Sausage and White Bean Soup is an easy dinner for cool nights! Packed with creamy white beans and hearty smoked sausage, this meal is sure to please just about everyone. When the weather turns chilly, nothing warms you up like a hearty bowl of soup. Sometimes though, soup can be an all day affair, but this Sausage and White Bean Soup is not only filling and delicious but ...
Soup
Bratwurst and Potato Soup
Easy to make and delicious to eat, this Bratwurst and Potato Soup is the perfect stick-to-your-ribs fall or winter meal. What to do with bratwurst besides stick it in a bun and top it with peppers and onions, is a question that I have thought to myself on more than one occasion. I love using bratwurst as a delicious change of pace from Italian sausage. We love our ...
Old Fashioned Beef Stew with Red Wine
As the deepest darkest days of winter settle in around us, I cannot help but crave stick-to-your-ribs comfort food. There is nothing quite like a hearty stew or braised dish that warms your frozen fingers and toes and fortifies you for a few more weeks of frigid temperatures. A good, old fashioned beef stew is the epitome of winter comfort food and I'm about to show you how to ...
How to Cook Black Eyed Peas
New Year's Eve was always a big celebration when I was growing up. My set of honorary parents hosted a huge party every year at their house way out in the sticks. There where at least 100 people there with all of their kids and teenagers tagging along. Everyone would come with their signature dish and a 6-pack of beer in their hand. It was always the same group of people. The ...
Creamy Chicken & Potato Chowder
There was once a time, long long ago, that a good hearty soup was a rare appearance on our dinner table. Our two adorable children were dinnertime dictators and refused to let something as easy and cheap as soup cross their lips. There were too many things touching, too many ingredients in one bowl and it was too hot to put your fingers into. Spoons were a utensil that at least ...
Quick and Easy Creamy Wild Mushroom Soup
My family is really into mushrooms. We hunt wild morels every spring and we get super excited when the chanterelles start coming in in the middle of the summer. We spent a couple of days a few winters ago inoculating over 100 logs with wild mushroom spores of lion's mane, shitake and 2 different types of oyster mushroom. We are big big fans of fungi. Right now (autumn) is ...
Ham Broccoli and Potato Chowder
The tree is up, even though it leans precariously to one side as if tempting one of the new kittens to bring it all down in a blaze of silver tinsel and glory. A small smattering of precisely wrapped and bowed packages are waiting patiently under the leaning tree tempting the children to wonder what could be in them. In the kitchen, the last vestiges of Thanksgiving dinner – ...
Oven Roasted Tomato Basil Soup
Oven Roasted Tomato Basil Soup is an easy, comforting soup to put together. Turn the last basket of your garden tomatoes into the best tomato soup to ever cross your lips. The last of the summer tomatoes is always the first sign of fall in my book. The big, bushy plants that brought forth the first orbs of tomatoey goodness are now all but a sad tangle of brown, weary ...
Best Ever Slow Cooker Beef Stew
Cold weather has been hard for us to come by this winter. And...yes...I am complaining about it. As much as I hate being cold all of the time, I also feel that nature needs that period of rest to recuperate from the ravages of heat and bugs and humidity. It cannot and should not always be Summer. But I have no control over the weather. All I can do is experience it ...
Rosemary Vegetable Soup
Rosemary Vegetable Soup is a humble soup with lots of warm hearty flavors to keep you warm and nourished this winter. It has been scientifically proven that trying to lose weight during the winter is futile (ok, maybe not scientifically proven, but I have tested this theory on my own) but I tend to not let this knowledge stop me from putting forth a good frustrating ...
Butternut Squash Bisque
Smooth and warm and comforting for a winter's day light lunch. Butternut Squash Bisque will warm the cockles of your heart. I have come down with the first (and hopefully last) cold of the season. I'm all achy, my ears have a slight ring to them, my throat is raw and my head is all stopped up. The simplest of tasks has me run down and out of energy. The furthest I have gone ...
Crock Pot Double Chicken Stock
Chicken stock is one of those things that everyone knows that they should make themselves. That if they did, in fact, make their own that it would be practically free. Making chicken stock seems like a daunting task because good chicken stock takes forever on the stovetop. It just sits there, barely bubbling the day away until every ounce of deliciousness has been sucked out ...
Easy Turkey Taco Soup
Time is a precious commodity at our house and squeezing in quality time at the holidays is a juggling act that I stink at. The phone is always ringing and there is always some place we have to be in an hour. My grand plans for cute little homemade gifts for everyone who has touched our lives during the year turns into me throwing a sad stack of cookies into a brown paper sack ...
Ham and Cabbage Soup
Ham and Cabbage Soup is a family favorite that has been passed down through the generations. Turn a leftover meaty hambone into a dish that will have you going back for another bowl. This post has been updated with new pictures and such. Whenever I see or smell ham and cabbage soup, I think about a brief moment in time (late 80’s perhaps?) when my parents dove head ...
Roasted Poblano and Corn Chowder
Although driving into the city every day is now part of my life, I still do the majority of our grocery shopping in our small, local grocery stores. While I would love to say that I solely shop there because I want to make sure to support my community and its businesses, it’s mostly because I like the people at my tiny little grocery store so much more than any big ...