Kitchen Sink Soup

Today I made "kitchen sink" or "garbage" soup for dinner.

Here's what I put in:

a quart of hamburger broth (from boiling hamburger)
a small container of mixed beans from the freezer
a few cups of some turkey and vegetable soup I found in the freezer
some leftover round steak and juices from the freezer (I chopped the meat into small pieces)
half a bag of mixed frozen vegetables (beans, broccoli, onions I think) from the freezer
some brown rice to thicken it a bit
a can of chicken rice soup that I remembered no one had really liked and figured this was better than throwing it away

It tasted fairly mild so I began adding bits of garlic powder, onion and celery salt, dried basil, dried thyme, pepper. Tasted. Added a bit more pepper and celery salt. Wow! It tastes great now and I'm just letting it simmer until dinner, thinking that it will thicken up a bit and taste even better by then!

I've often made broth from bits and pieces in the freezer and almost always have a bag of celery tops, carrot ends, onion ends, chicken parts/bones etc. in the freezer for broth but I've never actually made soup like this before. I'm already a convert just based on my tastes while it simmered!

Ellen

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Easy Red Velvet Cake

1 package chocolate cake mix
2 large eggs
1 cup buttermilk
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 Tbs cider vinegar
1 Tbs red food coloring (I used the paste kind so used less, maybe 1/4 tsp)

Mix everything but the red food coloring together on low speed of your mixer for one minute. Turn the mixer OFF before adding the food coloring so it doesn't splatter! Beat on high for 2 minutes. Grease a 13x9 baking pan. Pour the batter in. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes. Let cool before frosting. After frosting, sprinkle with 1/2 cup chopped pecans. (I skipped that part.)

Cream Cheese frosting:

4 Tbs butter, softened
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
6 ounces cream cheese (I used lite)
1 tsp vanilla extract

Whip it all together until smooth.

Chicken cutlets with olio e aglio

Company for dinner last night so we had 8 kids (ages 2 to 12) and 7 adults. I made chicken cutlets, homemade macaroni and cheese, angel hair pasta with olio e aglio (oil and garlic), a Caesar salad and had applesauce and carrot sticks on the kids' table.

Chicken cutlets. Pound the chicken until thin. Soak in buttermilk for a few hours. I use pie pans for dipping trays, which gives you a big enough flat surface. In one pan beat an egg or two (1 per 4 (half) chicken breasts about) and mix in a bit of water or milk or soy sauce and lemon juice. Put flour in another pan and seasoned bread crumbs in a third. I seasoned mine with an Italian herb mix and grated Parmesan cheese. Put some olive oil and butter (2 Tbs each) in a big frying pan and heat over medium heat. Line the pie pans up: chicken, flour, egg, bread crumbs. Use two forks and move the chicken from one to the next. Do this right when you're ready to cook. Don't bread things ahead of time. After breading them, set them in the hot oil and cook for a few minutes on each side. You can usually tell they're done when a fork pierces through the chicken easily, but cut one open to make sure until you get a feel for it. If you're cooking a lot, lay them on a cookie sheet and put them in the oven to stay warm until they're all done.

Olio e aglio. Heat up some good quality olive oil with a bunch of chopped garlic. I don't measure but I'd guess for half a package of pasta maybe about 1/4 olive oil and 2-3 large cloves of garlic. Do not overheat or the garlic will taste bad. You just want it softened and warmed. Cook some angel hair pasta about 3 minutes in boiling water. Drain. Mix with the oil and garlic and top with grated Parmesan cheese.

Onion Soup

I'm experimenting with a "new" onion soup tonight. I love onion soup. My kids are not overly fond of onions in any form, although my eldest (12) has just discovered, thank goodness, that fried onions, a steak, and a baked potato make a perfect meal! But tonight it's just me so I'm making onion soup. MY normal recipe is to saute a bunch of onions, slowly, in a bit of butter and olive oil. The recipes often say to do this so slowly that you can do it for an hour without caving in and making the soup because the smell is driving you bonkers! Okay, I've never quite given them an hour. I also have yet to make beef broth from scratch. I always make my own chicken broth but I so rarely have beef bones, I've never made broth that way. But I keep a little jar of "beef base" in the frig and use that for my broth. Most recipes say saute the onions forever, add the beef broth, a bit of sherry and cook a long time, then serve with either grated Parmesan or a slice of bread covered in Parmesan or provolone and broiled till the cheese is soft. (I usually end up just eating it with toast and sprinkle the soup with Parmesan.) The recipe tonight is a bit different. I love Patricia Cornwell's mystery novels with Kay Scarpetta and picked up her cookbook on a day I felt rich. This is from the book, although I'm not following it exactly, of course. Anyway, saute the onions for 15 minutes, add a bit of flour, add 1/2 chicken broth and 1/2 beef broth (however much broth you want, half of each), and some chopped tomato. I'm using a can of diced tomatoes because even in California the fresh tomatoes in the store are not worth bothering with and I find the canned ones better this time of year. A bit of sherry, as well, which is traditional, and a bit of Kitchen Bouquet which I found in the cupboard although I'm not sure why I have it. But I'm going to add it at the appropriate time, which is now. The bell is ringing downstairs. I'll report back later!

Okay. I just finished it. Mmmmm. The tomatoes added a touch of sweetness and some nice texture. And I think the 1/2 chicken broth and 1/2 beef broth really made it nice, lighter than all beef broth.

Spinach Salad

The simplest Spinach Salad ever--and healthy too! I love spinach salad. I am actually not fond of cooked spinach, although I try to fix it now and then because I know it's packed full of good things. My mother used to serve cooked spinach with lemons that we could squeeze onto the pile of wilted, limp leaves. A bit of salt as well and I'm okay but not particularly enjoying myself. But raw spinach, in salads, I love! The fancy spinach salads, with bacon and onions and a wonderful dressing are divine. But I've found a 1 minute substitute that is pretty danged good. I buy a big bag of already cleaned spinach. Perhaps not "cheap" but this way I eat spinach and my good health is a worthy investment I think. I put a very liberal amount on a plate. Then I sprinkle it with seasoned rice vinegar. A tiny bit of salt, if you're a salt-fiend like me. That's it. Seasoned rice vinegar makes a great frugal salad dressing.

Baked Penne Pasta with Meat Sauce

Made one of the kids' favorites last night. I pulled a bag of meat sauce from the freezer (about 2 -3 cups I guess) and thawed it and warmed it up while I cooked up a half a pound of penne pasta (little tubes). Drained the pasta when it was done and mixed with the meat sauce then poured it into a 8x8 baking pan. Topped with about a cup of grated mozzarella then some grated Parmesan. Covered with foil and baked for 20 minutes at 350, then uncovered and baked another few minutes. I also pulled out some garlic bread from the freezer. (I'd made two big loaves for my party then only needed one of them.) I cut it in half (still frozen!) because that was plenty for the 3 of us, then heated it in the oven with the pasta to thaw out. Put the broiler on for a few minutes at the end so the bread would get crispy on top like we like it. Made a quick salad and that was dinner.

You could easily double this and freeze half for later. Or freeze just the pasta and meat sauce in a bag and just add the cheese when you're baking it although for me just having the meat sauce in the freezer is the most flexible and allows me either do this OR spaghetti or whatever we feel like.

Onion Quiche

I made a quiche last night that came out wonderfully.

The crust was easy. Stir together 1 cup flour, 1/4 tsp salt, and 1/4 pound of butter until crumbly. Add one egg yolk and 3 tablespoons ice water. I used my Kitchen Aid mixer to mix this all up. When it balled up, it was done. You don't need to roll it out. Just break off pieces and press it into your pie pan or quiche dish. Prick with a fork a few times and bake at 350 for 5 minutes to partially bake it. (If you want to roll it out, refrigerate it for 20 minutes or so to chill the dough.)

While that was baking, I sliced up 2 onions and sautéed them in a bit of butter until soft. I've also used bacon, ham, and/or leftover veggies, in the past but just did the onions this time. Sometimes simpler is better.

I took the leftover egg white and added 3 more eggs, 2 cups milk, a pinch of nutmeg and a pinch of cayenne pepper and mixed it all up. Put the onions in the pie shell, sprinkled about 2 cups of grated cheddar cheese over it (recipe called for Swiss but I like cheddar), poured the custard mix in it. Baked at 450 for 15 minutes, then at 350 for 30 more.

Baked Chicken Quarters, Cheesy Potato Wedges, and Broccoli

Tonight's dinner was chicken quarters, potato wedges, and broccoli and cheese sauce. The chicken quarters had been bought on sale a while ago. I threw a few pieces into each freezer bag and mixed up various marinades and threw them in. This was essentially oil, lemon juice, garlic and salt I think. Can't quite remember... Anyway I pulled them out of the freezer yesterday and had them in the frig but they weren't totally thawed so I used the microwave to finish thawing. I laid them skin side up in a baking dish and started them at 350, planning on an hour's cooking time.

However, I then decided to try these potato wedges that needed to be baked at 400. The potatoes were scrubbed and cut into fourths length-wise, then dipped in melted butter, then rolled in a mixture of bread crumbs, grated Parmesan cheese (about 1/2 cup each), paprika (1/2 tsp), and garlic powder (1/2 tsp). Laid them in a single layer in a baking dish. They needed about 35 minutes so when the chicken had been baking a half an hour, I turned up the oven and added the potato wedges.

The broccoli was fresh. I generally just "steam" it in the microwave. It stays nice and green that way and doesn't get mushy. I cut it into chunks and put in a covered dish with a few tablespoons of water and microwaved about 3 minutes (for about 2 cups). I made up a cheese sauce and poured that into the broccoli, then covered with the leftover bread crumbs from the chicken and baked it for the final 15 minutes with everything else.

The girls pronounced everything but the broccoli "3 stars", especially the potatoes. The broccoli they happily ate when I mentioned the See's Candy we had for desert and pronounced it "not too bad."