Broccoli Grilled Cheese

I needed a quick and easy dinner idea because I was exhausted and not looking for anything where I would have to follow more than say, 2 steps. We had some tomato soup (from Ruby's!) to use up so I decided on grilled cheese, tomato soup, and fries. Non of this sounded very healthy. I don't think tomato soup can count as a vegetable unless you make it from scratch. I needed a vegetable. I'm not a big fan of just eating a little pile of peas on my plate (but I do it sometimes and I do it for my toddler regularly) but I also try to incorporate a vegetable into the dinner somehow.

I considered adding something to the soup but I didn't want it too chunky since my husband likes to dip his sandwich into the soup. After hopping on Pinterest, I found this idea: adding broccoli to the sandwich! It's so simple yet brilliant. Broccoli and cheese are always a good combination. How did I not come up with this on my own?? I have added tomato slices to grilled cheese before but tomatoes are kind of juicier than I'd like and I can totally taste the tomato. With this broccoli recipe, you can barely taste the broccoli at all!

Basically, all you do is cook up some broccoli, chop it small, and add it to the grilled cheese.Do be sure to drain it well after cooking because any leftover water will make for a juicy sandwich. For the adult sandwiches, I use two slices of cheese so I put the broccoli in between the two slices so the melted cheese can hold it in while I flip it. For my toddler, I only use one slice of cheese so the flipping was a bit trickier but it still worked out (Not to toot my own horn but I should also mention I'm a pro at making grilled cheese. Everyone who has tried mine agrees that I make the best ones).

When giving the sandwich to a toddler, I cut it in half and then I cut those halves in thirds (like strips) so they can easily pick them up and eat them. However, be sure to wait a minute or two after cooking it before you cut it up so the cheese doesn't just ooze out everywhere.

Surprisingly, after watching us dip our stuff in our soup, my toddler also wanted to! She is behind in the whole toddlers-love-to-dip thing even when we have done it in front of her before. We didn't give her her own cup of soup though because that's just asking for a mess so we dipped hers in ours and she loved it! Definitely making this again!

Ham and Potato Soup

I love soup in the fall and winter! A big bowl of something hot to warm you up after raking leaves in the cold wind or shoveling snow. Now, I wasn't doing either of those things when I decided to make soup for dinner but this soup was delicious anyway!

For this recipe, I actually had everything on hand with a few adjustments. Here are the ingredients I used:

• 5 large russet potatoes, diced (this is part of the 50 pound bag we got from Ruby's pantry and when I say large, I mean as long as your hand)
• garlic powder, to taste
• onion powder, to taste
• 3 ish cups of mixed frozen vegetables (no need to thaw ahead of time)
• 2 cups of diced ham (we keep this in the freezer after chopping up a big ham since ham even comes precooked! very convenient!)
• 1 cup reduced sodium chicken broth (this was the last of my broth)
• 3 cups water with 3 chicken bouillon cubes
• 6 tablespoons butter
• 6 tablespoons flour
• 2 cups milk
• 2 cups monterrey jack cheese

I threw in the potatoes, frozen veggies, frozen ham, broth, and water (no bouillon yet) into a giant pot until it boiled. Because I started with so many frozen ingredients, this took a good 20 minutes. Then I added in the bouillon, garlic powder, and onion powder until the potatoes were done. Next, I made the cheese sauce and then stirred that in. It all came together very easy.

This soup was very hearty but I served it with bread anyway. I'll take any excuse to eat more bread! My mom and brother were in town and we all agreed that it could've used more ham. It probably didn't help that my toddler was picking ham out of all of our bowls but even in spite of that, I would add more ham. 

My mom also suggested using a sharp cheddar. The original recipe calls for that but I don't normally have that kind of cheese on hand so I probably wouldn't buy it special for this but I do admit, it might help. We all rated this an 8/10. Very good and easy dinner, just not what I would call quick. I will definitely make it again! 

Homemade Cream of Celery Soup

Today for lunch, I made cream of celery soup. I was a little leery of it because I wasn't sure how much of a meal it was going to be. I still don't think it had enough protein, since it just came from dairy products, but it was much better than I was expecting. It is definitely not the same as heating up a can of cream of celery soup and adding the milk or water. Even though I use the cans in recipes, eating them plain just seems too gross to me. Also, this recipe can easily be modified to make just about any cream of soup you want. It is of course more time consuming than opening up a can but because it tastes so much better and is arguably healthier, it might be worth it. However, by no means is this soup healthy. Yes, it has celery in it but that's about it. It also has lots of butter and other fats.

I made a few adjustments to the original recipe so I will write mine out for you.

Ingredients:

• 6 stalks of celery (non-organic but we don't buy organic anything), chopped small (and next time I will chop them even smaller)
• a couple shakes of garlic powder
• a couple shakes of onion powder (I got too lazy after chopping all the celery to find the energy to cut the onions too but I may change that for the future)
• I misread the directions and used 1/2 cup of butter instead of 1/4 and next time, I will cut it down (although this way was delicious too)
• 1/3 cup flour
• 1 1/2 cups of water with the chicken flavoring from a ramen mixed in (usually what we use for chicken broth)
• 1 cup 1% milk
• about 1/4 cup sour cream (to make it thicker since we didn't have cream or whole milk and we had this on hand)
• a pinch of salt (I was careful not to use too much because the ramen is so salty)
• a pinch of sugar

Then I followed the same directions as the original but I only simmered for 7 minutes instead of 15. I also turned the heat down to medium-low instead of medium because mine kept sticking. I think the full 15 minutes would've made it took thick.

The recipe said that it makes the equivalent of two cans of cream of soup but I have to disagree with this. We barely got 3 servings out of it (and that's food pyramid servings, not what people actually eat servings). It was very very good, even on its own and we will definitely make it again. We also think it might make a good sauce for something or be good if you add some potatoes. 

Pulled Pork

I apologize for not posting the last couple days. We were having internet issues (and unrelatedly, extreme cold temperatures).

At the grocery store, they had pork shoulder ribs on sale and we decided to get some. No recipe in mind, I decided to try them in the slow cooker. I didn't want them barbecued since we already have a lot of barbecued meat stocked up. I decided to make what's called Korean Ribs. To me, this means putting my 4.5 pounds of ribs in the slow cooker with 1 cup water, 1 cup brown sugar, and 1 cup soy sauce (basically the whole bottle). Because my ribs were frozen, I had them on high for an hour and then turned it down to low for another 8 hours (I timed this horribly and we ended up eating dinner around 8pm instead of our usual 5pm ish), turning over partway through.

It was so worth the wait! The ribs basically shredded themselves when you tried to turn them over. They had enough flavor on their own but since we were only eating a portion's worth before freezing the rest, we didn't want to season them too much. That night, we had them with a side of asparagus and mashed potatoes (both leftover from when we made lobster tails over the weekend. This was something we also found on sale and they are SO easy to cook!) Then we froze about half of the rest in individual containers for when Teeny is here and we want quick sandwiches and the rest went in a leftover container in the fridge.

As usual, we had no recipe in mind for the leftovers but figured we should put them in something, rather than eat them all plain. I found a recipe for Brunswick Stew (which I had actually never heard of before) and very very loosely based the soup I made on that. We used our pork (probably around 2 pounds worth, maybe a little more), a big jar of tomatoes (with their juice, fresh from David's Grandma's garden), 4 red potatoes (chopped), half an onion (chopped), 3 cups water (we wanted a broth and only have bouillon cubes. I only used two cubes instead of 3), corn (half a bag, frozen), paprika (a LOT, probably around 2 tablespoons), garlic (also probably around 2 tablespoons), and....I think that's everything. I was worried it was going to taste too much like chili, especially because we have already frozen some chili and I knew we'd be freezing this but it definitely turned out with a different flavor. It was really good! We basically just threw everything in the pot and let it simmer for an hour. This would've been another good recipe for the slow cooker but we used the stove top since it was already dinner time when we started (lately we've been having dinner later and later...)

So there you have it! Two amazing recipes to use both frozen pork ribs and leftover pork. Both gave us enough leftovers that now I am feeling more confident in the amount of meals we have frozen for when Teeny comes.

End of the Year Updates

I am back! David went back to work today. I find it really hard to get anything done when he's home just because we don't have a schedule anymore so my blogging kind of fell to the wayside. I apologize.

As always, the end of the year is a busy time but I managed to get a lot done! The main thing I am most proud of is reading 85 books in one year! Around the beginning of December, I had gotten sick and wasn't reading as adamantly as I was before and I got really behind. I managed to catch up and I finished two days early! My goal for this year is only 30 because with a baby, you never know what your day is going to be like. I doubt I'll be able to spend entire afternoons devouring books after Teeny is born.

I also sewed our curtain tie backs for the living room. I'm sorry I don't have a picture but maybe I will add one later. Since our curtains are gray and turquoise, I used turquoise fabric for the tie backs. You need almost a whole fat quarter, at least if you make them as wide as I did. I didn't taper them or curve them. They are just rectangles. I designed them after a headband I had made the previous night (that I'm also excited about!). I wanted them to be 2 inches wide with a quarter inch seam allowance so I cut three strips of 4.5 inches (I had three spots that needed a tie back). Then I folded them in half, sewed along the long, open side and flipped them. Then I ironed them with the seam down the middle of the back. The edges got folded in (to hide the raw edges) about a half inch (but you can do however much you like) and pressed. Instead of using interfacing, I top stitched a quarter inch around the entire thing (which will catch your folded in edges). Then I hand sewed on little plastic rings we had (you could also do d rings or anything similar) so they can hang on a hook by the window when you want them to hold the curtain. I think they look great and I regret not having a picture. They were really simple and a lot easier than what I found some other people doing online. Hopefully, the directions are clear enough.

We had the chance to freeze more meals before Teeny comes. We now have the quinoa with vegetables, chili, cream of potato soup with brats, and empanada filling. I'm hoping for more but this is a great start. For those of you interested, this is the empanada recipe I used (http://www.turntablekitchen.com/2012/02/argentinian-beef-empanadas-a-return-to-calm/) We did make a few changes and I would by no means call them authentic. Our dough wasn't working out (we only got 7 circles out of it anyway) so we decided to stack them (i.e., make a circle, fill it, put another circle on top and seal the edges) and that worked out better. We still ended up with a lot of extra filling and not enough dough (but that's fine because we just froze it). We didn't put an egg wash on top and we also left out the capers and the hard boiled eggs. It was still really good and we were really impressed with how they turned out.

I think that's enough updates for today. You can hopefully expect another blog post tomorrow and then returning to my regular schedule.

Magic Cabbage Soup

Over the weekend, David and I were sick. As I had mentioned last time I was sick (not that long ago!), pregnant people can hardly take ANYTHING to feel better. David can take whatever he wants and we even have lots of different options but he just doesn't for whatever reason. So I was looking for a soup recipe that would help us feel better. We didn't want anything spicy (even though it can help clear out the sinuses) and we're sick of chicken noodle. That is when I found cabbage soup.

We based it off the recipe found here and changed it to what we needed. Hers is actually vegan (depending on the broth you use) but it's lacking protein. You could just as easily use beans but we decided to use brats because we were unsure of the cabbage and knew that brats and cabbage tasted good together. We also used chicken bouillon (since that's what we had).

So here is what ours was.

• half yellow onion, chopped
• 1 head of garlic, minced
• 1 large cabbage head, chopped
• 5 large carrots, peeled and sliced
• 10 cups water (with 5 chicken bouillon cubes)
• 1 14.5 oz can of diced tomatoes with onion and garlic with liquid
• 1 frozen package of 6 Polish sausages, chopped 

Then we threw everything into a pot but the bouillon and the sausages. We didn't cook the onion ahead of time (and we even keep ours frozen so we don't cry when we cut it).  Then we waited for it to boil (high heat) and added the bouillon and the sausages, put a lid on it and let it simmer (low heat) for 20 minutes. The end! It's so simple. The prep isn't that bad (although truly David did all of it) and you can just leave it on the stove and walk away while it simmers.

Not only is this delicious (we decided even with our additions, it serves about 4 or 5 people, not 10-12) and easy to make but it's great at making you feel better. It feels really  nice on sore throats and does help clear out your sinuses.

We both decided we would eat this soup even when we aren't sick. It does seem like it would be a little bland without the flavor of the sausages and bouillon but that's just my opinion. When you're sick, you can't really taste anyway. If we made this just as a great soup to warm up with, we might add more seasonings (I was thinking Italian seasoning would probably be a great addition).

Beef Stroganoff With Cream of Mushroom Soup

I was looking for a way to use up sour cream I had bought on sale a couple weeks ago. I decided on stroganoff. David and I found a really good recipe for mushroom stroganoff a few years back but now that I require more protein (basically if I get anything less than 70 grams of protein a day, I feel really sick and can barely function. I'm hoping this goes away once Teeny is born because I find myself eating a lot of meat) we decided to look for a beef stroganoff recipe.

We asked David's mom for her recipe but after finding out that it takes an hour and a half just to simmer everything, closer to two hours for the whole recipe, we decided to search elsewhere. I know my mom uses cream of mushroom soup in hers so I looked up if Campbell's had a recipe and sure enough, they did! That's this recipe. We mostly followed it but didn't like some of their instructions so I'll rewrite it for you the way we did it.

1 pound round steak (we actually asked the guy behind the counter at the butcher part of our grocery store for his recommendation)
vegetable oil (we didn't measure since we pour it off later anyway but it was about three tablespoons)
1 medium onion, coarsely chopped
2 cans cream of mushroom soup (not diluted)
2 sprinkles of paprika
1 cup sour cream
1 box of medium shells (noodles), cooked (I recommend starting the water for these when you're slicing up the beef. We thought the beef would take longer to cook so we didn't start right away and they weren't done at the same time).

1. Cut up the beef. My parents usually use ground beef for this recipe but David's family's recipe uses the round steak so that's what we used. I would've made the pieces even smaller but anything bite size is manageable.

2. Heat oil over medium-high heat. Cook beef until almost done, stirring often. Add the onions and continue to cook.

3. Pour off fat. With the onions in there, I'm really  not sure how David mastered this step because I would think it would be hard to keep the onions in the pan too but he did it.

4. Stir in soup and paprika. Heat to a boil (this really doesn't take long). Stir in sour cream. Cook until everything is heated through and serve on noodles.

And there you have it! It takes less than a half hour (even for people as inexperienced as us) and for the most part, these should be ingredients you can find in the pantry. It's even short on prep work so you really don't have an excuse.

If you notice, the original recipe only used 1 can of soup and 1/2 cup of sour cream. It was also only 4 cups of noodles, whereas we made the whole box so by doubling these ingredients, you get more sauce. Plus, some people in the comments on the original recipe complained the sauce was too thick and I think they made it more the right consistency.

Ramen Noodles

Because ramen is so cheap, we have a lot of it in our pantry from when we used to eat it all the time. Of course now we realize there are much better things out there (with much less sodium too). However, I have to use these up somehow so I looked for recipes that use them. After much browsing, I sort of came up with my own thing.
Ingredients:

• shrimp (about 3oz a person)
• ramen noodles, any variety (one block serves two people)
• vegetable broth (4 cups per block of ramen)
• ginger, to taste (I used about a tablespoon and a half)
• garlic, to taste (I used about two tablespoons)
• vegetables (I used an entire frozen bag of broccoli and cauliflower and then half a bag of mixed vegetables but you can use whatever vegetables you want. Just make sure you have at least 2 cups)

Note: I don't measure anything, especially spices, when I cook so it's hard to determine how much of something I used.

Directions: While boiling broth, cook vegetables in microwave. When broth boils, add noodles and cook for 3 minutes. Then stir in vegetables, shrimp, and spices and cook for another 2 (ish) minutes (you want everything to be the same temp). Voila. You're done.

I did use one package of seasoning and I had two packs of ramen but I thought even that was too salty so I might take it out next time. Use your best judgment. You know what tastes good. By the end of this, I didn't have that much broth left but it still felt like a soup to me. Of course, you're welcome to use more broth but I thought this was fine. Let me know in the comments what you thought if you end up making it!

Grilled Cheese

When your town is being engulfed by a snow storm, there is no better lunch than soup. I looked in our pantry and I found tomato soup. As a kid, I actually ate tomato soup plain and wasn't introduced to the grilled cheese and tomato soup concept until college. Since then, I have never had it plain again. Today, I will teach you how to make the perfect grilled cheese sandwich. You would be surprised at how many adults can mess this up.
First: You will need two slices of bread (your choice), some butter (or margarine), and cheese (your choice).
Second: Butter your bread. Only do one side on each slice. Be kind of generous in your buttering but you don't need to slather it on.
Third: Put one slice of bread butter side down in a frying pan. Add your cheese (you can use slices, shredded, small hunks, anything! I will warn you though that anything other than the slices can get a bit messy when you flip it, especially the shredded).
Fourth: Put your other slice of bread on top of the cheese, butter side up.
Fifth: Turn your burner on low-medium. (This method will take a bit for your sandwich to start cooking but if you put the butter in the pan instead of on the bread, it doesn't turn out as well and it makes a bigger mess.)
Sixth: Wait for your sandwich to start sizzling. You can choose to wait to flip until you think it's brown (a couple minutes) or you can flip right away (if you're impatient like me) but then you will have to flip several times.
Seventh: Then do the same with the other side, after you have flipped. The sandwich is done when it's a brown color you like. Then serve with the soup!

You can experiment with all different kinds of cheese and toppings (some people add bacon, tomato, scrambled eggs, etc). What's your favorite way to eat grilled cheese?