As I've previously mentioned, I have a huge sweet tooth. Flipping through Pinterest, I saw this recipe and had to try it. No, a smoothie does not necessarily have the benefit of being a meal across multiple days (or even one day) the way the soup recipes can, but as a snack, I decided to give it a try. Now, as much as I was hoping, I knew this smoothie would not taste exactly like a cinnamon roll. However, I was hoping this would kick my sweet cravings in a healthier way than eating an actual cinnamon roll (I have to plug my nose when I'm walking past a Cinnabon, otherwise I'll want one). Cinnamon rolls are my weakness...especially the frosting. Anyway, this recipe was easy peasy to make...especially compared to my previous experience making soups. I guess that's the advantage of a smoothie. I literally just threw everything into my Ninja blender. No science to it, whatsoever. Sometimes they say to put liquids in first, or solids...or something....well I didn't! I just threw it in. I do have to mention that I used regular vanilla yogurt instead of Greek yogurt. I like Greek yogurt, but the sourness of it can be overpowering sometimes, particularly when I want to pretend I'm eating a cinnamon roll. In the end I think I blended a little too much, since it was extremely liquidy. I just added some ice, and it was good to go. Overall I would say that the recipe was a success. It definitely satisfied my sweet tooth, and I was pleasantly surprised by how tasty and refreshing it was. Even with the vanilla yogurt it was not overly sweet. I do have to say it tasted a bit more like an oatmeal cookie than a cinnamon roll (which was still very tasty) because of the oats. Regardless, I would definitely make it again when I'm in the mood for something unhealthy and sweet. Ingredients1 cup vanilla almond milk
1/2 cup vanilla Greek yogurt 1/4 cup old fashioned oats 1 Tablespoon brown sugar 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon 1 frozen banana (or fresh banana, but add in 3-4 ice cubes with fresh) Directions: Place all ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth.
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There's something really comforting about chicken soups. I was really excited to try this one, since it seemed to have the right level of difficulty to make it tasty, but not take up an entire day making it. This recipe just sounded good - when reading through the ingredients I thought to myself, "well those sound like they'd be good together." Such a simple concept. Does anyone else think the word "chowder" sounds gross? Maybe it's just me. I'll keep you in suspense on this one- keep reading to find out what I ultimately thought of the recipe and this soup!
CliffNotes Version1.) Melt butter in pot 2.) Add onion, carrots, and celery 3.) Cook until tender (3-4 minutes) 4.) Add flour, then gradually add chicken broth, milk, and cook 1-2 minutes 5.) Stir in potatoes 6.) Bring to boil, reduce to simmer for 12-15 minutes 7.) Add chicken and cheese Final Review: Loving this recipe! This soup is the perfect balance of good,, flavorful ingredients, while still being easy to make! It even passed the "leftovers in my lunch test," which means that it tasted great (maybe even better) the next day. I really enjoyed the thick, creaminess of the soup without being too rich and heavy. The chicken, potato, and vegetables make such a great combination, and the cheese in there...wow. Yes, I suppose "chowder" is the correct word to use, because this does come out pretty thick.
My husband is the first person to "taste test' my soup after it's finished. He's so sincere, I can always tell when he likes the soup vs. when he LIKES the soup (because he always "likes" it). This one was definitely a winner- I could see it in his eyes :) I would definitely make this one again. Soup Sunday has become my new favorite thing! Check out this roundup of some of my faves :) Click on any to be directed to the post!
Hello! Nothing says "love" like making homemade soup for someone- and this roasted red pepper soup certainly does the trick. This one was a little out on a limb for me, since I don't think I've ever even eaten a red pepper soup. The flavor is delicious, and it has the smokiness of the red pepper and the paprika that makes this soup a great and healthy recipe. Is it easy? Well, that is, of course, relative. Compared to the other recipes I've tried, this one was one of the more difficult (at least for me). Typically the level of difficulty is closely correlated to the number of bowls and utensils I have to use, which is also correlated with how messy my kitchen is after making it. My kitchen was a disaster, and my plate count was up to 5 or 6 when all was said and done. There was also an aerobic component to this recipe, given (see previous posts) my broiler is on the bottom of my oven. Therefore, every time I needed to broil something (which happens quite frequently in this recipe), I literally had to get down on floor level to make sure I wasn't burning anything. It felt like one of those exercise bootcamps- up to stir, down to check red pepper in broiler, up to stir, down to check broiler. Other than the small challenges of peeling a softened red pepper (I probably should've googled this), and all the chopping involved, it was a great recipe and perfect if you have a little more time on your hands. Ingredients
CliffNotes Version of Recipe1. Cut bell peppers and lay on pan. Broil until "skin has become black" 2. Broil cauliflower florets 3. While broiling cauliflower, head oil in a pot 4. Add garlic and onions 5. Add chicken stock, thyme, and paprika 6. Add chopped peppers and cauliflower 7. Blend Final look before plating I do think this soup turned out well, especially with the crostinis on top that I made for the "french onion soup recipe" on top. french-onion-soup.html For me, a few things made this recipe more difficult than others. First of all, broiling the peppers until the skin was "black" was a little scary for me. Does that mean all black? Black spots? Peering into the broiler and watching the color change on the peppers proved a little too adventurous for me, so I ultimately didn't broil them as long as probably was necessary. I waited until I saw black spots forming, and that was enough for me. The next challenge was peeling these peppers....Is there some secret, easy way to peel half a broiled pepper? The peppers become soft after broiling, even after cooling. There's also not much "meat" or "flesh" on half a pepper, so to separate the skin is extremely difficult. I ended up just giving up and chopping the peppers fine enough that the skin didn't really matter. If the skin was all black I probably couldn't have done this, but maybe if it was all black it would've peeled more easily. Finally, just the amount of chopping was quite a task. Chopping 4 bell peppers into tiny pieces, chopping onion, chopping cauliflower....tends to leave a mess! I even have a special tool that helps with the chopping process, and it still was a major task. If you have the time (and are better at chopping than I am)- definitely a tasty recipe. I have to admit that it was difficult to decide what to make this week. I was feeling rather uninspired when I scrolled through my saved recipes, but that could've been becaues I wasn't hungry when I was deciding what to make. This can make a big difference- when I'm hungry every recipe looks amazing. When I'm not, well, it makes things more difficult. I decided on a tomato and tortellini soup that I had been eyeing. This may be a good time to tell you that I don't like tomatoes. I LOVE tomato soup, ketchup, yada yada. I have just NEVER liked tomatoes- and this is not for lack of trying. I have tried tomatoes on numerous occasions, including while making this soup. Nope! Not for me! So be forewarned that if you don't like tomatoes, this recipe (as it is written) may not for you. That's because, unlike other tomato soups, this one has halved cherry tomatoes in it. Of course it would be VERY easy to just not put the cherry tomatoes in it. That's probably what I should've done. The shopping list for this was easy and difficult. Easy because it had very few ingredients. It was difficult because there was one ingredient, tomato pesto, that was difficult to find. I personally had never heard of it before. Here I am by the "tomato truck" at one of our local grocery stores. Tomatoes and I have never really got along.....but I'm trying to put our differences behind us. Unfortunately you can only buy this "bouquet" of parsley, even when you only need a sprig. Oh well, at least it looks pretty. Not pictured: Sprinklers started two seconds after this picture was taken. Ingredients
Not pictured: Chicken Broth! (I had already put it in the pot) CliffNotes Version of Recipe1.) Heat chicken stock until boiling 2.) Add tortellini and wait 7 minutes 3.) Add halved cherry tomatoes and wait 1 minute until tender 4.) Stir in pesto and cream 5.) Add red pepper flakes (optional) I was a little scared at first because it didn't look ANYTHING like tomato soup and I wasn't sure just adding the 1/3 c tomato pesto would do the trick - but it shaped up quite nicely! Looking pretty good! Here is the finished product- it looks very pretty!
My final comments: I thought this recipe was extremely easy. Was it my favorite soup recipe I have tried? Definitely not. For some reason this soup requires a lot of stirring, and if you let it sit, the cream and tomato will separate making it look extremely unappetizing. The taste is fine, and I (personally)would probably like the soup a lot better, overall, if the halved tomatoes weren't in it. There's also something about the tortellini being in there that makes you feel like you're eating pasta with watery tomato sauce. But maybe that's just me. This is a great recipe if you have ZERO time at all to make a soup. It took literally 10 minutes to make, including "prep time" since there's very little chopping involved. However, if you have more than 10 minutes to spare, I'm sure there are other tomato soups out there that may be even tastier. Definitely a personal quest to find my next tomato soup recipe :) Hello everyone! This week I made one of my winter favorites: Beef Barley Soup. I came across the recipe and it just sounded so delicious, I had to give it a try. I would say this one was the second easiest recipe I have made so far (after last week's "wonton" soup," and for such a simple recipe, it is so incredibly tasty. You would never guess how easy it is by the taste of it. I had a "cringe-worthy" moment while making this recipe. I went a little crazy with the barley. When I put in the listed 1/2 cup of barley in the soup, it looked like so little. So I added a little more. Little did I know (which seems various obvious) that the barley would completely absorb the liquid. I was getting way too over-confident with the soup recipes, and that set me back a couple notches. Luckily the soup was salvaged. All was well, in the end. I'm sure none of you will make the mistake I did, but just in case, I had to be fully up front about this little snafu. Clearly a rookie mistake. Browning the meat worked well in the pot! Love this blend of vegetables. So many pretty colors! Ingredients1 tsp oil
Cliff Notes Version of Recipe1.) Brown meat in pot 2.) Add carrots, onion, celery, and garlic 3.) Add water 4.) Bring to boil 5.) Reduce to simmer for 1-1/2 hours 6.) Add barley 7.) Simmer for additional 30-35 minutes This recipe made a good amount of soup- and I think it would be great to freeze for eating later!
Enjoy! I have to tell you all a little secret. I wasn't going to post a soup this week. I'm going out of town and I just didn't think it would be possible. Well of course over my lunch hour I was looking through soup recipes and one stood out to me. It was titled, and I quote, "Easy Wonton Soup." The title of this recipe caught my heart immediately. Easy. Yes! Wonton Soup. Yes! I have this newfound obsession with Asian style soups. I love Chinese-inspired, Vietnamese-inspired, and Thai-inspired soups. In fact, my husband and I go out for Foh at least once or twice a month. It is by far one of my very favorite meals any time of year. So when I saw this recipe pop up I thought- well, now that I've seen it I have to make it. I made a quick stop at the grocery store after work. I didn't have my usual photographer with me (my husband), so I had to selfie it up. Let me tell you, you get some pretty weird looks taking selfies with green onions in the middle of the grocery store. Instead of wontons, the recipe suggests frozen potstickers. I personally think this is a great idea in many ways- makes the recipe quick and easy. However, anytime you incorporate anything frozen I guess it adds some extra ingredients that make it less "pure" than maybe some of the other soups. I did enjoy the potstickers available at our local grocery store- not too many ingredients that I would consider "bad" (preservatives, etc.). Ingredients
Cliffnotes VersionThis recipe IS easy. I mean, easy. The "Cliff notes" version is practically the real version. 1.) Put ginger, garlic, soy sauce, and chicken broth in a pot 2.) Bring to boil 3.) Add pot stickers, onions, and carrots 4.) Simmer for 10 minutes 5.) Add sesame oil (had never heard of this until this recipe) Since I've been doing this a couple weeks now, I felt like I could experiment a little bit with the recipe. Therefore, I added more green onion than the recipe called for, and a little more garlic than what is listed. I think this was definitely a good choice, since it fills out the broth more (and I love green onion). When (not if) I make this again, I would probably buy more broth, and add more of every ingredient except the wontons. Basically I just want more than this recipe made. Is it bad that this recipe was one of the easiest I've made and one of my absolute favorites?!? I suppose that's definitely a good thing :) I couldn't stop eating this soup right after I made it. I was enjoying it immensely, and then realized that I hadn't taken a picture of it yet! It was hard to stop eating it long enough to take the picture. Needless to say I'll be making this again. This picture makes me hungry, and I just ate dinner. Feel free to comment if you try this recipe, or if you have any other easy recipes you would recommend! Enjoy!
Hi everyone! This week I'm making an easy butternut squash soup recipe, which is pretty exciting for two reasons: The first is that I've never made a butternut squash soup before. The second is that I get to use my new immersion blender!! I've always considered squash a difficult vegetable, just because it seems "pumpkin-like" in that it can be very hard and has seeds. I thought this recipe was interesting because, unlike my first thought, you bake (or roast) the squash WHOLE, before you even cut it. This certainly made the cutting much easier. Apparently "heavy cream" and "heavy whipping cream" are the same....thank you, Google. Fresh sage and veggies! Yummm! The Ingredients
1.) Chop onion, sage, apple 2.) Put whole squash(es) on a foil-lined pan and "baste" with oil (I used olive oil) 3.) Bake squash at 375 for 1 hour (ish) 4.) Melt butter in pot and add onion until translucent 5.) Add apple and heat until soft 6.) Add garlic and red chili flakes 7.) Peel squash and put flesh in onion mixture (this gets messy) 8.) Add broth and bring to boil 9.) Add cream and sage 10.) Blend! Great recipe- I really enjoyed the soup. I topped with pumpkin seeds, like the recipe suggests. I also added a little brown sugar on top because I needed some sweetness :)
If you try this recipe, or have another butternut squash soup recipe, comment below! Enjoy! I absolutely love french onion soup. It is my default soup choice on any menu. When I saw this french soup recipe I realized that it never really occurred to me to make it myself, nor did I have any idea how to make it. We hit the grocery store and stocked up on supplies- basically a bunch of onions, chicken stock, and beef stock. Shopping for supplies! Onion extravaganza! Yes, I purchased soup crocks because of this recipe. The thought of laying a cheese slice over the top of the crock and broiling until bubbly was just too much for me to NOT go for the crock. As a side note: is "crock" the correct term for this? It sounds silly, but I don't know what else you'd call it. The woman at the store looked at me like I had five heads when I asked where they were. Without further ado......the recipe: Ingredients4 Tbs of Butter (unsalted) A few tablespoons of olive oil or vegetable oil (your preference) 4 to 6 medium to large onions. I use a mix of spanish/white/and sweet (Valida or Mayan) 1 quart chicken stock (stock not broth) 1 quart beef stock Salt Pepper Croutons (either store bought or you can make them) Gruyere, Swiss, or provolone cheese (your choice) "Cliff Notes" Version of Recipe1.) Chop oinions forever and ever (and henceforth smell like onions forever and ever) 2.) Melt butter and oil in bottom of pot 3.) Add onions 4.) Stir until onions get brown-ish 5.) Add the stock(s?) 6.) Bring to simmer for several hours (or until you get too impatient to eat it) A couple comments about this recipe. First of all, I think you need a bigger pot than what I have. Once I chopped up the mound of onions, they basically filled half the pot I own. This makes carmelizing the onions difficult. It still worked, but I couldn't use all the onions and carmelizing them took awhile. My bad. I would recommend carmelizing in a larger-diameter frying pan, and then transferring over to the pot once carmelized. Secondly, I didn't realize how long carmelizing the onions would take (although see comment above for why this could be the case). It took about 20-25 minutes to get some color on the onions. I noticed that there was also a change in the smell once they started to brown a bit. For some reason I thought this would be a very quick process since it seems like everything else I cook burns in 30 seconds. You'll all be shocked to know that I did make my own croutons. This was pretty easy, since I just cut up a small loaf of french bread into narrow slices, brushed each side with olive oil (fancy), sprinkled with salt, and garlic powder. Then I used the broiler to toast them until they were golden brown. Another surprise was that our broiler is located under our main oven, which as a side note, is very inconvenient when you have a fear of burning things. Basically I had to lay on the floor to watch my little crustinis. Before During Cooking After A final note is that I apparently don't know the difference between boiling and simmering. I think my heat was up too high, and half my liquid was gone in about 30 minutes of cooking. Rookie mistake. Otherwise, the soup was delciious! My Soup Picture from RecipeMore picturesAs a first stab at "soup-making" I selected a tasty-looking recipe from Pinterest. I didn't realize how many spices were included until I was at the grocery store, looking at the list. In reality, it isn't THAT many (some I actually had, surprisingly), and the recipe was very quick to make. (Even for me it was about a half hour, total). The first step was to chop the jalapeno and onion. Honestly, this was the most time-consuming part of the whole recipe. I like that you can adjust the spiciness of the recipe by either including the jalapeno seeds or not. Because I didn't feel like picking out the seeds, I just included them. The final result was pretty spicy (not too spicy for me), but can be mellowed out by sprinkling cheese on top and adding some sour cream. Heating the jalapeno and onion together, and then adding garlic made me feel like a cooking goddess. Regardless of how bad of a cook you are, when you heat garlic and peppers it smells amazing. I made a conscious effort to keep stirring these ingredients so they wouldn't burn (my stirring was probably a bit excessive). For the first time I also included all the spices listed (except the cilantro). Usually I skip some of the spices because I figure they can't have much of an impact if you only add a teaspoon or two. There are some cooks out there that are probably cringing. You'll be happy to know that I added even those "trace" spices, and I think it really did make a difference (go figure). A final note: The recipe does have a section for making homemade tortillia strips. There was no way I was doing that, so I just bought a bag of tortilla crunchies at the grocery store. The recipe was still great :) Check out this link for original recipe: http://www.averiecooks.com/2015/09/easy-30-minute-homemade-chicken-tortilla-soup.html Ingredients:
Cliffnotes version of recipe: 1.) Heat oil in large pot 2.) Add onion and jalapeno (stir until soft) 3.) Add garlic and stir for a minute (enjoy the aromatic scents) 4.) Add all other ingredients 5.) Bring to boil for 5-7 minutes My version: Picture from recipe:The picture from the recipe does look better, but in all fairness the picture I took was without the tortilla strips, and without the other acoutremants. I also was packing up the soup for my husband and my lunches (which was delicious reheated, by the way).
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March 2017
CategoriesAbout This BlogI don't have time to cook. Follow my journey as I try to make a different, easy recipe every Sunday. You know if I can make it and it tastes good, you can. |