Chicken Wild Rice Soup and a Monsterous Grilled Cheese Sandwich

What is the best use of last Friday, which I had off? I thought and thought, and then invited 5 women over for lunch. Two accepted, one rejected, and two ignored the email completely. Then I got stood up by ALL FIVE! So I suppose I will have to do the eating of five women all by myself. Such is my life.... OK, OK. So little kids staying up all night crying might have played a part. The end result is that I ate with my hubilicious hubby instead of some girlfriends. My girlfriends, not his (just in case your eyebrow went up.)

First, chop up 1 cup of celery and shred 1 cup of carrots. Then lightly chop a can of mushrooms.
There. Most of the work is done. Put this in 2 quarts of chicken broth and simmer until the veges are tender. Meanwhile, cook a couple of chicken breasts in boiling water and steam 2 cups of wild rice. When the veges are tender, mix 1/4 C of butter with 1/4 C of flour and whisk it into the veges. Then whisk in a can of cream of mushroom soup. Then add 2 C of wild rice and the chopped chicken. That's it! We have a special place in our hearts for this soup because we had it at our wedding reception. And because it is yummy. And because it is easy. And because it is healthy if you pretend it doesn't have cream of mushroom soup, which I will.

Then it's time to make a sandwich. Anybody up for grilled cheese?

I couldn't leave well enough alone, so I decided to add some turkey. The book "Why We Eat More Than We Think" says that if we want to eat less, make a sandwich with less meat and cheese, but really load up on the veges, and you won't even miss the extra meat and/or cheese.

So I am using 2 deli slices of turkey and sauteing some green peppers and jalapenos. It took too long on the stove, so I had to finish the job in the microwave. I mean....five minutes!? Who has time like that...

And here is the sandwich as it is finishing grilling. Hurry up and finish already! I am hungry!

Oh, yeah. Come to big mama. Big mama reminds me of the song in Chicago "When You're Good to Mama" which will be my theme song when I have kids at home.

This sandwich is so big. Look at it! It is a tall as the soup bowl! I only ate 5 bites of soup and half the sandwich before I had to stop. Kevin says that next time, 1 jalapeno will be enough, and that 2 made it too hot. (He ate 1/4 of the sandwich when I just couldn't finish it.)

Chicken Wild Rice Soup

2 quarts (8 cups) chicken broth

1 c celery, diced

1 c carrots, shredded

1/2 c. onions, chopped (or a small handful food storage onions)

1 t parsley flakes

1 t thyme

1/4 t garlic powder

1/4 c butter

1/4 c flour

1 can cream of mushroom soup

3 c cooked wild rice

2 c cooked chicken, cubed

Combine the ingredients through the garlic powder in a large saucepan. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to a simmer and cover for 30 minutes. In a small bowl, melt the butter and stir in the flour to make a paste. Gradually add to the soup. Whisk in the cream of mushroom soup. Turn up the heat for a few minutes, until thickened. Add the rice and cubed chicken and serve.

Shrimp Salsa Bisque

Last week I worked overtime three days and had a yoga class on another night, which meant I had to bring lunch, dinner, and two snacks with me every night except once.

On Monday I went home early to spend some time with Kevin, and got home just in time to remember that Kevin was fishing. So I felt sorry for myself and caught up on my library books instead of making some food to bring to work. Uggg....we had no food in the house so I had to resort to toasted peanut butter and banana sandwiches more than once. It would be an incredible hardship to have to eat the same fare again all this week, so I tried this shrimp bisque recipe.

Cut up the shrimp into bite sized pieces. Doesn't it look so bright and colorful?

The shrimp is ready to go into the soup.

Take it from a girl who knows: don't put your plastic cutting board on a hot burner.

Shrimp Salsa Bisque

1 18 oz can crushed tomatoes

1 can tomato sauce

4 cups water

1 lb cooked shrimp, shelled and cut into bite sized chunks

1 red bell pepper (or green)

2 jalapeno peppers

1/2 onion

1/4 C fresh cilantro

1 t oregano

1/2 t cumin

1 C sour cream

1 T sugar

2 C cooked rice (or barley)

Pour the tomatoes, and their juice, in a soup pot. Bring to a boil then reduce to a simmer. Remove the seeds from the peppers and chop them and the onion. Place in a blender with the cilantro, oregano, and cumin. Pulse until finely pureed. Add to the soup, stir to blend, and add the shrimp. Warm 5-10 minutes. Whisk in sour cream and sugar. Put a spoonful of rice in a bowl and ladle the soup over the top.

White Chicken Chili

We've got beans. Bunches and bunches of them. Right before Christmas we ran out of beans in the freezer. We usually cook up a couple of pounds and freeze them in sandwich sized bags. I went downstairs to the food storage closet and *GASP* there were no more black beans. How could this be? Immediately I called Amanda, my sister-in-law, and told her that I absolutely needed some beans. Would she pick them up from the bean mill for me? I wasn't playing games - I needed 50 pounds of white beans, 50 pounds of red beans, and 100 pounds of black beans. Now we have our year's supply of beans, and now we are in dire need of some recipes to actually use them.

As it turns out, the black beans weren't ready so we still don't have them. It makes me tear up a little. *sniff*

I have been wanting to try a white chicken chili for awhile. We were both leery of it because chili just isn't chili if it doesn't have any chili powder. Alas, we had to leave our preconceived notions behind and take a leap of faith in our bean-using adventure.

This is a simple recipe. Basically, you throw all the spices together, let it simmer, and then throw in the beans and chicken. One bite and we realized that it is really very good. Really really. The cumin, which I usually don't like, gives it a familiar chili flavor, and it is very filling.

Here is the original recipe.

White Chicken Chili

1 small handful food storage onions, or 1 small onion
1 can chopped green chili peppers
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper
3 cups chicken broth

2 cooked chicken breasts
3-4 cups cooked white beans (or 3 cans)
1/3 cup shredded white cheese (I used mozzarella)

1/8 cup parmesan cheese

Bring a pot of water to a boil and throw in the frozen chicken breasts. You do not need to thaw them first. Let them boil for a few minutes, until they are white all the way through. Then chop them into bite sized cubes.

If you are using a fresh onion, saute it in a little oil. Otherwise, put the food storage onions, green chilies, cumin, oregano, cayenne pepper and chicken broth in a soup pot and let it boil a few minutes. Throw in the beans, chicken, and cheese and stir it up. Heat everything thoroughly then take it off the burner. Alternately, you can add cheese to just your own bowl.

Manhattan Clam Chowder

The first time I ate clam chowder I had the misfortune of getting some dirt in my bowl. It was from the cafeteria at work, and I was already leery of that food. Then it happened again - and again - and again. EVERY time I somehow ended up with a little bit of dirt in my bowl. Granted, I grew up in a home where we ate red meat, so I wasn't used to a lot of meaty flavors or textures. In fact, the first time I cooked chicken (in middle school) I completely freaked out when it started to turn white. Luckily, Kristin's boyfriend was there to tell us it was just starting to cook. *WHEW* That was a disaster barely averted.

Anyway, back to the clam chowder. In 1939 the good people of Maine were so upset when they heard of a tomato based clam chowder that they proposed a bill to outlaw tomatoes in clam chowder. When I heard that, the rebel in me perked up her ears, and here we are - making Manhattan Clam Chowder. It is my first time eating the Manhattan version, so I am not sure how it compares to other recipes, but this one is pretty darn good. It comes from Dr. Mirkin's website. . .

This is really more like clam stew. It doesn't sound as good as the word "chowder" but when I hear "chowder" I think of a thick, creamy soup. This is beef stew where all the beef has been usurped by clams.

Don't they look funny in the can? I had one can of chopped and one can of minced and upon close inspection, I can't tell the difference. If you don't like the grainy texture of clams, give them a few taste tests. They grow on you until you feel sad when you don't get a grainy bite.

Manhattan Clam Chowder

3 C chicken or fish bouillon

2 carrots, chopped

2 stalks celery, chopped

1 C potato, chopped

2 cans of stewed tomatoes

1 t oregano

pinch cayenne

1/2 C barley, cooked

2 cans green beans

2 cans chopped clams and their juice

Combine the bouillon, carrots, celery, potato, tomatoes, oregano, cayenne and barley and simmer until the vegetables are tender. Add the green beans and the clams with their juice and heat about 5 minutes until warm. Revel in the knowledge that you are a wild, crazy rebel as you savor each bite. Then hope you get to travel to Maine someday to eat the blueberries. Make a mental note to not mention MANHATTAN clam chowder when you are there.

Black Bean and Steak Chili

The snow calls for something warm and hearty. A big pot of chili and some mini cornbread muffins are just the ticket to satisfaction through the storm.

At our house we have a strange problem. Two years ago we started buying our beef from a rancher in Iowa, who will sell us 1/4 a beef at a time. He butchers and then splits all the cuts into 4 sections so everyone gets the same amount of each cut. It takes us a solid year to eat it. This year we got it in May and the hamburger is almost gone - but the freezer is overflowing with steak and roasts. What to do, what to do? We had better start eating more steak.

Clarinda, Kevin's friend who introduced him to the church, made steak chili for him once, and he decided to make it for us so. Just so you don't get the wrong idea, Clarinda is my friend, too. And why wouldn't she be? She is wonderful. And if she hadn't been Kevin's friend, Kevin and I may have never left. Yes, we owe a lot to the lovely Clarinda. But she was Kevin's friend before I even knew her, so she is listed as "Kevin's Friend."



Here is the whole pot before it simmers down. It thickens and darkens as it simmers.

Isn't this little cornbread muffin the cutest thing you've ever seen? I will refrain from giving you the recipe because, quite frankly, it was a new recipe and not a big hit. We wanted to try a recipe that had pieces of whole corn in it, and this one turned out to be mostly corn and only a little bit of cornbread. Bluuck.

Grill the steak and cut it into very, very small pieces. You don't want to get a bite of nothing but steak. Kevin calls it 'nibble size.'

Black Bean and Steak Chili
2 - 6 ounce steaks, grilled and diced

2 sandwich bags of frozen roasted tomato puree - or 2 cans of tomatoes, 1 chopped red or green pepper, and 1 chopped onion

2 cans black beans, or 3 cups cooked black beans

2 T chili powder

1 T paprika

1 t salt

dash cayenne

Add tomatoes, pepper and onions to large pot and simmer until tender. Then add everything except the beans. If you are using the roasted tomato puree, add everything except beans to the pot. Let it simmer for 30 minutes on medium heat. Add beans and continue to simmer long enough to heat them thoroughly. Add water to desired thickness.

Turkey Noodle Soup

What do you do with the leftover turkey? Make soup, of course!

Sometimes noodle recipes call for salt, but I don't like to knead noodle dough with salt because it cuts into my hands. Salt the water instead. Also, the standard is to use 1 egg for each person, but I think that is too much. 1/2 egg is more like it. It really isn't an exact science - you can have wildly different ratios of eggs to flour and they will still be perfect.

The noodle sheet should be smooth and elastic - but it doesn't have to be perfectly square.

When the noodles come out, just put them on a dowel and let 'em hang while you finish the rest of the noodles.

Here they are - hanging around and waiting for you to use them. The best thing about fresh noodles is how tender and fluffy they are.

Turkey Noodle Soup

2 carrots, diced

3 stalks celery, diced

3 T food storage onions

1-2 C turkey

2 T chicken broth

sea salt

noodles made from 2 eggs

Cover the turkey carcass in water and boil a couple of hours. Strain and put everything except the noodles into the turkey water and cook on low. Make the noodles while the veges cook. Turn up the heat and let it come to a boil right before you finish the noodles. Add the noodles and boil 3-5 minutes until they are tender.

Noodles

2 eggs

2 T water

2-3 C whole wheat pastry flour, whole wheat flour, or all purpose flour

Beat the eggs lightly with the water and mix with 1-2 cups of flour. Knead lightly, adding more flour until it creates a firm ball. Press it into a flat disk and run it through the noodle maker. Keep folding the noodle sheet and running it through, creating thinner sheets until it is smooth and elastic and fairly thin. I usually stop at setting #4. Then run it through the fat noodle cutter. If you don't have a noodle maker, come to my house and make them, or roll out the dough and cut it into 1/4 inch strips with a butter knife.

Bean and Ham and Bean Soup

A ham bone had been sitting in the fridge for a few days, and I had promised that I would use it, and demanded that I absolutely did not want it thrown out. So I finally decided that I would have to make good on my promise and make some soup. It was about 9 PM when I started.

Drat! We were out of white beans. Oh, wait! There was one bag hiding at the bottom of the bean pile in the freezer. It was 2 pounds, and the recipe I had called for just 1 pound, but I used the whole thing anyways. After all, soup is very tolerant to tweaking.

Then I brought the beans to a boil, rinsed them off, and threw everything into a crock pot. At noon the next day Kevin emailed, "This has got to be the best Bean and Ham soup I have ever had. Got to go get more... Bye!" I smiled when I read it. He's the best. And he was right - it was "bean and ham" and not "ham and bean." There were a whole lot more beans than ham. It's healthier that way.

If you have a bunch of friends, it would be great to invite them over for this. The soup is good and all, but ham and bean soup just isn't something you eat as leftovers for days on end. Or, if you ARE the kind of person to do that, nobody else probably wants to be around you much. And they probably call you "Stinky Stinker" behind your back.

Ham and Bean Soup in the Crock Pot
8 C water
1-2 pounds white beans, sorted and rinsed
1 T lemon juice
1 T honey - optional
1 bay leaf
1 handful of food storage onions (or 1 onion chopped)
1 ham bone with a bit of meat on it
1-2 C chopped cooked ham

Rinse and sort the beans, then throw them in a pot with a teaspoon of baking soda. Bring it to a boil, then rinse the beans. Then rinse them again. Get 'em good and extra rinsed. Then add everything to the crock pot and let it cook on low either overnight or all day, up to 12 hours. Remove the bay leaf before serving.

Phenomenal Lentil Soup

Did I just say LENTIL soup is yummy? It absolutely is. It freezes well, keeps quite a while in the fridge, and has a savory heartiness that satisfies your hunger.

In fact, I brought some to work and Kevin S. ate some and said:

"You're the best, this stuff is phenomenal!" (that's where the title of the post comes from)
to which I replied, "And who'd a thunk that it was super healthy, too!"
He responded, "No kidding, I still don't believe that."

So there you have it. A meatatarian has pronounced lentil soup as good enough to eat. Just so there is no confusion, my husband Kevin did not say that. He won't touch this stuff. Kevin S. is a coworker. But Kevin my husband is missing out on oh-so-much delight, waiting to happen right in his mouth.

When you are making this, the saffron yogurt is really worth the effort of finding some saffron. If you make it in advance, the yogurt will take on more color and turn a rich yellowish orange. Get Spanish saffron but not Mexican saffron. I don't know what the difference is, but the Soup Peddler said it, so it must be true. In the cities, go to Trader Joe's for super cheap saffron.

Here is the pot of soup right before I added the kale.

And here it is when it is finished and screaming to be scooped into your bowl and eaten just as quickly as possible.

Lentil Soup

2 cups black beluga lentils (or green French lentils), picked over and rinsed

1 handful dried food storage onions (or saute 1 chopped onion)

1 teaspoon fine-grain sea salt

1 28-ounce can crushed tomatoes

2 cups water

2 T beef bouillon

3 cups of a big leafy green (chard, kale, etc), rinsed well, deveined, finely chopped

Saffron Yogurt

pinch of saffron (30-40 threads)

1 tablespoon boiling water

two pinches of salt

1/2 cup plain yogurt

Bring 6 cups of water to a boil in a large saucepan, add the lentils, and cook for about 20 minutes, or until tender. Drain and set aside.

While the lentils are cooking (or the night before if you think about it), make the saffron yogurt by combining the saffron threads and boiling water in a tiny cup. Let the saffron steep for a few minutes. Now stir the saffron along with the liquid into the yogurt. Mix in the salt and set aside.

In a heavy soup pot over medium heat, add the onions, salt, tomatoes, lentils, and water and cook for a few minutes, letting the soup come to a simmer. Stir in the chopped greens, and wait another minute. Taste and adjust the seasoning. Ladle into bowls, and serve with a handful of shredded cheese and a dollop of the saffron yogurt.

Roasted Tomato Soup

Have you been to 101cookbooks.com? It is amazing. Heidi uses a lot of whole grains and everything I have made from her site has been delicious. This soup recipe is no different. I altered it slightly because I didn't have as many tomatoes.

3 tomatoes, quartered
1 onion, quartered
1 red pepper, seeded and quartered.

Put it on parchment paper, skin side down, spray oil on everything, and sprinkle it with salt. Then throw it in the oven at 350 for 45 minutes. Then blend it with a stick blender and add 2-3 cups of chicken broth and 1 teaspoon paprika.

Kevin took his bowl, said that he doesn't like tomato soup but that he would eat it anyways. A few bites later he said it was pretty good for tomato soup. Then he said it was the best tomato soup he had ever had. Then he started listing all the things we could put it in: a base for chili, in lentil soup, and taco soup. The possibilities are endless.

Then we went back to the farmers market and bought a whole box of tomatoes. It took 6 jelly roll pans for all the tomatoes. Then it took 4 more pans of peppers and onions. We were exhausted and our house smelled like soup all weekend.

Try not to groan too loudly when you eat this. What will the neighbors think?