Cream of Mushroom Soup

Tonight is soup night. When the weather turns chilly and the leaves start drifting down quietly from the trees...when the wind blows a little colder, the sun sets a little earlier, the light is more golden, the acrid smell of burning wood melds with the sweet smell of damp leaves... it's fall. And fall means Thursday soup nights, my son's favorites.

This was actually, despite my deep love of mushrooms, my first attempt at cream of mushroom soup. No resource altered or guidance used. This is 100% me.

Ok, I know, the picture is terrible. My camera's battery decided to die right as I was being a genius, and ye old smart phone has only 8 megapixels. My bad. 

This is in no way, shape, or form fat free. It is lower in fat that the crap in the can and much yummier. 

Start with a bunch of different kinds of mushrooms. I used something like close to 2 pounds. 

See, mushroom-a-holic. 

I used Oyster, button, crimini and shittake. These were what was available at the local produce market. It's not mushroom season till March, so I make do.

You will also need:

1/2 and 1/2

Chicken stock or Better than Bouillon

Onion

Celery

Carrot

Garlic

Bay Leaf

Rosemary

Salt and Pepper

Butter

White wine

Milk 

Cut the onions into tiny bits, shred the carrots, chop the celery, rough chop the garlic, rough chop the mushrooms. 

Melt 2 Tbs of butter into the bottom of your stock pot (10 qt) on medium-high heat. Saute onion and garlic until onion is translucent. Add carrot and celery and cook for a few minutes. Add mushrooms mix gently so butter coats them. Add 1/2 c white wine, 4 cups of chicken stock, and 2 c milk. Add 1/2t rosemary and  2 bay leaves, Reduce heat to medium and watch carefully so the milk doesn't separate. Add 1 quart of 1/2 and 1/2. Heat through. Salt as needed (I used a lot). Soup should fill the stock pot about 3/4. 

Serve warm with bread and butter or a salad. 

And that's it. Super easy. Moderately healthy. Deliciously yummy. 

Penne with Pesto Cream sauce and Stuffed Mushrooms

I have made a decision regarding the food blog.

I originally started posting as meals, because everyone usually makes a meal. Then I went to the individual recipe thing as that seemed to be the format many liked. Then I realized that everyone who writes a blog is doing the same thing as everyone else. They are either copying the Pioneer Woman's format on their food blogs or just post individual recipes.

I have decided that most of us make more than just one thing when we cook, and a good majority of people who look at recipes and new ideas are women or parents or people who cook for more than just themselves.

This makes things easy on me as well as my readers. You guys get a one page meal with multiple recipes and how to get everything ready in sequence, AND I don't have to make a million posts for individual recipes. This saves us both time in our busy, hectic lives.

There is a search option, so I am guessing people will use that if they are looking for something specific.

That being said, here is the next meal-like recipe. Jill, I made the stuffed mushrooms just for you so I could fulfill the request for the recipe :-)

I needed something to go with the Stuffed Mushrooms and pasta or steak is always a good option. As steak is not in my budget, this became a vegetarian meal.

Now, before you run off, adding steak or chicken is a cinch and is very yummy. That makes this meal easy for split households as well. Cut your meat up into strips and saute with some olive oil and garlic and serve over the top of the noodles. Or grill/fry/bake your meat of choice and serve off to the side. The steak with blue cheese butter is a good meat dish to go with this.

Looks totally yummy right?

So... Grab your ingredients. You'll need 8-10 large mushrooms, frozen spinach, bread crumbs, an egg, cheese of choice,  medium sized onion, noodles, alfredo sauce, pesto sauce and capers if you have them. Also grab some chicken or vegy bouillon or better than bouillon if you have it. 

Ok. Now. Micro-nuke the spinach. My 8 mushrooms took about 1/2 c of thawed spinach. 

Stem the mushrooms and clean out the fluffy white flesh the stems leave on the inside while the spinach is getting de-icy. Chop 1/2 the onion and the mushroom stems into tiny bits. 

Get out your cheese and shred if needed or in my case, using goat cheese...

I crumbled it. 

Like this. Amount is up to you. I used about 1/2 c.

Mix the ingredients together. Spinach, onion, stems, cheese, 1/4 c bread crumbs, 1 egg, 1 tbs garlic powder and a pinch of basil. 

Oh yeah, forgot to mention those. 

Spoon stuffing into mushrooms and mound. Yes, your hand will get dirty 'cause you have to kinda mold the stuffing to the top a bit, but its ok. That's what sinks are for. 

Mushrooms stuffed, pop in oven at 350 for maybe 20 mins.

Meanwhile, as the mushrooms are getting all happy boil some water and get the pasta going. Pop in a couple of teaspoons of bouillon to make it taste even better.

Mix half the pesto and half the alfredo together in a microwave save thingy.

Get a salad made or whatever veggie you intend on making.

Check the mushrooms. Now top with some more cheese, and put under broiler for about 2 mins. 

When they come out they should look like this. Ish.

When the noodles are done cooking, drain them and nuke the sauce.

And then you are done. Plate the noodles, top with sauce.  

And see what the beautiful mushrooms look like inside... MMMMMM.

Stuffed Mushrooms
8-10 large mushrooms
1/2 c spinach, thawed
3/4 c goat cheese crumbled or mozzarella shredded plus 1/4 c.
1 Tbs garlic powder
1/4c bread crumbs
Mushrooms stems, minced
1/2 onion, minced
1 egg

Stem the mushrooms and clean out cavity or any remaining stem parts. Mix together rest of ingredients except 1/4c of cheese. Spoon into mushrooms and mound slightly over top. Bake at 350 for 15 mins. Top with other 1/4 c of cheese. Broil until cheese melts and is slightly browned. 

Penne with Pesto Cream Sauce
1 lb Penne
Jar of pesto
Jar of alfredo sauce
3 Tbs capers

Boil pasta. Mix 1/2 jar pesto with 1/2 jar alfredo. Drain pasta. Add capers. Top with sauce. 

Serve with salad, bread or other vegetable. 

Homemade Marinara Sauce

This is a long task. Be forewarned. Long task.

Its worth it though. This is one of those things you start on a Saturday morning and let cook all day as you do your weekly housecleaning.

It makes the house smell yummy too.

I suppose you could do this as a slow cooker thing. No reason why not.

First and foremost, pour yourself a nice tall glass of Wild Cherry Pepsi. Or wine. Wine is good too.

Ready?

Ok.

The ingredient list is long.

Tomatoes-Roma 6-10.

1 onion

1 bell pepper

5-6 cloves garlic

Some sort of squash, zuchinni or yellow squash. 1 should be fine

Carrots, 2-3.

Celery, 1 or 2 stalks

Mushrooms. 5 or 6 pounds. Just kidding! Geez! 5 or 6 should be fine. Baby Bella's if you can find them for a reasonable price or wild mushrooms work well too.

On occasion I will throw in broccoli, artichokes, sun dried tomatoes, or eggplant. This can totally be one of those whatever is left of my veggie drawer kind of thing.

Wine. A little for you, a little for the sauce.

So let's start with that.

Chop onion, pepper, and celery (trinity) into bits. Chop garlic coarsely.

Saute in olive oil until translucent and smelling yummy. Sprinkle some salt and pepper in there.

While getting all happy, chop everything else into bits or chunk. However you like your veggies. I like mine chunky.

These are examples of chunks. 

Asparagus. I totally forgot to mention asparagus. This works too, or you can use it as a side for the noodles later.

Toss everything else but tomatoes in and saute for a few minutes. 

Put in tomatoes. I usually end up using more than I think I need. I said 10 above. Sometimes its more. Depends on how many other veggies I put in.

Beautiful makings this is. In the above picture, I cheated. I used some tomatoes and a can as well. I didn't have a ton of fresh left and didn't feel like getting out for just mater's.

No worries. You can do the same. I won't hunt you down, I promise. (Fingers crossed behind back)

Add a dash of red wine. Take a sip. Ok another. Maybe one more.

Add a tablespoon of sugar.

Now on to the herbage.

Important stuff, herbage is.

Here we have...

Oregano

Basil

Garlic powder (cause you can never have too much garlic)

Lemon Pepper

Here's how much to use of each.

About that much. Can you tell I don't like measuring herbage?

Measuring is overrated. 

Ok. Baking is the ONLY exception.

Err on the side of too little and you'll be fine.

If you are anal about measuring...this is about 1.5 tsp, give or take.

So for the oregano, 1 of those is fine. For the garlic 2-3, basil 2-3, lemon pepper 1 or 2. If you have rosemary, 1 is good. 

Fresh is always better, but its not quite time yet to be able to have fresh unless you want to pay out the nose at the store or have and indoor herb garden.

Sigh.

One of these days.

Cook the sauce slowly, on lowish for awhile. The longer it cooks, the better it is.

When you are ready to use it, cook your noodles in salted boiling water (I used ravioli this night)

Fix a veggie (Asparagus this time)

And maybe some bread - Freddies had foccacia in the used bread section so I used that. Have I mentioned my love of used bread? Seriously. Why pay full price?

This is what the whole she-bang looks like. So worth the wait. 

I generally make a huge recipe and freeze it for later. The measurement above feed a fam of 5. 

Hawaiian Chicken Sandwich

It's an amazingly beautiful perfect day today in Washington. I am hobbling along with bare feet and a tank top today. Let me tell you, the air on my skin is like a lover's caress. Mother nature needs to create a climate where it doesn't get above like 70 ever. Or below for that matter. I'd be down with that.

I'm in a summery mood today, and again am in a creative mood for food.

So lunch today was a chicken sandwich, hawaiian style.

Well probably not technically hawaiian, but it has tropically things on it so we are calling it that, k? K.

See the yumminess...

So there is no step by step with this, because its basically assembly only. And cutting stuff.

Start with chicken. I used a frozen chicken patty and cooked it in the microwave then put it in a saute pan for a little bit to get it crispy. Lots less time than using the oven. 

I was hungry. I like shortcuts.

You can use a chicken breast as well and just cook it in oven or saute pan. I keep several cooked on hand because I have a high protein diet and its a quick snack.

Cut up an onion and mushrooms while waiting for chicken. Saute them in a little olive oil to until brownish in color. Sprinkle with a little salt and pepper while cooking.

Slice a piece of pineapple or use a ring or 2 out of the can and put in pan. Let them get a golden brown color on both sides. 

Slice an avocado.

For the mayo/sauce I used 1 T olive oil mayo, dash of garlic powder, pinch of dill, pinch of ginger.

Get out your buns. 

EWWWW! NO! Not those buns! Geez! Put THOSE buns away!

The edible kind...get one out. I like onion rolls, but a hoagie bun or whatever you have on hand os fine. 

Take pineapple out of pan and after buttering the un-crusty side of the bun, put them in the pan to warm up. You know. Kind of like grilled cheese.

When nice and toasty, spread each half with mayo mix and a wedge of laughing cow cheese or melt your cheese of preference over the chicken. Swiss, provolone, monty jack works well or cream cheese if you don't have the Laughing Cow stuff.

Assemble. Chicken. Lettuce. Pineapple. Onion/Mushroom mix. Avocado. 

Yum.

Voila! You have a very yummy summery sandwich, perfect for a sunny day and eating on the porch.