That Burger...

... I was talking about was so good! Really. Yum.

Veggie Soup

The yummy end product.

This has become a favorite recipe in our house as I'm trying to increase my iron consumption. Pairing ingredients that are high in Vitamin C with those high in iron helps increase the absorbency of iron in the body. This is a quick recipe that is healthy, budget-friendly & single-mother friendly, 'cause it's so easy to make that the kids can do the chopping & cooking while the pregnant Mama knits & blogs about soup recipes! This is a chunky soup. As always, it's best to go local and/or organic with ingredients. The best produce comes from your garden!

Veggies chopped. Yay for clean teenager-fingernails!

You'll need:
A bit of olive oil
1 onion, diced
2 cloves of garlic, pressed
2 stalks of celery, diced
3-4 medium carrots, diced
4 oz. fresh (baby) spinach
2 cups of water
2 - 28oz. can of pureed tomatoes
1 cup of pasta (We like the colorful spirals from the bulk isle.)
A bit of heavy cream
A broth cube (I'm a Rapunzel girl.)
A few sprigs of parsley, chopped
Sea-salt & pepper to taste

Gettin' it goin'.

To make it:
Sautee the veggies in the olive oil until onions are glassy, spinach is soft. Add the pureed tomatoes, water, the garlic & the broth cube. Bring to a boil. Add the pasta & reduce to simmer. Season to taste. Remove from heat when pasta is 'al dente.' Add a bit of heavy cream to increase the yummy factor. (I'm not a low-fat cook. Nourishing Traditions is a good read if you're wondering why.) Garnish with parsley.

Serve with a handful of roasted pumpkin seeds to add even more iron. And maybe have a shot of Floradix with it, too. ;-)

Feeds a pregnant mother & 2 hungry sort-of-teenagers with some leftovers for lunch the next day. (Oh, and it also is enough to feed the friend of one of the boys who shows up unexpectedly & makes the pregnant Mama remember that we did invite him over yesterday.)

Well, the boys are done cooking the soup. I'm done blogging about it. Off I go to eat. I must remember to tell them a good cook cleans the kitchen, too.

Christmas Crazies & Goodies

On Friday we drove around town to see Christmas lights. There are a few places where people go way crazy - crazy in an awesome kind of way. I like this picture I snapped. Could be a Christmas card, huh? It's on Wendhurst Drive here in Richmond. Illumination extraordinaire! :-)

The boys spent some time baking this morning for the bonfire cookie exchange we're invited to this afternoon. Yummy cookies. I decided on this recipe. We used some homemade peach jam.

So...

... the amazing kiwi-dude traveled 34 hours just to come see me. Awww, huh? ♥ Here I am eating chocolate fish & reading Cuisine ("The Perfect Kiwi Christmas") & NZ House & Garden (Christmas Special) while he recovers from the trip halfway around the world (including a "detour" via Australia). Never thought that would still happen, but here I am. - And those magazines. I've always loved the Christmas editions of home & cooking type magazines. I have a stash of them. Nostalgia. Idyllic Christmas. Snow & sleighs. Cookies. Okay, I'll stop now.

We were lucky to have an invite to my cousin's house for Thanksgiving, so I got to be lazy on Turkey Day. They just moved to Virginia from Tennessee & I feel so blessed to have family not-quite-an-hour-drive away. The boys enjoyed hanging out with the "cousins", playing football, being boys.

We're not vegetarians, although we do eat very little meat. Anyhoo. Today I'm preparing a nice Sunday dinner for us - in the spirit of Thanksgiving so to speak. We'll have a petite baked ham with a simple maple & orange glaze, Sausage, Apple & Cranberry Stuffing, homemade mashed potatoes & gravy, and a salad of winter greens. For dessert, we'll have some baked apples & fresh whipped cream or something like that.

I'm also gearing up for a cookie exchange next weekend. We'll be baking Thumbprint Cookies, or Thumbprint Cookies, or maybe Thumbprint Cookies? I can't decide on a recipe.

Enjoy the first Sunday of Advent!

Nutty Chocolate Cookies

Nathan felt like baking something. We didn't have all the ingredients for his favorite recipe, so he improvised. (He also took the picture.)

~ 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
~ 1/2 teaspoon salt
~ 1 teaspoon baking soda
~ 1/2 cup butter, softened
~ 1/2 cup white sugar
~ 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
~ 1 egg
~ 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
~ 2 tablespoons milk
~ 1/2 cup chocolate-hazelnut spread
~ 3/4 cup sliced almonds, crushed into pieces
~ 3/4 bar of white chocolate, broken into pieces

Preheat oven to 350 F. Sift together flour, salt & baking soda. Add sugars. Mix together butter, vanilla, milk & chocolate-hazelnut spread. Add to the flour mixture. Add nuts & chocolate. Shape into balls and bake on a cookie sheet lined with wax paper for 10 minutes. Remove & cool.

These cookies are so, so good!

Weekend Kitchen

Homemade bread. So yummy warm with butter melting on the top. I'm often not all that pleased with my breads, but this one tastes good & we were actually able to cut it into slices rather than just eat it "by lumps." I added a bit of cornmeal which gave it a nice "crunch."

On Friday I received a pumpkin as a gift from a student. I was thus inspired to make a pumpkin soup. I added carrots, sweet potatoes & potatoes as well. Salt. Pepper. A bit of cream. A sprinkle of nutmeg & a bit of parsley. Autumn goodness.

These were peanut butter cookies the boys made (pretty much all by themselves) for a fundraiser for Nathan's class. Of course we had to eat a few, too.

WIP Wednesday

WIP - "Works In Progress" is a pretty general term. I'm going to jump on the "WIP Wednesday" blogging wagon. Seems like a nice idea. Here's what I've been working on.

These are the squares for a version of the Barn-Raising Quilt. 8 squares so far. I really like the rainbow effect of the squares. I can't wait to see all 36 of them together. They are still unblocked.

We bought 25 pounds of peaches at a farm stand in South Carolina this past weekend. We've eaten lots of them. Yesterday I made some baked peaches with fresh whip cream as a dessert for Nathan's birthday. Today we made jam. Why WIP? - Well, I haven't cleaned the kitchen yet!

Fruity

I felt like I wanted some sort of homemade goodness this year, so the boys and I improvised a peach-raspberry jam that turned out oh so yummy. We couldn't resist & opened the first jar right away. So good with plain yogurt. They made cute lil' tags to go with the jam. My slice of being "homey" - a step towards the garden I have been manifesting for years. I think we'll make some more soon. They will be nice gifts for the "handmade Christmas" I'm envisioning.

I'm A Soup Girl!

Yesterday I received some home-grown goodness from a friend. With the boys still out of town & being the soup girl I am, I decided to fix some cream of squash soup for dinner today.

1/2 onion sauteed in a bit of butter. Two yellow squashies & a russet potato thinly sliced. Added some water, salt & pepper. Boiled to softness. Pureed with blender stick. Added a bit of cream & some chives. Such a simple, good meal. This would easily be enough for the three of us!

Pumpkins In July

Nothing better on a cold July 4th in the midst of winter than a hot bowl of homemade pumpkin soup. Yum.

Progressive Dinner

I hosted the wine & cheese portion of our faculty's end-of-the-school-year progressive dinner party. New Zealand Oyster Bay Merlot. New Zealand Cheddar. New Zealand kiwifruit. There were five "stops." It was a lot of fun.

Salmon Chowder

We've always been fans of the chowder at Whole Foods. I always thought chowder was difficult to prepare. Not! I started following a recipe from one of my favorite cookbooks, "Soup!" by Pippa Cuthbert & Lindsay Cameron Wilson. I love to cook soup. I unique-ified the recipe along the way & I'm gonna write it down here for future reference.

3 strips of bacon, cut into small pieces
3/4 pound salmon
4 medium potatoes
1 cup frozen corn, thawed
1/2 medium red onion
3 tablespoons flour
4 cups milk
1 cup heavy cream
a bit of fresh chives & 3 or so sprigs of parsley
a bit of olive oil
salt & pepper to taste

Bake the salmon in the green clay baking pan with a bit of olive oil, salt, pepper & dill, then set it aside to cool. Cut the potatoes in half, leaving the skin on and arrange them cut-side down in the olive oil/seasoning/salmon drippings pan & bake them in the oven.

In the big ole pot brown the bacon & add the red onions until they become glassy, then add the flour making sure there are no lumps. Add the milk & half and half and let it all come to a boil. Reduce it to simmer adding the salmon & baked potatoes & the corn & the chopped parsley. Serve warm in hot bowls.

Yum. Yum.

Next time have some French bread & homemade garlic butter to make garlic bread!