winter life

i realized yesterday afternoon, mike and i haven't had a "just us" evening since january 1st.  glorious, friends/family filled month that it's been!!  but there is something about having time with just my mike; no rush, no schedule, no to-do......the most restful time i spend.  he's my best friend, you see.

consider this post an overarching update on our winter.  the big items are our travels - we've been to williamsburg multiple times, did a speed trip to boston, had our annual beach trip with the blacks over thanksgiving, and went to colorado with andrew and suzanna.  we are capitalizing on our "pre kids" stage of life!

our home nights are comprised of reading, drinking tea (after judging tea-drinkers for most of my life, i've joined their ranks - please post all jokes re: eating-your-words in the comments section below), playing games (we have quite the collection now!), and experimenting with stove-top and air-popped popcorn.  mmmm....i want to head home, just thinking about it!

battleship - do you remember playing this as a kid???

lessons learned this winter....
- we both CAN change, even when it seems to the other spouse that we never will.
- praying during a disagreement "magically" brings a solution closer - no, really!!  try it.  God is amazing, and so very kind.
- contrary to what we expect again and again, the recycling bin does not empty itself daily.
- mike loves me, and has my back.  i love mike, and have his back.  so simple, but difficult to believe sometimes.

happy winter from the decarlos!  thanks for stopping by!

zuppa toscana

at my last job, we had a group that regularly went to lunch together.  through this group, i tried my first sushi, tested new burger places, and took advantage of lunch specials near and far.  during this enjoyable feasting season, we would often go to olive garden and devour their soup, salad, and bread-sticks deal.  i discovered zuppa toscana for the first time, and fell in love!

when i pinned this recipe, i did so because it reminded me of that soup.  i pinned several others, but this one is the base of my own soup.  i didn't make this soup for our soup tasting night, but it was so yummy, i thought you'd forgive me doing it out of order.  ;-)

note 1: the original recipe calls for this to be made in the crockpot - how lovely!!!  as you'll see, i didn't take advantage of this option.....my own crockpot was busy all weekend with other tasks!  i have added a crockpot adaption of my recipe below; please note, i have not tried this specifically.

note 2: this soup is rich.  the cream shines through in its luxurious glory!  at some point, i may play with using some half-and-half or milk in place of the cream - this soup seems as though it could safely lose a little bit of that milk fat without suffering.

note 3: we LOVE this soup.  i went back for seconds even though i was full.  (shame on me!)  when asked, mike gave it a 9 or 10 out of 10.  his previous favorite, chili, came in second to this one!!!  i'll chalk some of that up to novelty, but still claim this one as a winner for us.

note 4: we used yukon gold potatoes, and i highly recommend using these for soups.  they are a very creamy potato, and do better in a broth than baked.  i also noticed that they cooked faster than the baking potatoes i've used.

zuppa toscana

1 1/4 lb spicy italian sausage

4 large or 6 medium yukon gold potatoes (so creamy!)

1 large or 2 medium onions, minced

1 1/2 T minced garlic

2 c frozen kale, chopped

4 c chicken stock

2 c water

1 c heavy whipping cream
1 T salt (optional)

1.  slice potatoes in half, then in 1/4 inch slices.  the potatoes are so soft, it won't matter that the pieces are a little bit large.
2.  brown sausage in large pot.  our sausage was in links; i sliced these open, and crumbled the meat before beginning to brown it.  cook fully.
3.  add onions to sausage; saute until clear or mostly clear.
4.  pour chicken stock and water into pot.  add garlic and potatoes.  bring to a boil, then reduce heat to simmer.  continue to simmer until the potatoes are fully cooked, ~10 minutes.  my potatoes did not take long to cook!
5.  use immersion blender to blend soup to desired creaminess - be careful not to lose all of your potato chunks.  alternatively, blend ~1/4 soup in blender, then stir back into the pot.
6.  add heavy whipping cream and kale.  turn up heat to medium high, stirring almost constantly.
7.  taste, and salt if necessary.  my stock has very little salt, so i almost always need to add a little bit.

crockpot aternative

1.  slice potatoes in half, then in 1/4 inch slices.
2.  brown sausage in large pot.  our sausage was in links; i sliced these open, and crumbled the meat before beginning to brown it.  cook fully.
3.  put sausage, chicken stock, water, garlic, potatoes, and onion into your crockpot.  cook on low for 6 hours.
4.  use immersion blender (or traditional blender) to blend a portion of the soup into desired creaminess.
5.  add kale and recover crockpot for 5 minutes.
6.  stir in whipping cream; taste; salt; serve!

let me know how you like this recipe!  also, if you have any tips for where to buy italian sausage that isn't already in link form, please leave me a comment!  i would love to skip the step of cutting open the sausage skins.  :-)

"Soup" post - from Vail!

We are in CO this week, so I don't have a recipe for you today. But, I will share a pic from earlier this week - I cannot get over the beauty of this state!!

I'll bring another recipe next week!

curried sweet potato chowder

remember when i said that not all of the recipes i made were home runs?  time to present you with the big flop - sweet potato chowder!  i so wanted this recipe to work, because mike really likes sweet potatoes, but......no cigar, kids.  it's another one from better homes and gardens cookbook, that unfortunately i played with.  but enough of the chagrin - let's get to the notes!

note 1: the recipe reminded me so much of a potato chowder i made last winter, that i added a step that the recipe did not detail.  i scooped out about 1/4 of the soup into my blender, in hopes of having something like a sweet potato chowder.  the result was something akin to baby food.  oh, how far from my intentions!  should you try this recipe, skip step 5 below.  this recipe should have stayed a soup rather than becoming a chowder.

note 2: i am posting the recipe i made, in part because none of the "fixes" i've since tried worked out perfectly.  i made a large batch, so each time i take some out of the freezer, i try different things to improve it.  adding more milk has been the biggest improvement (which has solidified my thought that i shouldn't have blended to begin with); i've also added more curry and cayenne pepper to help with the bland flavor.  mike often thinks that i overdo the cayenne pepper, but in the case of this soup, he said that the spicy was a good contrast to the sweet potato flavor.

(this soup made me so sad that i wasn't even motivated to take a flattering picture of it! *sad*)

curried sweet potato chowder

6 medium sweet potatoes, cubed
1 large onion, diced
4 c milk
3 t curry powder
1 t cayenne pepper

1.  boil sweet potatoes in a large pot until mostly tender - be careful not to over cook.  drain the water, and set aside.
2.  saute onion in a large pot until clear; drop heat to low.
3.  gently fold sweet potatoes into sauteed onions, then add the milk.
4.  turn heat up to medium, and stir vigilantly.  i found that this mixture was prone to burning, so be careful to scrape your spoon against the entire bottom of the pot.  bring to a boil, then drop heat to medium-low.
5.  scoop 1/4 of soup into a blend; blend until smooth and add back to pot.
6.  add curry and cayenne pepper.

this soup freezes very well, and smells good.  ;-)  i'm sorry to give it such a rough rating here - if you have tried something similar and it worked for you, please leave a comment with your tips!!

sausage lentil soup

i hope that everyone had a great Christmas!  we had a full and wonderful holiday - and have already taken down our decorations!  when you live in an efficiency, the pull of having a few square feet of floor space back can outweigh nostalgia.  ;-)

and now for a soup!  this was my "first" soup to make as an adult.  a friend of mine gave me a copy of the better homes and gardens cookbook for Christmas one year, and it has since become my favorite cookbook.  the recipe below, primarily based off of one from that cookbook, is especially beloved by me because it nursed me through mono - it did!  i swapped in spinach and turkey sausage, and it was the only thing i ate for two and a half weeks.  love it!!

note 1: the picture below shows carrots and celery as the veggies includes; however, i also LOVE this soup with spinach.  frozen works just fine!  also, like a lot of soups, it's very forgiving - i often add 50%-100% more vegetables than the recipe calls for, simply because i have them on hand and want to use them up.  go crazy!!  ;-)

note 2: mike always wants beef sausage, so i usually use that - however, i found that turkey sausage works extremely well with this soup.  sometimes i use half beef, half turkey, and when i want to go healthy (like when i had mono!), i use turkey.  it feels so gentle to digest.

note 3: cayenne pepper - what a wonderful spice!  add a wee bit, and suddenly you have an interesting soup no matter what else you add!  ;-)  i often add more than the 1/2 teaspoon listed below; if you choose to add more, go slow!  i've learned that it is easy to go too spicy by adding one 1/4 teaspoon too many.  

 

sausage lentil soup

6 cups chicken stock
1 1/2 cups brown lentils, rinsed
1 cup chopped carrots
1 cup chopped celery
1 cup chopped onion
2 T minced garlic
1 pound of sausage
1/2 t cayenne pepper
2 t salt

1.  saute garlic and onion in large pot, until the onions are clear.
2.  add chicken stock and vegetables to the pot; bring to a simmer.  cook 10-15 minutes, until vegetables are tender.
3.  add sausage, lentils, cayenne pepper, and salt; heat through.

this recipe freezes and microwaves very well.  as a tip re: freezing, if you wait more than 2 days to freeze after making, i found that the taste isn't quite as good.

typing this out makes me want to make a batch tonight - enjoy!!

chicken noodle soup "from scratch"

welcome to thursday!  our first soup up is chicken noodle.  after reading lots of reviews, i settled on using this recipe as my base.  the picture above is also from that recipe - my soup ended up looking very similar to it.

i'll start with my notes before jumping into the recipe itself, as it has been updated per these notes.  always incorporate the things you've learned, right??

overall review: mike and i love this soup.  our "raters" at our soup night gave it very good reviews.  it's so simple that i would be hesitant to serve it to company, but it will be forever on my recipe rotation from now on!  mike is always excited when i pull it out for dinner, or for his lunch.  yay!  :-)

note 1: i love, love, love making stock.  a friend encouraged me to try it, and see for myself how easy it is - and after the first time, i'm a believer!  it's free (you use things you would have otherwise thrown away), and better for you than canned broth.  that being said, if stock isn't on your radar right now, just swap it out for broth!

note 2: i didn't add any oil or salt to soup, and didn't miss them.  however, many of the recipes i perused would have recommended adding 1 teaspoon oil and 1 1/2 teaspoon salt to a recipe like this.

note 3: i didn't cook my noodles before adding them to the soup, and i so wish i had.  they sopped up so much of the broth as they cooked, that the consistency was more like a casserole than a soup.  mike and i have still gobbled it down like crazy, but that is the last time i will put uncooked noodles into a soup!

note 4: i used a whole rotisserie chicken.  i KNOW.  i read in a review that you do this instead of chicken breast, for extra flavor, and diversity of meat.  the reviewer recommended dropping the whole thing in for a bit, so that the skin could give the soup its flavor, before chopping it up.  it was a hassle, but i do think that it added a lovely bit of depth to the soup's flavor.  if this sounds like a pain to you, swap the rotisserie chicken with 3 cups of diced, cooked chicken breast.

without further ado, here's the recipe!

chicken noodle soup "from scratch"

2 1/2 cups of wide egg noodles
12 cups of chicken stock/broth
1 teaspoon basil
2 bay leaves
1/2 teaspoon pepper
2 tablespoons minced garlic
1 1/2 cup chopped celery
1 1/2 cup chopped carrots
1 1/2 cup chopped onions
1/3 cup corn starch
14 cup water
1 rotisserie chicken

1.  cook egg noodles per bag's instructions; set aside.
2.  saute onions and garlic in large pot.  once the onion is clear, add the stock, basil, bay leaves, and pepper; bring to a boil.
3.  add the celery, carrots, and rotisserie chicken to the stock, and reduce heat.  cook ~15 minutes, or until the vegetables are tender.
4.  remove the rotisserie chicken from the stock and dice; i threw away the skin.  save your bones for future stock!!  ;-)  toss the meat back into the soup.
5.  mix the corn starch and water together, and gradually add to the soup.
6.  stir in the noodles.

this recipe microwaves well.  pull it out for lunch during a grouchy workweek, or when the weather is just too darn cold outside.  i do not, however, recommend freezing it - the noodles get a little soggy.  enjoy!!

thursday is soup day!

i love making soups.  they are comforting and cheap, easy to freeze, perfect for recipe doubling.  which means my sunday nights consist of me pulling a bag out of the freezer, rather than panicking over what i'll feed mike for lunch that week.  valuable stuff!

so i found a bunch of soup recipes to test, and we invited several of our friends over to test them out - how else do you try new recipes??  naturally, our friends were asked to rate the recipes:

it was so much fun!!

so over the next several thursdays, i'll post a soup recipes here on my blog, complete with any applicable notes/critique/praise.  be forewarned, at least one of the recipes was a non-repeat!  keeping it real.  ;-)

for today, i'll give you a very valuable link.  i made 4 batches of this pho recipe this past weekend.  it's fabulous!!  not so fabulous that we won't go out for pho on occasion, but it's certainly our current favorite soup.  notes on this recipe:

- best part: you can do it in your crockpot.  

- second best part: you can buy a spice pack for pho at an asian market.  so for those of us out there who don't have star anise + other obscure spices lying around, this is a sweet cheat!  one spice pack costs about $1, and an asian market is one of the best places to pick up beef bones anyway.  now that i know we love this recipe, i plan to stock up on all those obscure spices - but this is a great option for a first try.

- tip #1: be careful not to add too much water to your crockpot - i had  too much water in my water-bones ratio, and my broth wasn't strong enough.  if this happens to you, pick up some pho bullion at an asian market - just add a little bit at a time til it's perfect!

- tip #2: buy steak sub beef instead of trying to do the super-thin slices yourself.

- other thoughts: since we now know we love this recipe, we also bought some sriracha (hot sauce), hoisin sauce (sweet), as well as pho bowls at our asian market.  the bowls were less than $7 each, and now we can have proper servings of this yummy broth without using my serving bowls.  ;-)  also, having the sriracha and hoisin sauce on hand really made it feel closer to restaurant-quality pho.

if you have any questions, or need some encouragement to give this recipe a try, leave me a comment!  youuuuu can dooooo it!!!  ;-)