Blessings Darlings!
It's been REALLY busy around here lately, but nothing worth blogging about! Switching the garden from summer to fall/winter. Switching my COOKING from summer to fall/winter (stews, soups, baking again now that I don't have to worry about heating the house in summer). Working out transportation issues now that the Spawn works and we still only have 1 car that we are sharing among the 3 of us. Trying to find time and money to visit my mother in the nursing home in Chicago. The hard work of feeding a family on what we'd get if we were on food stamps (which I can only do because I work at home and can make damn near everything from scratch while still working).
In fact, I'm going to go throw some bones into the oven, because roasted bones make better soup stock. Then I can bring them and saved carrot scrapings, etc, and water to a boil, and make more soup stock. I've been going thru' GALLONS of that this month, and am trying to get every particle of flavor out of every bone.
Business has been busy, but as you hardware and software geeks know - all development takes longer than you think it will. Which means we are behind on several client's projects, which means we haven't been paid for several client's projects.
And I'd prefer to be at OccupyDC than here. Partly because I'm still having hot flashes and camping in the cold sounds REALLY nice, but mostly because I'm fully behind forcing our congresscritters into making real campaign finance reform.
Frondly, Fern
Showing posts with label soup. Show all posts
Showing posts with label soup. Show all posts
Monday, October 24, 2011
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Minestrone
Blessings, Darlings!
As regular readers have already discovered - we eat a lot of home-made soup here. Partly because we DO like it, partly because it's easy to heat for lunch, partly because it's cheap when made from scratch.
Today I decided to make minestrone, for the first time.
Looking it up I discovered that 'minestrone' simply means 'first course'. Which makes sense, when you consider the 5-course meals at good Italian restaurants that we share as a family. Soup, salad, pasta, main course, dessert. Small servings of 5 courses (one meal, split 3 ways, maybe with an extra salad thrown in).
Lot of variety, but SMALL SERVINGS.
I digress.
Every area of Italy apparently has it's own style of minestrone soup. And to my husband's amazement, "Campbells" is NOT an area of Italy.
Not being in Italy, I looked at recipes and winged it, using what I had on hand. Meaning no zucchini, which I have ALWAYS seen in minestrone soup. And I have several bottle of 'tomato water' - the liquid left over after I canned jars of tomatoes.
So I took one quart of 'tomato water...
One quart home-canned tomatoes
One onion.
One 15 oz can of commercial canned carrots
one stalk celery
a little leftover spinach
three cups of chopped cabbage
a little leftover ham
a pint of home-canned green beans
a quart of cooked chickpeas/garbanzo beans
two bouillion cubes
a little freshly-ground black pepper
Some salt.
Leftover whole-wheat rigatoni, chopped a bit
1 1/2 tsp oregano
a clove or two of finely chopped garlic
I quickly cooked the raw veggies, everything else in a big pot, added enough water that it was soupy. Simmered it a while.
Done.
And it was .... excellent! I really enjoy using the 'tomato water' as a major part of soup bases. It adds a great depth of flavor, and reduces the amount of salt recipes need (I can that without added salt).
All regular pantry stuff, and it equaled a gallon and a half of soup.
Happy family!
Frondly, Fern
As regular readers have already discovered - we eat a lot of home-made soup here. Partly because we DO like it, partly because it's easy to heat for lunch, partly because it's cheap when made from scratch.
Today I decided to make minestrone, for the first time.
Looking it up I discovered that 'minestrone' simply means 'first course'. Which makes sense, when you consider the 5-course meals at good Italian restaurants that we share as a family. Soup, salad, pasta, main course, dessert. Small servings of 5 courses (one meal, split 3 ways, maybe with an extra salad thrown in).
Lot of variety, but SMALL SERVINGS.
I digress.
Every area of Italy apparently has it's own style of minestrone soup. And to my husband's amazement, "Campbells" is NOT an area of Italy.
Not being in Italy, I looked at recipes and winged it, using what I had on hand. Meaning no zucchini, which I have ALWAYS seen in minestrone soup. And I have several bottle of 'tomato water' - the liquid left over after I canned jars of tomatoes.
So I took one quart of 'tomato water...
One quart home-canned tomatoes
One onion.
One 15 oz can of commercial canned carrots
one stalk celery
a little leftover spinach
three cups of chopped cabbage
a little leftover ham
a pint of home-canned green beans
a quart of cooked chickpeas/garbanzo beans
two bouillion cubes
a little freshly-ground black pepper
Some salt.
Leftover whole-wheat rigatoni, chopped a bit
1 1/2 tsp oregano
a clove or two of finely chopped garlic
I quickly cooked the raw veggies, everything else in a big pot, added enough water that it was soupy. Simmered it a while.
Done.
And it was .... excellent! I really enjoy using the 'tomato water' as a major part of soup bases. It adds a great depth of flavor, and reduces the amount of salt recipes need (I can that without added salt).
All regular pantry stuff, and it equaled a gallon and a half of soup.
Happy family!
Frondly, Fern
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Scotch Broth
Blessings, Darlings!
Today's foodie post is on Scotch Broth. Which, while I guess back in the day WAS a broth, I serve as a soup with all the ingredients chopped and in it, rather than separated out as, well, Wikipedia says it had been served. They also say folks peeled boiled potatoes before eating them, and that MUST be wrong. Peasants like me don't throw potato peels out, they eat them!
But I digress....
Scotch broth is, fundamentally, "vegetable barley soup with lamb or mutton". It's really flexible when it comes to amounts of all ingredients. Being cheap, obviously I tend to use more veggies and barley than meat! Actually, I guess my Scotch Broth is "pasties with lots of broth and no crust"!
Lamb is the meat I use - in part because I've never run into mutton where I've lived, and I have no idea if it's more or less expensive than lamb would be. The lamb I'm using in today's batch is leftover from the leg of lamb I served last week. I bought the leg of lamb (semi-boneless) just after Christmas, on its 'sell-by'date, so it was marked down in price. I have about 2 cups of diced left over lamb.
The bone from the lamb is simmering in a quart of water, giving the last of its flavor up. I'll add some chicken and beef bouillion cubes to the proto-broth to improve the flavor. Equal parts of beef and chicken broth taste kinda sorta like veal broth, so they say. I also use that mix as a lamb broth substitution. The soup will need more liquid, and more cubes, by the time it's done.
Also simmering in bouillion is a cup of pearled barley. Not my favorite kind of barley, but it's the most available barley.
Soon I'll be cutting veggies. Root veggies, mostly. Carrots, onions, turnips (if I had any in the house, I'm out), potatoes since I don't have turnips, celery, some leftover green beans and mushrooms from the fridge, etc. I'll add about 4 cups of them, since I'm using 2 cups of meat. If I had some butter beans/lima beans, I'd add some of them, too.
Bone will come out of the broth. Veggies will go in, and simmer until tender. Meat will be added. Barley will be added. More beef/chicken bouillion will be added .... both for making it a soup-not-stew today and because the barley WILL absorb an incredible amount of liquid even after it's totally cooked. That's because of all the soluble fiber in it, BTW.
I'll end up with about a gallon of soup. Which is roughly 12 adult meal-sized servings.
I'm ready for it NOW.
Frondly, Fern
Today's foodie post is on Scotch Broth. Which, while I guess back in the day WAS a broth, I serve as a soup with all the ingredients chopped and in it, rather than separated out as, well, Wikipedia says it had been served. They also say folks peeled boiled potatoes before eating them, and that MUST be wrong. Peasants like me don't throw potato peels out, they eat them!
But I digress....
Scotch broth is, fundamentally, "vegetable barley soup with lamb or mutton". It's really flexible when it comes to amounts of all ingredients. Being cheap, obviously I tend to use more veggies and barley than meat! Actually, I guess my Scotch Broth is "pasties with lots of broth and no crust"!
Lamb is the meat I use - in part because I've never run into mutton where I've lived, and I have no idea if it's more or less expensive than lamb would be. The lamb I'm using in today's batch is leftover from the leg of lamb I served last week. I bought the leg of lamb (semi-boneless) just after Christmas, on its 'sell-by'date, so it was marked down in price. I have about 2 cups of diced left over lamb.
The bone from the lamb is simmering in a quart of water, giving the last of its flavor up. I'll add some chicken and beef bouillion cubes to the proto-broth to improve the flavor. Equal parts of beef and chicken broth taste kinda sorta like veal broth, so they say. I also use that mix as a lamb broth substitution. The soup will need more liquid, and more cubes, by the time it's done.
Also simmering in bouillion is a cup of pearled barley. Not my favorite kind of barley, but it's the most available barley.
Soon I'll be cutting veggies. Root veggies, mostly. Carrots, onions, turnips (if I had any in the house, I'm out), potatoes since I don't have turnips, celery, some leftover green beans and mushrooms from the fridge, etc. I'll add about 4 cups of them, since I'm using 2 cups of meat. If I had some butter beans/lima beans, I'd add some of them, too.
Bone will come out of the broth. Veggies will go in, and simmer until tender. Meat will be added. Barley will be added. More beef/chicken bouillion will be added .... both for making it a soup-not-stew today and because the barley WILL absorb an incredible amount of liquid even after it's totally cooked. That's because of all the soluble fiber in it, BTW.
I'll end up with about a gallon of soup. Which is roughly 12 adult meal-sized servings.
I'm ready for it NOW.
Frondly, Fern
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Busy Kitchen!
Blessings, Darlings!
I'm busy in the kitchen today, making soup and bread and probably cookies or cake.
HOWEVER - I'm changing the day I post foodie stuff to Tuesday, since everyone seems to be too busy on Mondays to read anything. Not sure what I'll post on Monday, of course.
Frondly, Fern
I'm busy in the kitchen today, making soup and bread and probably cookies or cake.
HOWEVER - I'm changing the day I post foodie stuff to Tuesday, since everyone seems to be too busy on Mondays to read anything. Not sure what I'll post on Monday, of course.
Frondly, Fern
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