A warming soup for a cold day

 

It's such a cold day here!  It is 24º with winds of 8 mph (the wind is actually dying down a bit) so the "feels like" temperature is 15º.  I just walked to the mailbox and back and the wood fire felt so cozy when I came back inside.  It'll be a good night for the soup I have planned! I've posted about this soup before but have never actually shared the recipe. 

I found this recipe --- Fiesta Sweet Potato Soup -- in a Quick Cooking magazine over a decade ago.   I've posted links to the recipe on Taste of Home whenever I have blogged about it.  So today, I wanted to find the recipe and clicked on one of those links and --- the recipe isn't there any more!  

It may well have been renamed, but after spending some time searching I decided to see if I had saved the recipe elsewhere.  Sure enough, I found a pdf I had saved.  So I took a screenshot, and here are the ingredients and directions for this delicious, very warming soup:

If you double-click you will be able to see a larger version.

Hope you enjoy this if you try it!  I'm so happy that the recipe is not entirely lost to me.

Christmas Eve Soup, take two or three

 

 For decades we have used the same recipe for Christmas Eve Soup.  I've tweaked it a bit over the years so it is never exactly the same.  In 2021 I tried a recipe that I actually like a lot better, that tastes just the same only better.  I'd forgotten that I had posted about this over on my other blog in 2021, so having started this post I am just going to copy and paste here, and hope no one minds.  (That one had no comments on it, so it's possible no one even read it! 😀

"Our Christmas Eve Soup is just a simple creamy potato soup with some carrots and celery included, and with crumbled bacon and shredded Cheddar cheese to sprinkle on top.  We used to always serve it with biscuit, rolls, corn muffins or some other type of bread.  In more recent years we have often served it with pizza.  You can find the recipe here: Christmas Eve Soup.

This year I am going to tweak it just a bit.  A month or so ago, I tried a recipe from a Gooseberry Patch cookbook, Sunday Dinner at Grandma's.  This happens to be a cookbook which I received for free in exchange for having a recipe published in it.   You can also find it here at  Gooseberry Patch.  (Interestingly, it was a soup recipe that I had published in this book -- Cream of Broccoli Soup!)

The recipe I tried recently, though, is Grandma Jo's Potato Soup.  Interestingly, the ingredients are almost exactly the same as our Christmas Eve Soup.  But this soup was much tastier!  What is the difference?  I've scanned the page from the cookbook to show you.

 My usual recipe calls for light cream; this one calls for evaporated milk.  The only other difference is that this calls for "onion and garlic seasoned salt".  I didn't have any of that, but I did have a container of garlic pepper seasoned salt, so I liberally added that to taste.    This added zesty seasoning, plus the creaminess from the evaporated milk, has to make the difference."

So this year, when we celebrated "Christmas Eve" for adult granddaughters last night,  I again served Grandma Jo's Potato Soup instead of my usual.  And I tweaked it even more in that I used a can of carrots instead of cooking fresh carrots along with the potatoes, celery, and onion.  I added the carrots near the end, at the same time as the evaporated milk, so they wouldn't break up too much, being already cooked.  I like this much better than fresh carrots, and it's so easy. 

* The illustration at top is a scan of one of my very favorite Christmas cards, which features the Fred Swan painting Walking to Town.  To me it just says "Christmas Eve".  I actually have a cross-stitch kit of this design.  Maybe this year I will actually get to it! *

A quick soup to make on a busy night

 We eat a lot of soup at our house, especially in the winter.  It's also a great supper choice for the busy Christmas season.  The soup of the day will stay hot either in a slow cooker or on the stovetop, or can be easily reheated if necessary.  With any soup, I usually just serve something very simple, like bread, cornbread, or biscuits. 

In 2013 I tried (and blogged about on my Kitchen Table blog) this Quick Bean Soup recipe which I had copied down in my handwritten cookbook but had never previously tried.  It was from a Country Woman magazine over 20 years ago.  We really liked this soup a lot.  This time, I used a wonderful smoked kielbasa (and only half the amount called for) and it was still delicious.  It really was easy and quick to prepare other than chopping and slicing the vegetables, which took a little time.  Another thing I did this time was to leave out the carrots and use cubed winter squash instead.  It was outstanding! The recipe makes a lot, but if you have a larger family it looks as if it could very easily be doubled. 

Hope you enjoy this hearty soup if you try it!  This soup is so easy and delicious that I'm sure my readers will forgive me for having previously published it at my other blog.  What is your family's favorite winter soup?

The slow cooker is our friend this time of year

Forgotten Jambalaya from Taste of Home

Yes, indeed it is!

I  frequently use the slow cooker to prepare supper during the busy month of December.   I rely on my slow cooker so much during any busy season, but I find it invaluable in the weeks leading up to Christmas.  I can put supper in the cooker on any busy day, even if I plan to be home all day.  I can then spend my day crafting, cleaning, decorating, card-writing, gift wrapping, or whatever happens to be on my agenda, while supper cooks all by itself.

One of my favorite strategies in the past was to bake a loaf of bread in the bread machine at the same time I had a soup going in the crockpot.  What a time-saver!  Sadly, my bread machine stopped working -- well, it would still work for dough but would no longer bake bread properly -- so I threw it away.  With trying to eat less gluten, not to mention less bread, I made the decision not to replace it.  But it's a strategy that might still work for you and your family.  There are loads of soup recipes on my Kitchen Table blog (link in sidebar) and lots of bread machine recipes too.

Lately, I am more likely to make slow cooker dishes that are a meal in one, including vegetables.

Here are a few favorites:

Rosemary Chicken with White Beans

Tex-Mex Quinoa Casserole -- a very flavorful meatless recipe.

Slow Cooker Sweet & Sour Pork.  We seldom eat pork anymore, but this was a favorite.  The photo, obviously, is just a generic one of Chinese take-out.

Forgotten Jambalaya - pictured at top of post.
Sunday Chicken Supper, pictured below.  You can certainly use boneless chicken if preferred.

If you would like more slow cooker recipes, there are many of them on my Kitchen Table blog.  Just head over there (link is in the sidebar) and click on "slow cooker recipes" in the label cloud.  You will find a large variety to choose from, and I think you will be pleasantly surprised at how much of a friend your slow cooker will be during this busy time of year.

Crunch time for Christmas crafting

Yes, indeed!  Many will remember my hubby's common-sense directive that all handcrafted Christmas gifts need to be finished by December 1.  For that reason I have made very few handmade gifts the past couple of years.

This year I really felt differently.  It was on my heart to make a few simple gifts for the Nevada grands, so far away.  I also wanted to make a couple of very simple items for my two daughters.  And then, wouldn't you know, I signed up to take part in an ornament exchange!

I'm not worried about that.  I have a handmade ornament or two on hand,  and plenty of things I can easily embellish if I choose to make something new.

But it's crunch time on the handmade gifts.  Out of 8 simple things that I wanted to make, I have one completed (and a second one started).  And eleven days before December 1!  I'm really going to have to work diligently to get those completed in the allotted time.

To that end, I'm rethinking my meals for this week and next.  I think the crockpot is going to be coming into play a LOT between now and December 1, and our meals (other than Thanksgiving) are going to be extremely simple.

Here's what we're having tonight:

TORTILLA ENCHILADA SOUP

4 cups chicken broth
2 cans chicken with rice soup
1 small boneless skinless chicken breast (frozen is fine)
1 cup salsa or picante sauce
1 can red enchilada sauce
Flour tortillas
Shredded cheddar cheese OR cubes of velveeta-type cheese

In crock pot combine the broth, soup, chicken breast, salsa, and enchilada sauce. Cook on low for about 4 hours. Remove chicken breast from soup; shred it or cut in small pieces. Return to soup.

When ready to eat, cut flour tortillas into strips (scissors work best for this).

Put tortilla strips in each bowl and ladle the hot soup on top. Top with shredded cheddar or cubed velveeta.

About 6 servings.

How about you?  Are your handmade gifts completed?  Do you have any helpful tips for time management and/or easy meals during this crunch time?

Zesty Potato Soup

Photo from Taste of Home

I tried this recipe sometime last winter and filed it away to share in December, so here it is: Zesty Potato Soup.    I think I originally found the recipe in an early issue of Quick Cooking.  The picture looks so familiar, I think it may even have been on the cover of the magazine.

This soup is very easy to make and takes basic ingredients.  If you don't ordinarily keep chopped green chiles on hand, you will want to buy some for this recipe.  (I do try to keep them on hand, myself.) This is a very warming soup for cold December nights.  Tonight is predicted to be around 0º and it's already down to around 10º -- chilly indeed!  If I didn't already have our supper in the oven, I would be whipping up a batch of this soup.  I hope you enjoy the soup if you try the recipe.

Suppertime in the Christmas kitchen

Photo from Taste of Home

I know I've mentioned this before, but the slow cooker is one of my favorite and most hardworking helpers in the Christmas kitchen. Many, many days I will put a slow-cooker meal (most often soup) together in the morning and it will just cook happily away while I do other necessary,  and often more interesting, things.  If it's soup, then I just bake a quick side like cornbread or biscuits during the half hour or so before supper, and we are all set.

Last night was just such a night.  The things I had to do during the day included taking down my fall decor and putting up the beginnings of Christmas -- just enough to begin to look a little bit festive.  And then I also spent time at my dad's and did a bunch of other necessary tasks.  No crafting got done except a bit of crocheting during a phone call, but with the busyness of the day otherwise I was thankful that supper was taken care of.  This is the recipe I used for the soup: Fiesta Sweet Potato Soup.  It's delicious!

For an accompaniment, I made Iron Skillet Biscuits which are a new favorite recipe of ours. I didn't make them in an iron skillet, but in a black speckled 9-inch square pan.  This time I did try making them gluten free with the Bob's 1-to-1 baking flour, but the texture wasn't as good.  I'd previously tried using 1 cup of regular flour and one cup of the Bob's 1-to-1, with great success, but I really need them to be gluten free for the sake of my joints, so I'd probably make them with all 1-to-1 again.  As my husband pointed out, they were a lot better than no biscuits.  And he's right.

Do give these biscuits a try.  They taste a lot like Cracker Barrel's biscuits, but are actually even better, I think.  And they use a minimum of ingredients, which is nice too.

What about you?  Is your slow cooker already one of your kitchen helpers?  If not, give it some thought.  It could free up some time for you as it does for me.  And, if you do use your slow cooker more during this busy season, maybe you have some recipes to share.  I would love to see them!

A nice soup for Christmas Eve

Yesterday I tried a recipe for Crockpot Seafood Chowder for the potluck at church.  It was actually one I first tried from Quick Cooking magazine about 10 years ago and had forgotten about.

We liked this a lot and I think it would make a wonderful meal for Christmas Eve, with a simple accompaniment like raw vegetables and breadsticks ... something like that.  Easy, too ... it could be simmering all afternoon while you enjoy doing other Christmasy things.




I do need to add that I changed some things about the recipe.  First of all, and most important, so pay attention:  One of the reviews at the site mentioned the vegetables not getting cooked enough; too crunchy.  I did cook it quite a bit longer; around 3 hours on High to start with, and then about 3 hours on Low.  So you would probably want to do that, too.

I also changed some things with the ingredients.  We sliced the carrots rather than chopping them fine, and cut the potatoes in cubes about 1/2-inch to 3/4-inch square.  I left out the imitation crab completely; I did buy it and intended to add it, but after the other seafood was in it didn't seem necessary, so I left it out.  I used a 6-ounce bag of frozen salad shrimp rather than the can of shrimp, so the shrimp were larger and seemed like more.  Also, I just added the seafood right at the beginning rather than waiting.  I had intended to garnish with packaged bacon bits, but we had bacon left from breakfast so I just crumbled that on top..  We found this to be quite flavorful.  I guess the canned soups add enough flavor.  And it was creamy without being cloyingly thick as some seafood chowders are.

 


If I didn't already have a default Christmas Eve soup recipe, I would be making this for Christmas Eve!  Maybe your family would like to try it, too.