Homemade Chicken Soup

A few days ago I made homemade chicken noodle soup for our community group. It was such a hit that I

decided to type up the recipe and share it. This way, too, it's written down instead of just in my head, so I don't have to try to remember it!

The inspiration for this recipe is a kids' book called Noodle Soup by Gloria Repp, but I've modified the original quite a bit and made it my own.

Chicken Noodle Soup

Serves 12. Prep time: 5 hours. Cooking time: 45 minutes.

• 1 rotisserie chicken
• 2 onions, chopped
• 4 cloves garlic, finely grated
• 6 carrots, cut into 1/2 inch slices
• 3 stalks celery, cut into 1 inch slices
• 8 cups chicken stock
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
• 1 teaspoon dried basil
• 1/4 cup dried parsley
• 2 large or 4 small bay leaves
• 1 pound egg noodles
• 2 10.5 ounce cans cream of chicken soup

1. Separate chicken from skin and bones. Break chicken into bite-sized pieces. Reserve chicken.
2. In a large pot, cover skin and bones of chicken with water. Bring to a boil. Lower heat. Simmer 4 hours.
3. Strain out bones and skin and discard. Reserve liquid (stock) for soup. (Steps 1-3 can be done several days ahead of time.)
4. In a large stock pot, sweat out onions and garlic in several tablespoons of olive oil until onions are soft.
5. Add reserved stock from boiling the chicken bones. Add all remaining ingredients except noodles and cream of chicken.
6. Bring to a boil. Lower heat. Simmer 35 minutes or until carrots and celery are soft.
7. Add reserved chicken, egg noodles, and cream of chicken soup.
8. Bring to a boil. Lower heat. Simmer 10 minutes or until noodles are soft.
9. Remove bay leaves before serving.

Using Up The Leftover Turkey: Buffalo Turkey Dip

A few months ago, I bought the ingredients for a Buffalo Chicken Pull Apart Pizza to make for guests. But when the time came to make it, I was feeling lazy. So I left off the crust and mixed everything into a dip. The company loved it, and I decided I'd better write down the recipe. On this Thanksgiving weekend, I made the dip with leftover turkey, and it was a hit! 

So here is my recipe. 

Crockpot Buffalo Chicken (or Turkey) Dip

2 (10 oz) cans chicken, pulled

4 large cloves garlic, pressed or micro-planed

1 (12 oz) bottle Frank's Buffalo Hot sauce 

2 (8 oz) blocks cream cheese

1 (16 oz) bottle Ranch dressing

1 (8 oz) block cheddar cheese, shredded

1 cup sour cream

1.  Combine all ingredients. If too spicy, add more Ranch. 

2.  Cook in Crockpot on high for 1 1/2 hours. 

3.  Serve with chips. 

The Best Chocolate Chip Cookies You'll Ever Eat (Not Hyperbole, Fact!)

I must say that my favorite type of cookie is chocolate chip. My vision of the perfect chocolate chip cookie is one that is slightly crisp on the outside and chewy on the inside. (If you like hard, crunchy cookies like my sister does, then stop reading right now. Such heresy shall never grace the pages of my blog, so take your sweet tooth elsewhere!) The perfect cookie must have plenty of chocolate chips and a flavorful cookie base. I've kind of been on a quest to find this perfect recipe. Every time I made chocolate chip cookies I tried something new, but every recipe was missing something. Some were too crispy, some too doughy or cakey. And some had too much cookie and not enough chocolate! And all of them were lacking some specific taste that I just couldn't identify. (I'm not a chef or a foodie, so I've never been able to taste something and say, "This needs a touch more cumin." Not that you would put cumin in chocolate chip cookies, but you get my point!)

Another Family Favorite Recipe!

This super-simple crock pot recipe is becoming one of our favorites. It's great for Sunday lunch! I adapted it from Fix-It and Forget-It Cookbook by Dawn J Ranck and Phyllis Pellman Good.

Creamy Crockpot Mushroom Chicken

• 1 (4 ounce) can mushrooms
• 2 (10 3/4 ounce) cans cream of chicken soup
• 1 envelope onion soup mix
• 2 cups chicken broth
• 4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (thawed if you're using frozen chicken)
• 1 pound short-cut pasta such as penne

1. In a medium bowl, mix together mushrooms, soup, soup mix, and chicken broth.
2. Place chicken breasts in the bottom of crockpot.
3. Top with soup mixture.
4. Cover, cook on low for 6 or more hours.
5. Thirty minutes before serving, use two forks to shred the chicken breasts. Stir the meat into the sauce.
6. Cook pasta according to directions on package. 
7. Stir pasta into chicken and sauce.
8. Garnish with sour cream and fresh parsley or chives. 

Serves four.

Notes: 

• I used whole wheat pasta to add some extra protein. 
• Also, I boiled the pasta to just shy of al dente, about a minute less than the minimum recommended time on the package. That way, it could finish cooking in the crockpot.  
• I also added about a 1/2 cup of the starchy cooking water from the pasta to the sauce before I mixed in the pasta to help it stick.

Homemade Spaghetti Sauce

I've discovered a few recipes online lately (that I've adapted of course), and my husband says they're keepers! Here is one of them:

 

Easy Homemade Spaghetti Sauce

A few weeks ago I needed to make some spaghetti sauce, last minute. So I looked to the internet and found a recipe that used ingredients I had on hand. Last week I made it again, tweaking it a bit. Now I think I'll keep making my own sauce. It's cheaper than buying a jar, and my husband likes it better!

Photo credit: http://allrecipes.com

• 2 teaspoons olive oil
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 2 green onions, chopped (optional)
• 1 tablespoon minced garlic
• 1 (4 ounce) can mushrooms
• 1/2 green pepper, finely chopped
• 1 (28 ounce) can peeled and diced tomatoes
• 1 (8 ounce) can tomato paste
• 1 1/2 tablespoons dried basil
• 1 1/2 tablespoons dried oregano
• 2 tablespoons white sugar 

1. In a large saucepan, heat oil over medium heat. Saute onion, green onion and garlic. 
2. When onions are clear, add mushrooms and green pepper. Saute till peppers are soft.
3. Stir in tomatoes, tomato sauce, basil, oregano and sugar. 
4. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to low, and simmer for 20 minutes.

 Serves 4

Notes:
According to Rachael Ray, the correct way to make spaghetti is to boil it to al dente (lit. "to the tooth," or just shy of fully cooked) in salted water and then scoop out about half a cup of the cooking water from the pasta before draining it off. Add the water to the sauce to help it adhere to the pasta. Then dump all the pasta into the sauce (or all the sauce into the pasta if the pasta pot is bigger!) and stir it all together.

Also, I baked some store-bought, frozen meatballs in the oven (I'm not quite to the "make your own meatball" stage of cooking yet!), and added them to my sauce right before I mixed in the pasta.

Amazing Cheese Dip!

At our house, New Year's Eve is a time for appetizers and board games! This year, I searched the internet for a new dip recipe. I ended up combining some ideas and creating my own. It was yummy!

White Chili Cheese Dip

• 2 lbs ground beef, browned
• 1 lb Velveeta Queso Blanco cheese
• 2 (10 ounce) cans medium Rotel diced tomatoes, drained
• 1 (28 ounce) can chili with beans

1. Layer bottom of Crock-Pot with half of the browned beef, then layer of sliced Velveeta, then the rest of beef, then Rotel tomatoes, more sliced Velveeta, then layer the can of chili, then the last of Velveeta.
2. Cook on low for about 2 hours or until top layer of cheese is soft, stir and cook 20 more minutes.
3. Serve with tortilla chips. 

The key to this dip was the Queso Blanco. The mild flavor of the white cheese really blended well with the tomatoes and meat!

My Four Totally Delicious, Painstakingly Perfected, Absolutely-Necessary-for-the-Holidays, Recipes for Christmas Cookies!

I love to bake! And Christmas is a great excuse to make all kinds of cookies that I normally try to keep out of my house for self-control reasons. This year I stuck to the basics: my four favorite kinds of Christmas cookies. I like to think that I have the perfect recipes for all four. So I thought I'd share them with all of you! And, by the way, I've arranged them in order from easiest and fastest to most difficult and time-consuming. So if you haven't started baking yet and want something quick, start with the first recipe. They're amazing, and everyone will be impressed by your baking skills!

Adventures in Baby Food

This little guy would rather eat soot from the fireplace than food with texture!

When my son first transitioned to solids (as opposed to breast milk), I started by feeding him jarred baby food. I did this for a few reasons. Several sources I read pointed out that food used for baby food is picked at its peak and is actually better quality than the produce offered in stores (especially the stores I can afford to shop at!), and I kind of thought that making my own baby food would be far too time consuming and difficult. However, he quickly progressed through stages 1-3 of baby food, and it seemed like he needed to transition to something with a little more texture. Even stage 3 foods are fairly liquified, so I was forced to make my own. And it's been an interesting process, with lots of trial and error!

I quickly discovered that although my son will eat paper, dirt, and carpet fuzz, he doesn't like his food to have texture! He'd stay on a liquid diet if I'd let him--hence a lot of the trial and error. But slowly, I've been feeling my way along and figuring out what works and what doesn't!

Hearty, Spicy, Two-Bean Chili & Yankee Cornbread

After a lot of trial and error, I have perfected my chili recipe! We like it spicy and meaty, with lots of beans, so I started with the recipe in the Betty Crocker Cookbook (2005 edition) and played around with the ingredients and spices until it was perfect. (Side note: I think every bride needs a Betty Crocker Cookbook. It shows you how to make all those things that everyone is supposed to know how to make, and it even gives you things like basic substitutions and vegetable cooking times!) I pair the chili up with the Yankee-style cornbread, also in Betty Crocker. There's a northern and southern version of cornbread in my addition of the cookbook. We prefer the northern version because it's sweeter!

Here are both recipes:

Apples, Apples, and More Apples!

I've spent the last week trying to use up all the apples from our Skytop trip. We started with Apple Chicken on Monday night. Tomorrow I plan to try this Apple Cream Cheese Bundt Cake with Praline Glaze. After today's recipe (which is the point of this blog post), I had three apples left over, so I decided that Apple Fritters sounded good. I'll make those on Saturday so that my husband will be home to get some fresh out of the grease!

Anyway, today I made my mom's famous homemade applesauce! She got it out of an old cookbook (which I'm sure is out of print now) about cooking with honey. So I can't really give credit to the author at this time. If I figure it out, I'll come back and add it! UPDATE: I found out from my mom that she actually got the recipe from a friend in Indiana 28 years ago. She jotted it down on the inside back cover of her cooking with honey cookbook, so that's why I remember it as coming from that book!

I'm going to follow blogging protocol and post a wordy description along with pictures of my attempts to follow the recipe and then post the actual recipe in word form below. If you're like me and you just followed this on Pinterest and you don't care about my witty descriptions, you can just skip to the bottom and read the recipe!