Beef Stew

When you make one of my recipes, you need to understand that about 75% of the time, I'm not following a recipe. I probably followed a recipe the first time I made it, then I adapted the recipe, and I make it out of my head. So a lot of my ingredients I'm just eyeballing, especially the spices, so always do the spices to taste. With that said, this was a really good recipe and I was truly winging it the whole way.

Beef Stew

1 pound stew meat (I like to buy the already diced stew meat because I hate cutting raw meat.)

1/4 cup flour

5 small potatoes peeled and cubed (you don't have to peel red potatoes if you have them)

1 cups chopped carrots

3 stalks celery, chopped

1 small onion, diced

5 cups water

4beef bouillon cubes

1 tsp worcestershire sauce

2 TBSP ketchup

Put the meat in a bag, put the flour in, and shake until coated. Grease a large soup pot and cook meat over high until it is browned on all sides (it doesn't need to be cooked all the way through, just browned). Don't panic, it will make a mess of your pan, but the next step will take care of that. Just make sure to not burn the flour.

Add water, bouillon cubes and the chopped vegetables. Reduce heat to medium, put cover on and simmer for about 1 hour. When vegetables are nice and tender, add the worcestershire sauce and the ketchup. If it needs more of either one, add a little more. Remove from heat and serve. Yummy yummy yum!

Chicken, White Bean and Leek Soup

I forgot to get a picture of this dish, but it was really good. It's a very light tasting, but very flavorful soup, and very healthy.

Chicken, White Bean and Leek Soup

1 pound chicken

2 cans cannelini beans

3 leeks, chopped

1 pound red potatoes, diced

1 cup carrots, diced

3 stalks celery, diced

4-6 cups chicken broth

Bake the chicken at 350 degrees about 1 hour, or until juices run clear. While chicken is baking, diced the vegetables. Once chicken is baked, chop or shred it into bite size pieces and then set aside. Stir fry* vegetables in a big soup spot until they are just getting tender. Add the broth, and heat to boiling, then add the chicken and the beans. Salt and pepper to taste (this had a very nice, mellow flavor, and I didn't add any salt or pepper to it, I preferred the taste of the vegetables.) Serve and enjoy!

*Stir frying the vegetables instead of boiling them helps to maintain their fresh flavor, and makes the soup more flavorful. This was a tip from my sister, and I thought it made the soup taste better.

Tortellini Leek Soup

I made up a little recipe for dinner tonight. It came out really well! So well, that there's no leftovers for my lunch! The girls even asked to take it to school for lunch, which means it was good!

Here's my recipe. Very simple, but tasty.

1/2 a large butternut squash, peeled and chopped into bite size pieces
3 leeks
1 small bag of tortellini
3 cans of chicken stock

Slice leeks into thin circles. Chop squash into bite size pieces. Stir fry leeks for a couple minutes, then add the chicken broth and the squash. Boil for about 10 minutes, then add the tortellini. Boil until tortellini is soft. Serve with biscuits.

It was tasty yet very simple. I LOVE squash this time of year, but Liz doesn't like it, so I have to think of ways to put it into dishes. She liked it in this soup, not a single complaint, and she downed her bowl faster than anyone else. You could change it up by adding different spices, a can of tomatoes, or some sausage.

Squash Black Bean Soup

This is another really good soup. The kids really liked it, except for the ham. (Funny story, last night we had taco soup, and I had put hamburger in it, which I usually don't. Liz said, "It's weird, I've never had taco soup with meat in it before!" I put the meat versions of my recipes on here, but normally I don't put the meat in when I make them for us.) As you can tell, I really like soup, especially in the winter. The recipe said to puree 2 of the cans of black beans, but I wouldn't do it again, it made the soup gray. It was still yummy, but not so pretty,

Squash Black Bean Soup

2 15 ounce cans black beans, drained

1 (16 ounce) can diced tomatoes

1/4 cup butter

1 1/4 cups chopped onion

4 cloves garlic, chopped

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper

4 cups broth

1 squash

1/2 pound cubed cooked ham

1-3 tablespoons sherry vinegar(I used cider vinegar)

Directions

Bake the squash until tender. Puree the squash with the can of tomatoes and set aside.

Melt butter in a soup pot over medium heat. Add the onion and garlic, season with salt and pepper. Cook and stir until the onion is softened. Stir in the squash puree, the black beans, broth, and sherry vinegar to taste (I only used 1 TBSP, and it was too much for us, so be careful!) Mix until well blended, then simmer for about 25 minutes, adding water if too thick. Stir in the ham, and heat through before serving.

I would add a can of corn also, but I've been accuse of overusing corn lately, so use your own judgment!

Cream of Broccoli Soup

My cooking seems to be suffering from the mid-winter blues. I don't know what to cook, and I don't want to cook lately, and I especially don't want to blog. So, I am going to cook to force myself out of it. Really, it's just February, and gray and cold, and I'll be fine. This soup is a great one to help you feel a little better. It's from my Betty Crocker cookbook, my trusty, faithful cookbook that I bought when I was in college, so she's really old, and showing her age, but I love her. Truly, I've owned tons of cookbooks, and this is one of the few that has survived multiple purges over the years.

Cream of Broccoli Soup

1 1/2 pounds broccoli
2 cups water
1 large stalk celery, chopped (3/4 cup)
1 medium onion, chopped (1/2 cup)
2 TBSP butter
2 TBSP flour
2 1/2 cups chicken broth
1/2 tsp salt
1/8 tsp pepper
dash of nutmeg
1/2 cup whipping cream
shredded cheese, if wanted

Remove flowerets from broccoli, set aside. Cut stalks into 1-inch pieces (peel them first), discarding any leaves. (I buy my broccoli at Costco, in the big 3-pound bag, so it's only flowerets, no stalks.)

Heat water to boiling in large pot. Add broccoli, celery and onion. Cover and heat to boiling, reduce heat. Simmer about 10 minutes or until broccoli is tender (do not drain).



Carefully place broccoli mixture in blender. Blend until smooth. (This is where I decided I LOVE my Bosch. It took about 20 seconds to make the picture above into smooth broccolie puree.) Set aside.

Melt butter in the pot you cooked the broccoli in. Stir in flour. Cook, stirring constantly, until mixture is smooth and bubbly, remove from heat. (This is called a roux, it is your secret to making a good sauce, gravy or creamy soup.) Stir in broth. Heat to boiling, stirring constantly. Boil and stir 1 minute.

Stir in broccoli mixture, salt, pepper, and nutmeg. Heat just to boiling, stir in whipping cream. Heat just until hot (do not boil or soup may curdle.) Serve with shredded cheese.

Squash Soup

This is a favorite recipe around here. Liz HATES squash and sweet potatoes, but she absolutely loves this soup. She even asks to take it to school for lunch, which is the ultimate sign of acceptance for her! It's very simple to make, but there's not a firm recipe. A lot of my recipes on here won't be true recipes, because I estimate instead of measuring probably 85% of the time. The recipe I used the first time I made this soup can be found here. This is a pretty good recipe, but I've tweaked it A LOT to make it mine, and in my opinion, better.

Squash Soup

1 squash*
2 apples
6-10 cups of broth
3 stalks of celery
1/2 an onion
1-2 sweet potatoes**
2 cans of corn
Curry powder to taste

Roast the squash for about an hour at 350 degrees.

While squash is roasting, put the cored apple, celery stalks, diced onion and broth in a big pot (I use an 8 quart pot), and bring to a boil. Boil until the celery is fork tender, then remove from the heat. When squash is tender, remove from the oven and let it cool until you can touch it. Once cool, scoop the flesh out of the skins and add it to your pot of cooked vegetables and broth.

Spoon the squash vegetable mix into the blender, and blend until smooth. Dump into a big mixing bowl, and repeat until you've blended all of the soup. Return the soup to the pot and place on the stove. Add the cans of corn. If the soup looks thick, I don't drain the corn. After adding the corn, add water until the soup is the consistency you want. Sprinkle some curry powder, stir well and taste. Add more curry powder if needed. I add probably 1/4 tsp of curry powder to my soup. I don't want it spicy or overwhelming, just a hint of curry. Curry goes a long way, so be careful the first time you make it. You can always add more but you can't take it away!

Serve with a dollop of sour cream if desired.


*If I use a butternut squash, I use the whole squash. I discovered Hubbard squash last year, and they are my new favorite squash. However, Hubbard squash are enormous, and if you used a whole Hubbard squash, you would end up with at least 14 quarts of soup. I used a Hubbard squash this week, and I used about half of it, and froze the other half.

**If the squash isn't a very flavorful squash, I will boil one or two sweet potatoes, and add them in during the pureeing step.


This soup is very healthy, and oh, so good on a cold winter night. So start roasting, and happy eating!