Tuscan Soup

It doesn't matter that it was almost 80 degrees today; we love soup and eat it all year long. This is a favorite of ours. It is similiar to the Zuppa Tuscana from Olive Garden, but there are enough differences to keep making both! The original recipe called for spinach or kale, I use spinach in this one since the other recipe uses kale.


Tuscan Soup

1 lb mild Italian sausage
6 cups chicken broth
12 oz evaporated or condensed milk 
1 cup half and half
8 red potatoes, diced
1/2 large onion, chopped
1//2 tsp basil
1/2 tsp oregano
1/4 tsp rosemary
1/4 tsp sage
1/4 tsp margarom
1/4 tsp thyme
Salt or garlic salt to taste
Pepper to taste
1-2 cups torn spinach

Cook the sausage in the same large stew pot you'll use to cook the soup, drain excess fat and return sausage to pot.

Add the chicken broth and evaporated milk and bring to a boil.

Reduce heat so soup simmers. Add potatoes, onions, seasoning, salt and pepper.

The soup is done when the potatoes are cooked through, about 20-30 minutes. If using spinach or kale, add during the last few minutes of cooking.

Loaded Baked Potato Soup

We do love soup at my house! I try and plan soup at least once a week or so. We have many soups that we love, but this one is at the top of the list, especially for my husband!

Baked Potato Soup
2/3 cup butter
2/3 cup all-purpose flour
7 cups milk
4 large baked potatoes, peeled and cubed
4 green onions, chopped
1 1/4 cups shredded Cheddar cheese
1 cup sour cream
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
bacon crumbles

In a stock pot or Dutch oven, melt the butter over medium heat. Whisk in flour until smooth. Gradually stir in milk, whisking constantly until thickened. Stir in potatoes and onions. Bring to a boil, stirring frequently.

Reduce heat, and simmer 10 minutes. Mix in cheese, sour cream, salt, and pepper. Continue cooking, stirring frequently, until cheese is melted.

Top with additional cheese, sour cream, green onions and bacon crumbles if desired.

Coconut Curry Chicken Soup

Coconut Curry Chicken Soup

4 cups water
3 cups fresh spinach leaves
1/2 pound snow peas, trimmed and cut in half crosswise
1 (5 3/4-ounce) package pad thai noodles (wide rice stick noodles)
1 tablespoon canola oil
1/4 cup thinly sliced shallots
2 teaspoons red curry paste
1 1/2 teaspoons curry powder
1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric
1/2 teaspoon ground coriander
2 garlic cloves, minced
6 cups fat-free, less-sodium chicken broth
1 (13.5-ounce) can light coconut milk
2 1/2 cups shredded cooked chicken breast (about 1 pound)
1/2 cup chopped green onions
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons fish sauce
1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro
4 small hot red chiles, seeded and chopped, or 1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper
lime wedges

Preparation

Bring 4 cups water to a boil in a large saucepan. Add spinach and peas to pan; cook for 30 seconds. Remove vegetables from pan with a slotted spoon; place in a large bowl. Add noodles to pan; cook 3 minutes. Drain; add noodles to spinach mixture in bowl.
Heat canola oil in pan over medium-high heat. Add shallots and the next 5 ingredients (through garlic) to pan; sauté 1 minute, stirring constantly. Add chicken broth to pan, and bring to a boil. Add coconut milk to pan; reduce heat, and simmer 5 minutes. Add chicken, onions, sugar, and fish sauce to pan; cook for 2 minutes. Pour chicken mixture over noodle mixture in bowl. Stir in cilantro and chiles. Serve with lime wedges.

Enchilada Soup

This is one of those super easy soups to throw together on a busy night. It is delicious and can be made in a matter of minutes with ingredients that I usually have on hand most of the time.

When I take food to someone in need, I try to give things that can be readily made into meals. Since all the ingredients are canned, this is an easy one to give. Tuck in a small recipe card and you are good to go!

Enchilada Soup

1 (15 oz) can black beans, drained and rinsed

1 (15 oz) can pinto beans, drained and rinsed
1 (14.5 oz) can diced tomatoes, OR a can of Rotel
1 (15 oz) can sweet corn, drained
1 (12.5 oz) can chicken breast, drained
1 (10 oz) can of cream of chicken soup
1 (10 oz) can green enchilada sauce
1 (14 oz) can chicken broth
1 (1 oz) packet taco seasoning

Optional toppings:

chopped cilantro

shredded cheese

sour cream

jalapeño slices

tortilla chips

Mix all ingredients together and simmer until heated through.

Creamy Onion Soup

 We are still kind of iced in, Kip did make it to work yesterday using my Jeep, but I am still staying at home. Cold weather is t he perfect time for soup, right? We love soup and eat it year round, but this ice, snowy weather calls for a nice bowl of  steamy soup. 

Since I haven't been about to get out to the grocery store, I have not been able to really follow the meal plan that I had for this week, so I am making meals with the ingredients that I have on hand.

Since I have quite a few onions, I decided to go with this creamy onion soup. It is a fairly simple soup, but full of flavor and perfect for the cold weather.

I don't think I had every had onion soup until after I had married Kip. We were on vacation and eating in a local restaurant. He was so excited when he saw it on the menu. That excitement turned to disappointment when the waitress set it down before him. Basically it was a few very stiff onions floating in some chicken broth. I decided to learn how to make it, and came up with this version after tweaking a few recipes.

This soup is great topped with croutons. I happened to have a little bit of Rosemary Bread left over for a dinner earlier in the week and used that to make my croutons.

Croutons are super easy, I cube my bread, mist with olive oil and pop into the oven until toasted.

Normally after misting the bread cubes with the olive oil I will add some salt and pepper but since this bread already had had rosemary in it, I left didn't add anything else.

Dinner is ready!!

Creamy Onion Soup

2 quarts beef broth
3 large onions, quartered and sliced
3 TBS corn starch
1/2 cup cold water
1 cup heavy cream
1 1/2 cups shredded Colby-Jack cheese (cheddar will work too)

Salt and pepper to taste

Croutons (optional)

Shredded Colby-Jack

In a large, heavy pot over medium heat, bring beef broth to a boil. 

Place onions in boiling water, reduce heat and simmer 30 minutes.

Stir the cornstarch into 1/2 cup cold water to make a paste. Gently whisk this mixture into the simmering soup, being careful not to break the onions. Simmer 30 minutes more.

Stir in cream and cheese until cheese is melted and mixture is thoroughly heated.  

Serve hot, garnished with croutons, if desired.

One for Dinner--One (or two) for the Freezer

I have a lot of recipes I have collected over the years that work well for the freezer. Many of them are designed for the crock pot, but some of them are complete meals that can go in the oven. When I make one of these meals for dinner, I will make one or two for the freezer. 

I try to keep at least 8-10 meals in the freezer so I have a selection of things to choose from on days when I just can't, or don't want to cook. Having them ready to go also allows me to take a meal to someone. Yesterday, I made a batch of soup for a friend that got out of the hospital and I also gave her a meal from my freezer so that she would have an additional meal as she recuperates.

They key is making sure your meals get rotated enough that you don't lose them in the freezer! My method is very simple. I have a dry erase board on the freezer that lists the meal and the date that they were assembled. New meals get added to the bottom of the list and I scratch them off as we eat them. I also write the name of the meal, date assembled and cooking directions (if needed) on the outside of the zip top bag, a sharpie works great for that! For ease of marking, I label the bags before filling them, I learned that lesson the hard way!! These are labeled on the other side.

This is a taco soup that we really like.

Taco Soup

1 lb ground beef

1 onion, diced

1 small can of tomato sauce

1 can kidney beans, with liquid

1 can chili beans with sauce

2 cans diced tomatoes, we like the petite diced

1 can of corn, with liquid

1 can diced green chilie

2 cups of water

1 pkg of taco seasoning

Cook the ground beef until it is done and drain. Let cool and add to the freezer bag. 

Add everything else to the bag and freeze.

To use: I pull out the night before using and let it cook in the crock pot for 6-8 hours on low.

If I forget to pull it out the night before I will let the frozen bag sit in the sink with water until it starts to defrost.

Hot and Sour Soup

I love a good bowl of Hot and Sour Soup. I used to work at a place beside a Chinese restaurant that had the best soups. At least 2-3 times a week I would go there and eat soup for lunch. Then they changed owners and the soup was never the same. I still ordered it at other restaurants but it was either bland or so hot that all could could taste was the pepper. All that pepper would do was mask the other flavors in the soup and make my nose start running.

I have been looking for a recipe that I like for quite a while. I attempted a bunch of different recipes that I found online and they were all pretty much good, but not what I was looking for to recreate my favorite version of it. After many, many pots of soup, I finally came up with this recipe that I really like a lot.  

Hot and Sour Soup

8 cups of chicken broth (or veggie broth)

1/3 cup  soy sauce

1 cup mushrooms, sliced

2-3 tablespoons garlic chili sauce

1/2 teaspoon ground white pepper(start with the 1/2 tsp, but for extra heat add 1/4 tsp at a time--I will usually wait until the end of cooking before adding more)

1/2-3/4 cup white vinegar (again to taste)

1/2 cup canned bamboo shoots, julienned

 1/2 block of tofu, cut into 1/4 inch dice

4 tablespoons cornstarch and 4 tablespoons cold water

2 eggs, beaten

3 green onion stalks, diced (including tops)

1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil

Bring chicken broth to a simmer in a 2-quart saucepan.

. Add soy sauce, mushrooms and garlic red chili paste, simmer 5 minutes

 Add white pepper, white vinegar, bamboo shoots, tofu, simmer 5 minutes

 Combine two tablespoons of cornstarch with two tablespoons of cold water in a cup. Stir until mixture is smooth. Add cornstarch mixture to soup and stir well.

 Simmer for five minutes until soup is thickened.

 Beat egg in a cup until yolk and white are combined. Pour beaten egg slowly, in a fine stream into soup. Stir soup several times.

 Wait 30 seconds.

 Add green onions and sesame oil to soup. Stir well. Remove from heat.

NOTES:

***This makes a pretty good size pot of soup, but it can easily be halved. I like the extras for our lunches.

(If you want to add some shredded chicken or pork, add the cooked meat at the same time as the tofu. I prefer it without the meat)

YUM!!

Golden Mushroom Soup

One of my favorite ready to eat soups from a can is Golden Mushroom. I like the versatility of it; it is great eaten as a soup out of the can, makes a great simmer sauce for pork chops or chicken and works as a gravy on potatoes. As I have transitioned to eating less and less prepared foods to foods that I cook and/or can myself, I have missed that soup. 

One day I was reading one of the canning pages I follow on Facebook and there was a discussion about cream soups and someone mentioned finding a recipe for  Golden Mushroom Soup. I think I heard harps and the day became brighter so I new I had to make this and make it soon.

I started with the following ingredients:

Yummy, look at al those mushrooms!

My final product:

I am so happy to have this soup again. I couldn't wait to try it and compare it to the taste I had been missing. I pulled out a couple of pork chops, poured the soup over them and baked them slow until they were fork tender. Oh my goodness, was this soup good! I am no longer missing the stuff from the can. 

Rating the recipe: The first time I make a recipe, I tend to follow the recipe pretty much and if it is a canning recipe, I follow the directions for safety reasons. I made this recipe exactly as it was written and it is perfect as is. It does have the same taste as the can, but there is an additional layer of flavor that is missing from the can. I will definitely keep this on hand now. I found the recipe for this soup on the Chickens in the Road blog, a great blog to read and tons of recipes to try!

Beef Stew

I know I have been sharing a lot of canning recipes lately, but it is that time of year! I have been watching the weekly grocery store ads to see what meats are on sale and then trying to combine those sale items with in season items to plan my canning projects. I have a couple of goals in mind with this plan one of which is lowering my overall food costs. The other goal is to have a pantry full of foods that that have the convenience of processed foods, but that are better for me.

I love soups and like to have several kinds on hand. I have even been known to occasionally eat soup even for breakfast. Beef stew is a favorite and when I got my pressure cooker last fall, this was one of the first recipes I looked for. This recipe came from the Ball Book.

Lots of vegetables to chop:

I ended up with a 21 jars of soup, mostly pints, and a few quarts. I have found that the pint jars are perfect for single servings and are perfect to grab for lunches (or breakfasts) while the quarts make a great quick dinner for the both of us. I will serve with some homemade bread for a hearty dinner.

Egyptian Lentil Soup

I am a huge fan of soups and can eat them year round and for any meal of the day. This lentil soup happens to be one of our favorites. One night I had planned a Red Lentil and Chicken soup for dinner and Kip called and asked if I cared if he invited a friend over. My philosophy is there is always room at my table, I just like a heads up if possible. I would rather have to add something to the dinner than not have room for someone. I had only met this friend of Kip's once before and I knew he was a vegetarian. I couldn't remember if he was vegan or not or what kind of vegetarian he was. I did a quick Google search for "red lentil soup" and found this recipe. It was a huge hit and has been made many times since then. 

Here are all the ingredients chopped and ready to go in the pot. I don't think I had ever had lentils until I was an adult. I have made several different kinds of lentil soups with the hard brownish green lentils you can buy in almost any supermarket. I guess about three years ago I had some recipes that called for other kinds of lentils. I like these small red ones, but none of my local stores carry them. When I drive to the other side of Nashville to either Whole Foods are Trader Joe's I try and stock up on them.

Cooking the spice mixture just until they start to release their smell makes a difference for this soup.

 

The final step is using an immersion blender to make the soup smooth. 

I serve this soup with fresh bread and it makes a nice, hearty flavorful meal.

Chicken Gnocchi Soup

So what am I doing with the gnocchi that is now in my freezer? The night after I made all of the chive gnocchi that is pictured in the post below, we had a big pot of Chicken and Gnocchi Soup. I made the chicken the same day that I made the gnocchi so assembling the soup and getting it on the table was pretty quick.

To make the chicken:

 I started with a whole chicken, put it in my crock put with 2 onions that had been quartered. 4 ribs of celery trimmed and cut into thirds, 2 teaspoons of salt and about the same of pepper, a teaspoon of thyme and enough water that fill the crock pot about 3/4 of the way. I let it cook on low all day. After I got home from work, I pulled the chicken out and separated the meat from the bones. I strained the broth, discarding the veggies because they were pretty much mush. The broth went into the fridge overnight.

To make the soup: 

I pulled the broth out of the fridge and discarded the fat that had congealed on top. The broth went into the soup pot along with about two cups of the chicken, 1 pint of cooked carrots, half a bag of frozen peas and let that simmer for a bit. I had about 1/4 a cup of some onions that had been chopped and sauteed so I added that too. If you wanted you could also add some sliced celery. I will add celery when I am making stock or cooking a chicken or something, but I do not like to eat it in anything. After all of my vegetables were warmed through, I turned up the heat until I had a good boil going. I dropped the frozen gnocchi directly into the boiling soup and let it cook for about five to seven more minutes.


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I often get remarks about how much time it takes to actually cook from scratch. In the case of this meal it only too me minutes to prepare the chicken to cook in the crock pot. My return for separating the chicken: I had enough chicken to make dinner from me and Kip, we both had this soup for lunch the next day, and one extra serving for my lunch. I also had enough chicken to freeze for one more meal, plus enough to make a batch of chicken salad for lunches.

It did take me a while to make the gnocchi, but the recipe made enough for Kip and I to have three meals featuring gnocchi.

The carrots in the soup had been canned in the fall and I knew I would need extra onions when I cooked dinner earlier in the week so I made a little extra so that I only had to cut onions and cook chopped onions once.

Do I spend more time in the kitchen than I used to? Yes I do. I try and make the most of my time though so that when I am pressed for time I do have a time crunch we still have healthy options. 

Bring on the Soup

I love soup year round but as it starts getting cooler, I want it almost every day. One of my favorite cold weather meals is tomato soup and grilled cheese. This is what Samantha and I made for dinner on Friday night. Normally we cook together on Thursdays, but she was out of school on Friday so we had a sleepover and then spent the day together. I have been taking pictures of her cooking with me for the past year or so. I have decided to make her a scrapbook for Christmas with the pictures and I will include the recipes as a keepsake for her. Doesn't she look perfectly at ease at the stove with her hand on her hip? I just love that photo of her. She still isn't quite tall enough to stand without a stool to boost her up but she is getting there. If she isn't using a knife or working at the stove she will not use the stool, but as a matter of safety when she is working with something sharp or hot she does. New thing she learned: why it is important and how to heat cream before adding it to simmering soup. She has tempered eggs before but this was the first time we have added cream like this.

The recipe I used for this soup is found here. The only thing I changed was the fact that I used a quart jar of canned tomatoes from my Dad's garden and to smooth out the tomatoes I used and immersion blender before adding the cream. This was an easy recipe to make and simple enough so that I know there will be no more canned tomato soup at my house!

This was the final plate. When we cooked her mother's birthday dinner back in September, she asked what kind of dinner it was. I wasn't sure what she meant so I answered a birthday dinner. She said no, it is a fancy dinner? The reason she wanted to know was that she wanted to use my china and a full table setting laid out with cloth napkins, ,silverware and the good glasses! Ever since then since she knows where the cloth napkins and napkin rings are she sets the table for every meal she eats with us! I do use my china often, especially on Sundays. She also discovered that I have lots of dishes to choose from so we have been having fun actually "plating" our dishes too. We are both having fun doing this too and I am using all my dishes a little more often.

I think she was happy with her end result! That soup was delicious and will be made here very often.