My Favorite Soup!

Today I'm linking up at Kelly's Korner to share my favorite soup with you!

I used to hate soup. That may sound strange to you, but I think it's because my parents are BIG soup lovers, and I just got tired of it. I have since found so many different soups that I LOVE and especially on a cold winter's night, there's sometimes nothing I want more than a warm bowl of hearty soup.

This soup was first introduced to me by a co-worker who served it at our weekly girls lunch. I instantly fell in love and asked for the recipe. I couldn't believe how easy it was to make! It's a regular in my rotation of meals. Sorry I don't have a picture of it, but I hope you'll try it!

Tortellini and Tomato Soup with Rosemary

makes 4 to 6 servings

3 tbls. olive oil

1 onion, chopped

3 garlic cloves, minced

1 can dice tomatoes, drained

6 cups chicken broth

2 tsp. chopped fresh rosemary or 1/2 tsp. dried

12 ounces fresh cheese tortellini

3 cups chopped fresh spinach (I use baby spinach and leave it whole)

salt and pepper to taste

Heat olive oil in a large pot over medium heat. Add onion and garlic and saute 5 minutes or until softened.  Add tomato and cook for a minute.  Stir in broth and rosemary, bring to a boil.  Reduce heat and simmer, covered, for 5 minutes.  Add pasta, stirring to blend, and simmer 5 more minutes.

Add spinach, salt, and pepper.  Simmer, stirring often, until spinach is wilted and pasta is just tender.  Ladle soup into bowls and sprinkle with fresh parmesan cheese.

Sweet Things

Greetings from Texas! It is so nice to be back for a whole week! We are enjoying time in Longview now and on Thursday, we'll head to Rockwall. 

Road trip!

Max was a great traveling buddy and is having so much fun for his first time in Texas! He hasn't quite figured out how to play with Mitzi (Mom and Dad's new pup), but he's definitely making himself at home!

Now, onto the point of this post.  We've been spending most of our short time here in Texas concerning ourselves with food.  So far, we've checked three places off our list- Whataburger, Taco Bueno, and Dudley's! Yum yum! We've also gotten started with some cooking.  Of course, dessert is the most important part of the meal.

I found the recipe for these babies on Picky Palate and just had to try them.  They were super easy and so delicious! If you're looking for a last minute dessert (that easily doubles as a great breakfast treat!), you should give these a try!

Sweet Potato Cupcakes with Cinnamon Sugar Cream Cheese Frosting

We also baked up my Granny's famous Paper Bag Apple Pie.  If I could only eat one dessert for the rest of my life, this would be it.  I love this pie so much, it's what I always request as my birthday "cake" of choice.  So what makes it so special? First, the crumble topping. Instead of your standard crust, we sprinkle a mixture of butter, cinnamon, and sugar over it.  Second, the paper bag.  The pie is baked in a brown grocery bag and comes out perfectly cooked- juicy and lightly browned.  I know my grandma is not the first to bake an apple pie like this, but in my book, it will always be her special recipe, and I'll never bake an apple pie any other way.  

Can you tell I love this pie?!

And finally, we ended the night with another piece of pie. This one, a strawberry pie from Dudley's Cajun Cafe.  Dudley's is my favorite restaurant back home- it's where we had our rehearsal dinner and we try to make a trip there every time we visit.  Let me tell you- the strawberry pie is the best and it goes fast! There was one piece left when we got to restaurant, so I made sure to reserve that little plate of goodness before anything else (priorities, people!). Mmmmm...it was the perfect ending to a perfectly delicious dinner of boudin balls, gumbo, and fried crawfish.

Does it get any better than this?

What are your holiday standards?  Do you like to try new recipes or stick to your family's favorites? However you celebrate, I hope it's perfectly sweet!

Mom's Meatloaf

Mmmmm...meatloaf.

Not sure which one I like better.  This one...

Or this one...

Who am I kidding? Celine does it way better. 

Anyway, this post is not about that Meatloaf.  It's about my mom's meatloaf. My mom has never loved spending too much time in the kitchen, but she does have some signature dishes up her sleeve, and her meatloaf is one of those. It's not a gourmet meal by any means, but it's easy and fun to make, and oh so yummy! 

I was looking through my most recent issue of Every Day with Rachael Ray and saw her recipe for meatloaf which included two of my favorite ingredients: cheese and potatoes. I love my mom's recipe, so I decided to use hers and tweak it a little to have a Rachael Ray twist (aka add cheese and potatoes). The outcome was perfection. Marcus said it was one of the top five meals I've made so far.  I hope you'll give it a try!

Mom's (and Rachael Ray's) Meatloaf

2 lbs. ground beef

2 eggs

1/3 cup ketchup

2 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. pepper

3 tbs. dried onion flakes

2 cups Italian bread crumbs

2 tsp. Worcestershire sauce

6 colby-jack cheese sticks

red potatoes

Combine all ingredients (except cheese and potatoes), mixing well with hands.  Place in baking pan and flatten into rectangle. Add cheese sticks and fold edges of the meat over the cheese.  Quarter or wedge potatoes and scatter around the meat loaf. Drizzle olive oil over them and season with salt and pepper.  Bake at 400 degrees for 50 minutes or until potatoes are tender.

It should look a little something like this:

Enjoy!

Pot Roast Take 2

It's hard to believe it's been almost a year since the infamous pot roast incident that resulted in hot oil splattered all over my face.  I'm happy to report that I've survived and haven't left the kitchen yet! Our first year of marriage has included some ok meals, and even some that had to be thrown out (thank goodness we have a Little Caeser's close by!). But we've also enjoyed some really delicious dishes too and one of our new favorites is pot roast and roasted veggies! My mom passed this roast recipe on to me and it's not your traditional pot roast, but it's super easy and goes really well with roasted carrots and potatoes. Yum!

Easy Crockpot Pot Roast

4 lb. pot roast

1 can cream of mushroom soup

1 packet onion soup mix

1 cup water

Place pot roast on two pieces of foil (make a cross out of the foil). Mix together soup and soup mix.  Spread mixture over the pot roast, making sure it covers all sides.  Wrap the roast in foil and place in crockpot.  Pour water around the roast. Cook on low for 6-8 hours.

Roasted Veggies

potatoes (depending on size, 1-2 for each serving)

carrots (3-4 per serving)

small onion (we don't actually eat the onion, we just like it for flavor but you can add more if you want)

1/3 cup olive oil

1 tablespoon salt

1 tablespoon rosemary

1/4 teaspoon pepper

1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

Cut veggies into small pieces and place in single layer on baking pan.  Mix together olive oil and spices (may need to adjust depending on amount of veggies). Pour mixture over veggies and toss to coat each piece in the mixture.  Bake for 30 minutes at 450 degrees.  Test with fork and continue baking if needed until soft.  Some of the smaller pieces will get brown and crispy- so tasty!!

Hope you enjoy!

Adventures in Cooking

I'm pretty sure this has great potential to become a recurring theme on this blog.  No, I'm not trying to be the next Julie from "Julie and Julia." I won't attempt to cook my way through any cook book or cuisines of the world.  No, I am merely trying to stay alive.

You may or may not know that I'm not the greatest cook.  I LOVE food, but when I try to create a dish myself, something usually goes wrong.  And the mess I have to clean up later...don't even get me started.  I have mostly avoided extended time in the kitchen until now.  I want so badly to be a good wife and make good meals for my husband (meals that don't come out of a box).*  So far, not so good.

For this edition of Adventures in Cooking, I present to you: Pot Roast.

This past Sunday, I decided to use my mom's recipe and make a pot roast.  I was really excited to make a (mostly) healthy, home-cooked meal and I was fairly confident, because it was something I had made before.

The first step to cooking the roast is to season it and coat it with flour, then sear it in vegetable oil.  My mom suggested that I sear the roast in the same pot it simmers in, so as to not dirty up another dish.  I'm thinking, "Great idea, Mom! I'll do anything to avoid one more dirty dish!"

Here's a better suggestion:  If your pot roast is larger than normal, don't sear it in a deep pot!  It's not worth the five extra minutes it will take to clean skillet.

I thought I could handle the pot roast.  I got an extra large fork to turn the roast in the pot.  However, my extra large fork failed, and my pot roast plunged into the hot oil, resulting in hot oil on my face.  My first thought was that the oil got in my eye.  Marcus rushed me to the sink where I held my face under the cold, running water and cried.  The burns were not nearly as bad as I first feared.  There are small spots on my eyelid, nose and lip.  With lots of aloe, Neosporin, Advil and a big icepack, the pain eventually started to subside.

Marcus was so great to take care of me, calling my nurse friend and some family for help, and even finishing the roast.

Needless to say, we ate hot dogs for dinner.  They were delicious and pain-free. :) We had the roast the next day for lunch and it was also delicious!

I'm proud to say that this won't be my last pot roast.  Next time, I will conquer it and I will take great precautions in protecting my face (and I will use the extra pan. And I will buy a smaller roast.)  This will not be the last of my cooking endeavors, and I'm sure I'll have many more stories to tell.  I hope you enjoy!

*Disclaimer: I am fully aware that being a good cook is not all there is to being a good wife.  Marcus loves me despite my cooking mishaps.  Whew!