Risotto Soup

It's so cold out right now.

Seriously.  Our highs this week barely hit the double digits.  On weeks like this, it's hard to avoid soups.  Delicious, delicious soups.  I could definitely live on soup.

One of my favorite soups to whip up for myself for lunch is Risotto Soup.  It's simple, takes very few ingredients, and is quick to throw together.  It's also decadent, rich, and filling.

Turkey Gumbo

Thanksgiving is almost upon us, and my friends are already teasing me, because I've been stocking up on turkeys.  Right now, I baked one last week, have one thawing in my fridge, and have 4 more in the garage freezer.  Crazy about turkey?  Meh.  More like crazy about turkey gumbo!

Butternut Pear Soup

We've been getting a lot of butternut squash from our CSA lately.  Like one or two a week.  Which is fantastic, don't get me wrong, but I'm not a huge squash fan.  So putting it to good use is a huge task for me.  I'm really trying to think outside the box and find ways to prepare it that make my tastebuds dance with excitement, and this soup is one of those recipes.

Posole Verde - Ancient Comfort Food

Days are getting colder, and I kind of love that, because it means more baking and casseroles and soups and stews and...well, let's just say that I love warming up in my kitchen.

Lately, I've been on an intense flavor kick.  A little bit is not enough.  Spices, herbs, acidity...I'm craving it all.  And that doesn't always translate for the younger members of the household, but lately they've been troopers about trying new dishes and flavors that they might not be used to.

A couple of weeks ago, inspired by some tomatillos that my friend Amy of Amy's Organic's gave us when we picked up our apple CSA haul, I decided to pull out a dish that I had made a long time ago.  One that was all right, but needed tweaking, and I had just never gotten back to it. Posole Verde.  

CSA Share - Spring Week 3 and Unlimited Potential Spinach

In this week's CSA, we're starting to see a bit more color!  Along with a ton of green, that is.  And I was so excited for the new veggies!

We got massive bags of both spinach and lettuce, radishes, bok choy, beets, and sugar snap peas.

Soup or Salad? Why Not Both?

If you read my CSA post for this week, you know that I said I had a TON of lettuce in our share.  I may have been exaggerating.  It was not an actual ton of lettuce.  That would have been crazy.  But it was a huge amount of lettuce.  Just over a pound of lettuce leaves.  Which may not sound like a lot, but after serving salad to my family of 5 twice and still having more than half the bag left, I realized that a pound is quite a bit of lettuce.

So, what to do with an excess of lettuce?  It doesn't keep forever, and it doesn't freeze well.  But, surprisingly, it does make a delicious soup.

Souper Douper: Pasta e Fagioli

What makes soup good?  I'm sure it differs for everyone, but I have some high soup standards.  It should be warming, comforting, and tasty.  Good soups have layers of flavor and texture.  It can be hard to get that done quickly.  This Italian bean soup recipe manages to layer the flavor without taking hours of simmering.

I based it on a Giada De Laurentiis recipe for pasta e fagioli.  It's a great lunchtime soup, terrific with a slice of warm bread and a salad.  My kids like to dip, so the bread is a must around here, and Costco carries a great natural frozen french bread that can be in and out of the oven in the time it takes to make a pot of this pasta e fagioli.

Celebrating Sochi with some Boozy Borscht!

So, in case you haven't heard, there's some winter Olympics going on in Russia right now...

Also in recent news, my hubby bought me a great little recipe book called Apothecary Cocktails: Restorative Drinks from Yesterday and Today for this past Christmas, and I've really been enjoying trying some of the concoctions in it.  One, in particular, seemed like a perfect fit for this event: Roasted Beet Borscht with Sour Cream and Vodka.  I mean, ALL THE RUSSIANNESS!!!!

Cook it Once, Cook it Twice, Cooking Chicken Soup...

Okay, so, if you read the last post, you now have a pretty good recipe for a roasted chicken.  If your house is anything like mine, when you're done with it, you might not have much left except for the bones.  You could throw them away, or you could use them to make even more yumminess by making some chicken stock.

My apologies in advance, but I don't have pictures for the stock part.  It's something that I generally throw together without even really thinking about it, much less about taking pictures to blog.  I'll have photos of the good stuff, I promise.  You'll have to use your imagination on the stock for now.

Really quick, for those of you wondering about the difference between stock and broth, from what I understand, broth is made with scraps and meat as well as bones, whereas stock is usually more just the bones.  This means broth is usually a little richer and deeper in flavor.  Lesson of the day.

Paprika and Pierogi: Hungarian Chicken Stew

Baby, it's cold outside.  Really, really cold.  Which makes it stew weather.

Stews are great.  They are warm and filling, like a cozy blanket for your insides.  I love curling up with a bowl of savory goodness and watching the snow fall from the comfort of my warm kitchen.

This chicken stew is one of the favorites around my house, as far as stews go.  Probably because of the pierogi.  I mean, you can't go wrong with a good pierogi.  They're potatoes wrapped in pasta...I could practically live in them and die of carb happiness.  I'm not going to lie to you here, homemade pierogi are amazing.  I used to work as a teacher in an area in the city that had a large concentration of Polish immigrants, and I have tasted some fantastic pierogi.  Thank goodness for cultures that like to feed the people who teach their children!  However, also from personal experience, making homemade pierogi is not the easiest process.  And, as much as I like spending all day in the kitchen, I also like meals that you can get on the table in a decent amount of time on busy days.  Fortunately, there are a lot of good natural brands of pierogi in the freezers of grocery stores these days.  Not quite as good as homemade, but still pretty darn delicious.  Peter and Pat's pierogi are the ones I've been using lately, after discovering them at a Sam's Club exhibit thing.  For this recipe, I would go with either onion or cheddar pierogi.

Okay, I got a bit ahead of myself there.  Let's get to the stew.

Takin' Care of Business

Please tell me that I'm not the only crazy person with a huge stack (okay, let's be honest, stacks) of recipes clipped out of magazines and papers and such.  Mine have gotten out of control.  So, after having a long weekend and seeing as how the first snow fell here yesterday, I'm ready to dig in and start trying some of them in hopes of thinning out or *gasp* organizing the mass.

Here's what I'm hoping to try this week:

Tuscan Sausage, Potato, and Kale Soup

Cold weather is on its way.  I mean, unless you live somewhere near the equator, where it's pretty warm all year.  Or if you're reading this in spring, for some reason.  Or if you've totally bought into global warming so much that you don't think it gets cold anymore.  Or if you're somewhere like Australia, where the seasons are opposite ours here in the American Midwest.  Here, cold weather is on the way.

You need to have some soup recipes in your back pocket.  Soup is amazing.  It can be warm and soothing, and while you can spend a whole day (or more!) on building flavors, there are some great soups that you can make in that 30-minute time frame that everyone's so enamored with.