Tomato/Tomahto? Amy/Julia? Mushroom/Boeuf?

This isn't my first mushroom-based meal. If you don't like mushrooms, we probably won't get along. Or we'll meet, fall in love, and get married. You know, one of the 2. 

I found this recipe on my favorite food blog (besides my own of course) and knew my dutch oven was calling out to it. This recipe though, due to the lack of leftovers in the fridge, required me to make something for Hubby too, since he won't touch mushrooms with a ten foot pole. Wait. I take that back. He stirred the pot today and didn't sneeze/cough/fake anaphylactic shock. It's a step, but he certainly wasn't going to eat my mushroom bourguignon, so I made him a pot of Spicy Roasted Vegetable Soup.

I didn't take pictures of the soup, but it was easy to do and perfect for using those veggies you have that you don't want to go bad. It's all the normal stuff; we just amped it up. Veggie broth, 1 potato, 1 can of tomatoes, cilantro, 1 pepper, 1 onion, some garlic, a zucchini, a yellow squash, and a chipotle in adobo. See? Everything you have sitting around just waiting to get a little too ripe (and a good way to use up leftover chipotles). Hubby approved, and even slurped up the broth with some bread. But anyway...back to my 'shrooms.

Have you ever seen Julie & Julia? She gets all worked up over boeuf bourguignon that may or may not be served to important people. Well, I was just as excited to make this recipe, but I figured it would be just me eating it. Once again, I started with a big bowl of mushrooms.

And without the regular egg noodles or pearl onions I was supposed to have. But hey. There's a foot of snow on the ground, Trader Joe's didn't have them 2 days ago when I was there, and I'm certainly not heading out now to look. Broken papardelle and chopped regular onion will have to do.

Broken papardelle and regular onion certainly did do! There weren't many ingredients, nor were there many steps; most of the prep for this recipe was allowing each layer to simmer.

When it came time to add the next-to-the-last layer, I used half of an onion in large chunks instead of the pearl onions traditionally used. I've never had boeuf bourguignon, so it made no difference to me.

I'm an "it is what it is" kind of girl. Yes, I get frustrated and annoyed, and will complain with the best of them (Hubby, the comment box isn't working. I don't know what's wrong with it. Its not worth it to try to leave a comment. Trust me.) but I also try to live by a quote I heard several years ago: "If there's no alternative, there's no problem." Makes sense, huh? If there's nothing you can do about it, no sense in worrying. Just adapt and move on. Now, if you go back to the picture of ingredients, you'll see I'm using a $3 bottle of "full-bodied red wine." It gets worse. I'm using a 4 year old $3 bottle of red wine. Based on wine aging and inflation, that baby's worth like what? $3.50 by now? I didn't always cook with such high-class ingredients. But my high-class tastes aren't the point of this story. You see, at my bridal shower, a special friend gave us a bottle of wine labeled Big House Red and attached a tag to it that said "to enjoy, after the purchase of your first home."

We've gone through all the other wine in our wine rack. I've taken that bottle to a friend's house and rudely took it home when we didn't drink it that night (surprising, since conversation at that dinner eventually led to the frustrations Hubby and I are dealing with while trying to buy our first home, an ugly shell of a house that we've already renovated 35 times in our heads). Not-so-descretely, I've mentioned to people that if we drink that bottle before settlement day, we're going to jinx it and settlement day won't happen. So as I assembled my ingredients for my mushroom bourguignon, I remembered I needed red wine. And there was a foot of snow on the ground. You can fake the pearl onions, but bourguignon isn't bourguignon without red wine. If there's no alternative, there's no problem. "Ok," I thought, "I'll just wait. I'll make it this weekend after I can get to a liquor store." But wait! There is an alternative! That bottle of 3-Buck-Chuck on the bookshelf that I've been decorating as a hula girl 10 months a year and Santa Claus the other 2 months for the last 4 years. Yes! Adapt, and move on. Alas, I had my mushroom bourguignon and allowed the home-buying-process to move along as smoothly as it can muster.

Baked Potato meets Immersion Blender; muwahahaha!

I wish it was the soup I was enjoying on this snow day instead of just the memory of it...and the knowledge that my leftovers are in the fridge. At work.

I wasn't a soup-lover until a few years ago. They say your tastes are constantly changing as you age, so I guess I hit the soup phase in my life around 25. (Hubby's still waiting for me to hit the bell pepper phase. I think I skipped that.) But I'm not a minestrone or chicken noodle girl. I like soups that will fill me up and warm my soul. Something that feels like a meal but isn't so complicated that I'm too tired to eat it after its made. Also, being the bargain shopper/frugal/plain ol' cheap person I am, saffron broth soups are out, potato/chicken broth/other staple soups are in. And if it suggests the use of an immersion blender, you know I'm trying it.

With my requirement that soups not be too complicated or fancy-ingredient-filled but still be not-so-run-of-the-mill, it's not always easy to find something new to try. When I came across this Baked Potato Soup recipe on smittenkitchen.com, I was more than ready to give it a try.

I just realized that you can't actually see the potatoes in that picture. They're there. I promise. I guess all but the sour cream and leeks are part of a "well-stocked pantry" but when your shoebox home doesn't have a pantry, you may need to buy the potatoes, vegetable broth and sour cream to create this soup. Bay leaves, butter, garlic, and salt also go in, but they don't take up much space. I'm pretty sure that's all I had on hand.
I think this is the first time I've cooked with leeks. I realized that the Food Network chefs weren't lying. There's a lot of dirt in between those layers!! So I sliced my leeks and let them sit in a colander sitting in a bowl of cold water to let the dirt rinse off. Just before starting to melt the butter, I gave the leeks a shimmy-shake (sorry. shameless Rach line) and let them drain til I was ready to saute' them.

I saute'd the leeks until they were soft (maybe 5 minutes?) and then added an entire clove of garlic with the top sliced off (and the loose papery skins peeled off), along with 5 cups of vegetable broth, 2 bay leaves, and a bit of salt. After that simmered away for 30 minutes, I added 2 and a half pounds of potatoes, diced. I left a bit of the skin on, but peeled them most of the way.


I circled the garlic bulb for ya

I brought that back up to a slow boil and let it go, partially covered (to allow for easy peeking!) for 15-20 minutes. Once the potatoes were easily pierced with a fork, I pulled out the garlic bulb and broke out the power tools. If you have room to store one, and it's not a pain to pull it out of its hiding spot, you could use a blender for this step, but an immersion blender is a)easier to store, b)easier to clean, and c)more fun to use.



I think I left about 1/2 of the potato pieces whole, the rest got blended.

 I added 1/3 cup of light sour cream and let it cook for another 2 minutes, or until I couldn't wait any longer. It doesn't look like much, but oooh boy! It's the perfect medium for anything you usually put on a baked potato. It's creamy, without being fatty or corn-starchy. It's hot, but not chicken-noodle-scalding hot. And best of all? Crumbled bacon, a dollop of sour cream, and a sprinkle of cheddar cheese stay right where you want them when your (my) goal is to get a bite of each in each spoonful.

All you need is a little Hope.

First, I'd like to apologize for my slacker-status these past few weeks. Since I started my new job last week, I've had a bit of trouble adjusting to my new commute and daily routine. I promise to be back on track soon! I need to get back to cooking before my cookware gets dusty and I have to clean it off! So until then...lets introduce this cutie patootie...

We pulled Hope from a local shelter looking quite...well...scraggly. She had very very dry skin, dandruffy, and had some rough patches; all most likely from inadequate care. WJVA Volunteers took her out to the play area at the shelter and immediately discovered that Hope loves to play fetch. So into the care of WJVA Hope came.

Hope is a very people friendly dog. We have little will power as animal rescuers and will allow her to stand on her hind legs and give us hugs (don't tell Ribby and Buster!!). She is the best self esteem booster when she greets you--she's always so happy to meet you! Unfortunately though, Hope isn't as thrilled to meet other dogs. She will always be an only-dog kind of girl, but will give you more love than a whole pack of dogs could give!

Hope's coat is already looking 200% better than when we rescued her. She's wirey and still kind of shaggy, but now in a cute way. She looks like she got in the way of a spray paint can; she has small areas of white on her back and chest. She has a black tongue, so we believe she may be part Chow, but we're not sure what else may be in her creative make-up.

Even though Hope isn't good at making 4-legged friends, she'll be the BFF of any 2-legged friend who wants to give her a foster or furever home. She'd love to have a fenced in yard in which she could play ball, and would do great with a walk or 2 daily just to keep up on her leash walking and socialization skills. She already walks well on a leash and knows "sit." She pays attention well and will learn other commands quickly, I'm sure!

If you are interested in giving Hope the home she is Hope-ing for, please comment or email wjvolunteers@yaho.com directly.

Why oh why is Wiley still homeless?

Wiley came to us several months ago when we rescued him from a local shelter. His family had surrendered him, but not after teaching him manners and some commands. We aren't exactly sure why his original family surrendered him, but we are sure he'd make an awesome dog for one lucky family.

Wiley has the softest coat ever and loves to play outside. He's a big fan of snow! In his short 2 year long life, he has learned and retained, through his tough times, to sit, stay and lay down. He walks very well on a leash and is housebroken. He's a ready-made dog!

Wiley is probably a lab/huskey mix, and like I said, has the softest fur, you'll just want to cuddle up with him on a cold day. He's playful and loves to run around with toys. He'd do best in a home with a yard in which he can play fetch with his family. He had a yard with an invisible fence in his previous home, so we know he is trained for one, but would prefer that he have a physical fence around his yard in case he gets too excited about a cat to chase!

Wiley had some separation anxiety when he was younger but did not do well in a crate. He does better in a home where his family isn't gone full work days, but can be left alone in a home while his family is out.
He is very affectionate, and will quickly become attached to his new family. He could make a great brother to another fur-child, but must approve of his new sibling. Wiley is a bit of a boss and prefers submissive dogs over dominant ones. We think Wiley sees small children as competition for attention; he should go to a home with all adults or with children mature enough to be able to show they are leaders and that Wiley should not compete with them for attention. The only thing Wiley likes cats for is for lunch, so he cannot live with cats.

So many families are missing out right now! Wiley is currently living in a private kennel and would greatly benefit by being in a foster home until he finds his furever home. If you have a yard and a heart big enough to offer this happy guy either, please let me know.  

Easy Peasy, and a LOT of beans!

Severeal years ago, I found this recipe for Black Bean Soup. It is souper easy (I crack myself up!) and is the perfect combination of yum and comfort on a cold winter afternoon. The only problem is, I can't keep 4 cans of black beans in my house long enough to just happen to have everything on hand when that cold winter afternoon pops up. Either I didn't get the tomato paste/peanut butter/listerine hoarding gene (you know who you are), or I've successfully rationalized with myself that our little 850 square foot home isn't the ideal place for stocking up on groceries. I must credit Dave Lieberman for this recipe, and doing so makes it a little more bearable to make a run to the store to get the beans in the chilly weather because I feel that as a phellow Philadelphian, Dave must have had do to that too. At least once, right?!

A cold afternoon and a lack of interest in the NFL playoffs made for the perfect setting to create a pot of soup. It's one of Hubby's favorites, so I knew I wouldn't be eating it myself for days.

The recipe calls for a pound of bacon, but seriously, that's a lot of bacon. I use maybe 4 strips. And I drain the fat off before adding the onions. Bacon makes everything better but sometimes I need to make myself feel better about how much I use it in cooking. So anyway, I sauted the bacon til crisp (Don't cheat yourself on time; make sure it actually gets crisp. The texture of the whole soup is so much better without soft bacon.), drain a little fat if you'd like, and then add the onion, and about 4 minutes later, add the garlic. Before the garlic burns (let it cook maybe 2 minutes), add a can of diced tomatoes, or whole tomatoes if you have a handy dandy tool with which to break them up. Then add 1 can's worth of chicken broth, 2 tablespoons of ketchup, 1 tablespoon of Worchestershire Sauce, (Worchester---- I can't even do it. I was going to pull an overused Rach line, but I'll spare you) and 2 teaspoons of chili powder. Stir that up, bring to a slow boil, and add 4 cans of drained, but not rinsed, black beans.

Return it to a simmer and allow to cook for about 10 minutes. Just before serving, stir in as much chopped cilantro as you can handle (or skip it if you refer to cilantro as "the devil herb"). You can garnish with sliced scallions, cheddar cheese, sour cream, or any combination of the 3. It's pretty hard to mess this up.

So I've decided that one of my New Years Resolutions will be to keep the canned goods needed for black bean soup on hand. If I don't make such a specific resolution, I'll never keep it. Not much of an accomplishment if I have a year to make it happen, but hey; it's the little things in life.

Ma's Chocolate Chippers

I feel the need to say some good things about my mom's cooking since I totally bashed her spinach and asparagus. She didn't guilt me into it, (she probably didn't even read it) but being the good daughter that I strive to be, I'm going to highlight one of her many specialties today.

I've never had a raging sweet tooth. That's probably a good thing, since quantities of chocolate larger than that in a small brownie give me a migraine. Regardless, I tend to be pretty picky about my sweets. Nothing that will get stuck in my teeth (I'm looking at you, Heath Bars), nothing too rich, and whenever possible, milk with cookies. If they aren't soft cookies and there's no milk in sight, I'll pass. I just don't like hard cookies.

I grew up on only homemade cookies. Anything else that went on sale or came with a coupon, Ma was on it. But not cookies. From Black Friday to Christmas week, she's baking. She starts stockpiling butter and margarine in early June. The hidden Milky Ways and caramels are discovered around Halloween. It's always been the way in my family. No store-bought cookies in our house. Just a supply of homemade delights that lasts from Black Friday until about June. (That time was much shorter when my Dad was here to "test" the cookies as they came out of the oven)

I feel as though I was the weird kid growing up that would turn down cookies at friends' houses and gatherings. Its not that I didn't want them, it's just that I preferred my Ma's. Still do. Although now if a craving strikes, I'm not as picky and will make do with what's available. So not unlike her non-heirloom spaghetti sauce, I've always strived to duplicate my Ma's chocolate chip cookies. By gosh, I think I did it.

If I go down the pudding aisle in the supermarket, you know chocolate chippers are not far behind.

I never seem to have a print out of the recipe, so I end up calling my Ma every time I get the hankering and have all the ingredients on hand. You'd think she'd have memorized it by now...but she obliges each time and patiently reads it to me. I have a new-found patience for baking these days and was hopeful that this past Sunday, it would pay off.

I even left the butter out long enough to get as soft as butter is supposed to get before becoming part of a cookie. Everything came together easily, thanks to my new mixer. (I tried a few recipes pre-bridal shower without a mixer, and with one that I borrowed for wayyyyy too long and almost got a roommate in trouble with another roommate. I suggest keeping your own electric hand mixer on well, hand.)

I also owe a big thanks to my small scoop. Had I had this little gadget a long time ago, I think I wold have started baking a long time ago. It prevents me from getting frustrated with using 2 spoons to dallop the dough on the stone and also prevents me from getting lazy and making the cookies larger and larger as I go, just to get rid of the dough and be done with the process.

11 minutes in the oven and wa-lah! Ma's Chocolate Chip Cookies. I'm very proud of myself, as I've never gotten such a good result. That's all I've got. No clever sign off line, just pride. My mom has made these cookies for my niece. I can't wait for her to make them with my children some day.

There's a fungus amongus. And it's deeelicious!

I've been on a tear in the kitchen lately but I had to take a 2 or 3 day hiatus. That's because our fridge is full of leftovers. Even if I did cook a new meal, I wouldn't have anywhere to put the leftovers because the containers are all being used already. Sigh.....time off from work, ingredients available, and no room in the stomach or refrigerator. Such a tease.

I couldn't help myself today. I was getting anxious. I couldn't contain my excitement about this recipe. And hubby was out of the house, so I just had to make my creamy mushroom bisque while I could do it without hearing complaining about fungus infiltrating the house all day.

So I amassed my pile of mushrooms and the rest of the ingredients:

I was a little confused when I first read the recipe. It said the soup would take a total of 70 minutes, with 50 of those being active prep. The recipe didn't look like it required that much work (and I was even going to streamline the blending process and while testing out my immersion blender!). Well, I found those 50 minutes. See that big bowl of mushrooms? Yeah. They needed to be diced.

I bought all the portobellos that the store had and that wasn't enough for the recipe so I filled in the rest with criminis. That was actually a good thing before I even knew it. All those little criminis were diced using my egg slicer! I'm not sure how much time I actually saved, but I got into a rhythm of mushroom-in-chop-turn-mushroom-chop-dump-repeat quite easily.

This is what I was working toward:

I used my food chopper for the onions and a plain ol' knife for the portobellos. That was definitely the bulk of the prep time. It took a while but not much energy. In to the pot go 1/2 the oil and 1/2 the mushrooms. Saute', repeat, and huff and puff that this is what you're left with:

I will resist the urge to whine and just move on. I reserved 3/4 cup of the sauteed mushrooms to provide a bit of texture in the end. The rest went back into the pot with the onion and  4 cloves of pressed garlic. Once that started smelling good, I added 1/2 a cup of brandy and let that cook out a bit before adding 4 cups of chicken stock, 1/4 cup of uncooked rice, 2 teaspoons of chopped fresh thyme, and 1 cup of heavy cream. With a little salt and pepper, I let the mixture simmer for about 25 minutes.

I had to distract myself for those 25 minutes so I wouldn't blend the soup prematurely and get uncooked rice stuck in my immersion blender, but finally, the time had come! No need to dirty up a blender (that incidentally, I don't own). I used the immersion blender right in the pot and it worked like a charm (thanks Tina!!).

I added the reserved mushrooms back in the pot, let it simmer for another 5 minutes or so, and then it was the moment I'd been waiting for! The bisque tasted just as good as I imagined. Decadent, filling, but not too rich. If you even just like mushrooms, I highly recommend this soup. If you love mushrooms like me, I highly suggest you buy in to a farm in Kennett Square.