by jphilo | Mar 17, 2010 | Recipes
With the end of winter, soup season is almost over. But there’s still time for one more soup recipe, one that’s light and warm on a chilly spring evening.
My mom found the recipe in a free heart health publication at the grocery store a few years ago. It takes less than 45 minutes to prepare, though the adaptations below take a little more time. Chicken and chicken broth can be substituted for turkey, too.
Turkey Tortilla Soup
1 cup chopped onion
1 teaspoon olive oil
1 (4 oz.) can green chilies
1 (1.25 oz.) envelope dry taco seasoning
1 (16 oz.) can diced tomatoes, undrained
6 cups turkey broth
1 (10 oz.) bag frozen corn
2 cups cooked turkey, chopped into bite-sized pieces
1/3 cup chopped fresh cilantro
4 oz. tortilla chips
½ cup shredded Monterey Jack cheese
In a 5-quart saucepan, saute onion in olive oil over medium heat for 3 to 4 minutes. Stir in green chilies and taco seasoning. Cook 1 minute. Stir in tomatoes and broth. Bring to a boil. Add corn and turkey. Reduce heat to low and simmer 5 minutes. Add cilantro.
To serve, spoon soup into serving bowls. Top with tortilla chips and cheese.
Make Your Own Broth:
To make your own turkey or chicken broth, follow these steps.
Put turkey or chicken carcass in a stock pot.
Cover turkey with 8-10 cups of water. (Use 3-4 cups for chicken.)
Add a quartered onion, several garlic cloves and 2-3 stalks of celery.
Bring water to boiling, then cover pot and turn down heat to low. Simmer for 2-3 hours.
Remove pot from stove and let cool for 1 hour.
Use a slotted spoon to lift out carcass and put it in a pan to cool. Then pick off the meat and discard bones. Package meat and refrigerate or freeze to use in soup later.
Strain liquid and discard vegetables and bones. Pour broth into containers and refrigerate or freeze for later use.
Make Your Own Baked Tortilla Strips:
Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Cut pre-made tortillas into ½ inch strips. Spread on a cookie sheet and bake for 5-10 minutes, until strips are golden brown on the edges. Use in place of tortilla chips.
by jphilo | Mar 10, 2010 | Recipes
Now that winter has been replaced by dense fog and thunderstorms, it’s time to bring out the big guns and blast the gloom away. When I was a kid, we spent nasty Saturdays making chocolate chip oatmeal cookies. Dad would hover like a vulture, exasperating me to no end by eating them as fast as my sister and I made them.
Once Hiram came into the picture and my younger brother developed a man-sized appetite, they joined Dad on cookie patrol. Over the years, others have joined in – my kids, a whole monastery full of monks, foreign exchange students. And every one of them will tell you of the positive mood-enhancing effects of these chocolate chip oatmeal cookies.
So if the fog and rain persists in our part of the country, or even if it doesn’t, or you live elsewhere, try this recipe on Saturday. You’re gonna love it.
Gloom-Busting Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies
2 eggs 2 cups flour
1 cup softened butter 2 cups oatmeal
1 1/2 cup brown sugar 1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon vanilla 12 ounce package chocolate chips
1/2 teaspoon salt 1 cup chopped nuts, optional
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cream together eggs, butter, brown sugar and vanilla. Add flour, soda and salt. Mix well. Then mix in oatmeal, nuts and chocolate chips. Drop by teaspoonsful onto a cookie sheet. Bake 10 -12 minutes. The recipe says it makes 5 – 6 dozen, but they never stick around long enough to be counted!
You can make bars instead by spreading the dough into a greased 10 x 13 cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 15 – 20 minutes. Cut into bars while still warm.
by jphilo | Mar 5, 2010 | Recipes
The produce section of the grocery store is a depressing place this time of year. The vegetables look downright exhausted, and the out-of-season fruits look like parodies of what’s available in summer and spring. Finding fruits and vegetables with crunch, flavor, and texture is often an exercise in futility.
To keep from succumbing completely to frozen and canned vegetables, I rely upon a couple never fail side dishes. One of them is Greek salad, which uses vegetables available and crunchy year round. It’s easy to make and so healthy you’ll feel increasingly virtuous with every bite.
Greek Salad
1 Romaine heart, chopped or torn into bite-sized pieces
1/4 medium sweet onion, thinly sliced
1/4 sweet red pepper, thinly sliced
1/4 cup kamara olives, pitted and halved
1 1/2 tablespoon olive oil
1 1/2 tablespoon red wine vinegar
1/4 teaspoon coarse black pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt
feta cheese
Combine vegetables in a salad bowl. In small bowl or curet, mix vinegar, oil, salt and pepper. Pour over vegetables immediately before serving and toss well. Sprinkle with feta cheese.
by jphilo | Feb 25, 2010 | Recipes
My daughter and her fiance recently came to visit on the same weekend we hosted our Sunday evening small church group. So I wanted to fix a dual purpose meal: Sunday lunch for the kids before they headed back to school and supper for our guests later in the day.
The solution was Anne’s favorite meal, French Stew, and it was a winner with both crowds. As this week’s blog recipe, it’s fulfilling several more purposes. Now that it’s recorded electronically, I can add it to the family recipe cookbook Anne wants before she sets up housekeeping. And all our small church friends who requested the recipe can get it here, too. Wa-hoo!
Without further ado, here’s the recipe for Anne’s favorite meal. It’s my take on the French Stew recipe from Once a Month Cooking by Mimi Wilson and Mary Beth Lagerborg, a cookbook my mom gave me in the early 1990s.
French Stew
1 1/2 pounds lean stew meat, chopped 1 cup water
1 10 3/4-ounce can beef consume 1/3 cup red wine vinegar
3 large peeled and sliced carrots 1/4 cup minute tapioca
1 16-ounce can whole green beans, drained 1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 16-ounce can small peas, drained 1/2 cup fine, dry bread crumbs
1 16-ounce can peeled tomatoes 1 bay leaf
1 8 1/2-ounce can whole onions, drained 1 tablespoon salt
or 1 cup coarsely chopped onions 1/4 teaspoon pepper
Mix ingredients in the crock pot and stir. Cook for 8 to 10 hours on low. Makes 8 servings. To freeze, cool and ladle into a 14 cup freezer container. To serve, thaw and heat in large pot until bubbly.
by jphilo | Feb 19, 2010 | Recipes
As a long time a Sue Grafton fan, my insides get quivery at the release of a new Kensie Millhone mystery. I ask myself, “What title will she come up with for this letter of the alphabet? How will it foreshadow the plot, the stories, the characters?” When I finally read her newest release and get answers to the questions, I’m never disappointed. Grafton’s latest, U is for Undertow, was no exception.
When Grafton announced her intention of writing her way through the alphabet before completing the series, many people in bookland thought she was overly ambitious. But with only V, W, X, Y, and Z to go, the naysayers aren’t saying much anymore. Even if for some unthinkable reason Grafton doesn’t make it to Z, her critics will have a hard time finding reason to complain since her writing is consistently good. Not only that, but her plots are tight, with plenty of twists and turns. She researches carefully, (In one interview Grafton said she regrets keeping the setting in the 1980s because she has to keep checking on what electronic gizmos were and weren’t available at the time) and operates within the constraints of the time period. Then she creatively explains Millhone’s investigative techniques – going to the library to use a variety of city directories to discover addresses, for example – which would otherwise make no sense to today’s cell phone savvy readers.
But best of all is the slow and steady development of Kinsey Millhone’s spectacularly flawed and completely believable character. With each mystery Kinsey solves, Grafton scatters crumbs to explain why her detective holds the world at arm’s length. In the course of the series, she follows the trail of Millhone’s orphaned past and unconventional upbringing at the hands of a maiden aunt until readers are chaffing to learn the whole story, committed to reading every novel until all is revealed with the letter Z. Grafton does an equally good job with the reoccurring characters of Kensey’s octogenarian landlord and the dictatorial owner of the Hungarian restaurant down the street.
U for Undertow is as good as any of the books in the series, with flashbacks to the 1960s so realistic I felt like it was Weekly Reader time in elementary school again. But don’t take my word for it. If you’re a Sue Grafton fan, pick up her latest as soon as you can. But if you’re new to the series, start with A is for Alibi and work your way through the series. It’s the best way to get to know Kinsey Millhone, a woman who may become one of your best fictional friends. It’ll be worth the effort. I promise.
by jphilo | Feb 18, 2010 | Recipes
Along my gravel road, winter has been in full swing for two months. With the amount of snow on the ground, people in these parts are thinking the groundhog was mighty optimistic when he predicted only six more weeks of winter.
So what’s a person with raging cabin fever and a life-threatening snow overdose to do? Eat comfort food, which in my case means some sort of potatoes at supper, the thought of which probably has carb hawks shaking their heads.
But here’s the deal. One of my main motivations for sticking with my daily exercise regime is so I can eat potatoes now and then. My absolute favorite is mom’s recipe for the most comforting of all comfort foods, creamed potatoes. Yum!
Dorothy’s Creamed Potatoes
Peel, wash and slice 4 – 5 medium potatoes into 1/2 inch cubes. Put cubed potatoes in a saucepan and add water until the bottom 1/3 of the cubes are covered. Heat pan, uncovered, over high heat until the potatoes boil. Then turn down the heat and cover pan. Maintain a slow boil until potatoes are soft around the edges and firm in the middle. Remove from heat. Do not drain off water. Add 2 – 3 tablespoons of butter, 1/4 teaspoon pepper and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Sprinkle 1 tablespoon flour over all and stir well. Put pan back on low heat and add milk a tablespoon or two at a time, stirring constantly. Continue adding milk until the creamed mixture boils and reaches the consistency you desire.
Sorry the amounts aren’t exact, but this is a recipe Mom showed me how to make, and her amounts were by guess and by golly. So play with the recipe until you perfect it. The way this winter is going, you still have several months available to practice!
