup recipe courtesy of the Food Network. And although Mom had onions, I did end up having to go out to the store for beef broth, french bread, and Gruyere. But it wasn't hard to twist my arm to go to the grocery store. I just had to add some extra layers. And the smell of this soup cooking was really warming and made everything better.

French Onion Soup

from the Food Network

1/2 stick butter

1 Tbsp olive oil

8 cups thinly sliced onions (about 2 1/2 pounds)

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp sugar

1 Tbsp flour

8 cups beef stock

1/4 cup Cognac or brandy

1 cup dry white wine

8 1/2 inch thick slices of French bread, toasted

3/4 pound coarsley grated Gruyere

Heat in a heavy saucepan over moderate heat with the butter and oil. When the butter has melted, stir in the onions, cover, and cook slowly until tender and translucent, about 10 minutes. Blend in the salt and sugar, increase the heat to medium high, and let the onions brown, stirring frequently until they are a dark walnut color, 25 to 30 minutes.

Sprinkle the flour and cook slowly, stirring, for another 3 to 4 minutes. Remove from heat, let cool a moment, then whisk in 2 cups of hot stock. When well blended, bring to the simmer, adding the rest of the stock, Cognac, and wine. Cover loosely, and simmer very slowly 1 1/2 hours, adding a little water if the liquid reduces too much. Taste for seasoning.

Divide the soup among 4 ovenproof bowls. Arrange toast on top of soup and sprinkle generously with grated cheese. Place bowls on a cookie sheet and place under a preheated broiler until cheese melts and forms a crust over the tops of the bowls. Serve immediately.

Carrot Soup

It has been raining. All last night. Most of yesterday. Part of the night before. All day today. The constant rain has not only started to dampen my mood (except for the ocaisional pun hee hee) but it has created a soup out of our backyard. Our basement hasn't flooded so far. It's only a little damp around the edges. Our garage however is leaking.

When the Brain and I got married, I moved from a 1200 square foot apartment and he moved from a 1100 square foot house to lovely Nowhere, Ohio. Right into a 700 square foot house. So pretty much over the course of the last year we have been in the process of removing 1600 extra square foot of crap out of the garage. We've been doing pretty good at it. We've donated some stuff. We threw some stuff out. We've "oops" broken stuff. We've put up shelves to stash some of our stuff. We still can't get a car in our garage. But we can make a path to the beer fridge so it'll be okay in the end.

So there's a vent in the top of the garage. I guess that's so if we ever could get a car in the garage, we couldn't leave it running and kill ourselves with carbon monoxide poisoning. Anyway, I checked to see if the lake taking over the backyard was invading the garage only to find dripping from the vent through my sleeping bag, through the Brain's sleeping bag, on some of the boat cushions, down to the Brain's weight bench. I pulled over an empty garbage can to catch the drips and called the Brain to come fix it.

Then I made some soup. This soup recipe came from my brand spanking new vegetable cookbook. Who would have thought there would be more than one cookbook dedicated to vegetables that wasn't necessarily a "vegetarian cookbook". Now I have nothing against vegetarians, it's just that I can't digest soy and it gets a little ugly when I eat some. So this new book is Vegetable Love by Barbara Kafka. It's not quite as easy to find vegetables as my beloved Vegetables Every Day by Jack Bishop, but it does have them grouped by regions and by family so I'm learning some stuff there. With such a miserable day, I decided to go with good old familiar carrots and a lovely creamy carrot soup. It was warming and delicious and went great with some shavings of Grana Padano cheese and fresh cracked pepper ontop.


Creamy Carrot Soup
adapted from Vegetable Love by Barbara Kafka

2 tsp olive oil
1 1/2 tsp ground cumin
3/4 pound carrots (2 very large), peeled, trimmed and cut across into 1 inch rounds
2 3/4 cups vegetable stock
1 cup fat free ricotta cheese
1 tsp kosher salt
1 Tbsp lemon juice

Grana Padano
Black pepper

Cook the oil and cumin in a medium saucepan over medium heat for 1 minute to release the flavor of the cumin. Add the carrots and vegetable stock. Cover and bring to a boil until the carrots are very soft (about 30-40 minutes). Remove from heat. Puree with an immersion blender until smooth. Stir in ricotta. Season with salt and lemon juice.
Garnish with Grana Padano and black pepper.

Squash Soup

Our marathon Christmas celebration is finally over. This morning, exhausted, I surveyed the damage. We had Christmas presents in little piles all over the house. The cookie tins had taken over the kitchen. Dishes needed to be done. And I'm not sure which pile was bigger; the dirty laundry pile, or the ironing pile. Our house is too tiny to be so disheveled.

So I did the only thing that could be done. I started on one end and worked my way to the other. Its like that old joke about how do you eat a whale? One bite at a time. So the ironing is done. Most of the presents are put away. The bed is made. The laundry is downstairs. The sideboard and dining room table are uncluttered and the coffee table is bare. I even got the grocery shopping done and I have a plan for the week. I'm nothing without a plan.

It feels good to get things back in a little bit of order. The house isn't there yet, but its definitely much calmer now that I'm not worried about tripping and breaking my neck in the middle of the night anymore. Of course that doesn't mean I won't get up in the middle of the night and run into a wall. I've done that a couple times. My eating habits over the last two weeks have been like my house. In total disarray. I knew there was a problem, but when I was grocery shopping I had no desire to go down the ice cream or cookie aisles, but parked my cart in front of produce and pretty much drooled. A big slobbery drooler. Cleanup in produce.

So dinner tonight is a happily vegetarian, low fat, high fiber, delicious bowl of yumminess. It's Pinto Bean, Tomato, and Butternut Squash Soup. Its just a little spicy and yet so filling and comforting. I'm lazy and feel no need to puree any of it. I also find it has more flavor if you can find celery with the leaves on it too. This is my go to soup for wanting to feel better and healthier in an instant.

Pinto Bean, Tomato, and Butternut Squash Soup

adapted from Bon Appetit

1 Tbsp olive oil

2 cups chopped onions

1 cup chopped celery

4 garlic cloves, minced

4 cups vegetable broth

2 (15 oz) cans pinto beans, drained

1 (14.5 oz) can diced tomatoes

2 cups 1/2 inch pieces butternut squash (peeled and seeded)

1 tsp dried oregano

1/2 tsp cayenne pepper

Heat oil in heavy large pot over medium-high heat. Add onions and celery; saute until onions are golden, about 7 minutes. Add garlic; stir 1 minute. Add broth, squash, beans, tomatoes, oregano and cayenne pepper; bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer 20 minutes.

Eh What's Up Doc?

I admit it. I'm the kind of girl who doesn't like to be caught without. When going away for a trip I always pack twice as many pairs of underpants as needed. Just in case. I have sticks of deodorant stashed in multiple places around the house. I even have an extra tube of toothpaste in my car. Unfortunately when it comes to carrots, you can have a little too many. While rummaging around trying to figure out what to make next, I came to believe that there is no logical reason for me to have 10 pounds of carrots in my fridge. Carrots are ridiculously high in beta-carotene and are great for your eyes, they lower cholesterol, and might prevent heart attacks and cancer. But what exactly do you do with 10 pounds of carrots? Or even a healthy chunk of them?

I made soup. Soup is the great equalizer of odds and ends of vegetables. I hunted around for a good carrot soup recipe. This was a little trickier than I thought because I just didn't feel like putting ginger or chillies or anything fancy in it. I wanted carrot soup that was warm and homey and nourishing. So I kinda sorta peeked at the recipe my mother-in-law had posted on her fridge; I would give credit except it's an old photocopy from some unknown cookbook. I added some things and took some things out. I don't personally see the need for heavy cream in a pureed soup very often. It tasted good. Comforting. Homemade. But it needed a garnish. Bear with me, garnishing soups is a pretty recent kick I've been on. Sprinkling it with dried cranberries set it off just right. The sweet tart of the cranberries balance nicely with the salty smoothness of the soup. Yum.

Carrot Soup

8 Tbsp (1 stick) of butter

15 carrots, peeled and sliced

2 stalks celery, chopped

1 onion, chopped

2 potatoes, peeled & diced

1/2 cup chopped parsley

6 cups chicken broth

salt and pepper to taste

Dried cranberries for garnishing

Melt the butter in a dutch oven over medium high heat, add the carrots, celery, and onion, and cook for 10 to 15 minutes, stirring from time to time. Add the potatoes and parsley and stir until coated. Stir in the stock and cook, covered, until the potatoes are tender, about 20 minutes. Puree with a hand blender or food processor. Return to the pot, add salt and pepper to taste and rewarm. Garnish with dried cranberries.

Come in From the Cold

Fall in a small town means chilly nights watching high school football whether you have kids on the team or not. Being that our local Catholic high school team made the playoffs the Brain and I went last night as they played the team from the neighboring town. Those kids ran and they passed and they kicked and they played their hearts out and beat the crapola out of their opponents.

But up in the stands was where the real interesting action was. We managed to sit behind one of the loudest and most dramatic fans in town. The woman had lungs. Every single play she managed to shout instructions to the players. Every time the opposing quarterback threw the ball she yelled "PAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASSSSSSSS!" at the top of her lungs. It was like being in a Saturday Night Live skit or something. Highly amusing. I don't think there's been that much noise in the Big House in Ann Arbor all season.

It was nice to come back home out of the cold and have this Chicken and Squash Stew with Wild Rice waiting for us. I'd made it earlier in the day from the Cleveland Clinic Healthy Heart Lifestyle Guide and Cookbook. It's not the prettiest stew. In fact it looks kind of muddy. But it really is warming and delicious. It's comfort food for the Brain and me.

Chicken and Squash Stew with Wild Rice

8 skinless bone-in chicken thighs (about 2 pound) *

2 tsp extra virgin olive oil

4 medium carrots, cut into 1/2 inch pieces

6 celery ribs, cut into 1/2 inch pieces

3 garlic cloves minced

1 onion diced

1 Tbsp dried oregano

2 tsp ground cumin

Kosher salt (optional)

1/2 tsp ground pepper

2 pounds butternut squash, cut into 1 inch pieces

1 cup wild rice

2 quarts fat free reduced sodium chicken broth

1 bunch scallions **

10 sprigs fresh cilantro finely chopped **

1) Remove all visible fat from the chicken. Rinse and pat dry. Set aside.

2) In a Dutch oven, heat the oil over medium heat. Add the carrots, celery, garlic, and onion. Saute until the vegetables soften but do not brown, 5 to 6 minutes. Add the oregano, cumin, salt (if using), and pepper. Cook another 3 to 4 minutes.

3) Add the chicken to the pot along with the squash and rice. Gently stir. Pour in the chicken broth, making sure it covers all the pieces. Bring the mixture to a boil, then reduce the heat to a simmer. Cover and simmer for about 1 hour, until the vegetables and rice are tender. ***

4) Meanwhile, combine the scallions and cilantro. Place in a small serving bowl

5) Ladle the stew into 8 shallow bowls. Serve, passing the scallion / cilantro mixture to sprinkle over the stew.

6) Freeze any remaining stew.

*I have to admit I buy most of my meat at Costco. So I have all these happy little packets of 5 boneless skinless chicken thighs. I just use those instead of the 8 bone in ones. I know, I know, this makes it less meat. It seems to work though, because the Brain doesn't seem to mind that there's less meat in it. Of course I've never made it for him with more meat.

** Yeah, as I mentioned previously my cilantro was tragically weeded over the summer, and there were no scallions in my fridge. I think I may have (oops) put them in the pumpkin soup. So I just skipped them. Actually, I don't think I've ever put them on top. It just doesn't need it.

***At this point the Brain was itching to go to the football game and we wanted to get there early enough to get a seat. So I turned it off after it had been simmering almost an hour and then we just brought it back up to temperature when we got back and we dug in. We skipped the fancy garnishing steps.

oooooh spicy!

I've been spending the morning trying to get motivated to replant my sage, rosemary and parsley plants out of my herb garden and into pots. It's not cold outside right now. In fact it's nice and bright and sunny and the temperatures are reasonable. But we've been having nightly frosts and if I want to continue to have the luxury of fresh herbs this is something I must do. I know this. I'm good with this.

The motivation trouble comes in when I look at my nice enormous parsley plant (or is it a parsley bush?) and then I think about what happens to plants that are in pots around my house...

Oh the horror!

It's like I'm a cold hard killer of plants.

So yeah now I just have to go to WalMart and get pots big enough to plant a rosemary bush, a sage bush, and a parsley bush. I don't like to support Walmart, but it's all we have in town and I don't feel like driving to another county. So I decided it was time for lunch. Lunch is always a great distracter.

When I first moved here and I was looking for work, I interviewed with Nestle. Nestle is the parent company of Libby's pumpkin. I happen to love pumpkin and all things squash. (It's a superfood you know. It helps protect your skin. yay!) So I didn't get the job, but I did get a little pamphlet for different uses of Libby's pumpkin puree. I made a soup loosely based on the soup in that little pamphlet.

The Brain's parents, who travel extensively, brought us back a bottle of pumpkin seed oil from Austria and I drizzled that on top. Wow. I'm totally impressed with myself. I wasn't sure the peanut butter was all that important to the soup as I'm not a giant fan of peanut butter, but with the pumpkin seed oil it's super yummy! I think it might also do something for the consistency.

Thai - Style Pumpkin Soup

very loosely based off this recipe from Libby's

2 cups chicken broth

1 can (15oz) Libby's 100% Pure Pumpkin

2 cups apple juice

3/4 tsp ground ginger

3 cloves garlic finely chopped

1/2 tsp crushed red pepper

1/4 cup creamy peanut butter

2 Tbsp rice vinegar

1 finely chopped green onion

2 Tbsp chopped cilantro

pumpkin seed oil for drizzling

Combine broth, pumpkin, juice, bouillon, ginger, garlic and crushed red pepper in large saucepan. Bring to a boil, stirring occaisionally. Reduce heat to low. Stir in peanut butter, vinegar, green onion and cilantro. Cook, stirring occaisionally, for 5 to 8 minutes or until soup returns to a boil. Drizzle with pumpkin seed oil.