Glam the Leftovers
There are usually some leftovers when I cook. Not the meal very often but its components. For example, today I have about 4 cups of cubed and cooked potatoes in a tub in the refrigerator left from last week. They are running out of time. This seems like a place to start so I look around for other additions that will turn into a pot of something good.
I always keep carrots, olive oil and spices around. In my dehydrated stores, mushrooms are a wonderful umami booster to any dish. There has been a leek in the crisper for a while the tops looking a little shabby. In the fridge also is some milk I must use up and a tub of sour cream with a couple of nice dollops that need to go away before it’s too late. Not sounding very glamorous is it?
Well, here’s how we’ll put the glam to the pan:
Clean, slice and sauté a leek (an onion will also do) in a couple of tablespoons of olive oil until soft and slightly golden on some pieces. Add the cooked potato cubes and go over them with a potato masher until coarsely but evenly mashed. Stir in about 5 cups milk (I had whole milk), add 2 teaspoons salt and 1/2 teaspoon black pepper. Also add spices you like. I used parsley flakes for a hint of greenery and coriander for a hot and lemony hit. A pinch of red pepper flakes adds 
nice heat if you like that. I do!
This needs to be simmered until it bubbles a bit and while we wait for that use a carrot peeler and slice a medium carrot with it to make ultra thin slices. It whiles away the time it takes for the soup to bubble and adds beautiful color to the pot. Those dehydrated mushrooms I mentioned come into play here. I grab a few slices and crush them in my hand and add the flakes to the pot. You can’t see them much but you sure will taste the mellow earthy goodness they impart.
Once everything has a chance to simmer and blend flavors it’s time to add a bit more creaminess. It’s time to close off the flame so the dairy components won’t break and look grainy. Those dollops of sour cream are just the touch. If you happen to have some regular cream, a shot of that will add more richness. Just stir it and let it melt right in. As a final touch that adds that Je’ ne sais quoi (that’s how a diva says “I don’t know what”) a tablespoon of Parmesan cheese gives everything a sharper taste. Don’t add too much or the secret will be revealed. You want just enough to have people try to guess what that great (or grated) taste is. Another ingredient that does that in tiny amounts is nutmeg. Grate some fresh or go to your spice rack an add just a wee pinch.
In the end our leftovers have never looked and tasted better. The refrigerator is slightly cleaner and the company at the dining room table are enjoying themselves better after raking leaves, working on the car and cleaning and cooking. I think after all this work we’ll have to dress up for a date night tonight. And that’s how we glam the leftovers.
Creamy Corn Chowder Has Everything
We got a bit of a cold snap today with temps around the 50’s. Jackets were called for to block the chilly winds. A warm bowl of soup was the next order of the day so I conjured up something warm and creamy and comforting; creamy corn chowder.
To make this rich and tasty soup I started with these ingredients:
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- 1 tbsp bacon grease/ butter
- 1 medium onion finely diced
- 1 large rib of celery finely diced
- 1 carrot thinly sliced
- 1 cup frozen, or freshly cut corn
- 1/2 red pepper finely diced
- 1 clove of garlic minced
- 2 medium baked russet potatoes peeled and finely diced
- 2 tbsp corn starch
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp parsley flakes
- a pinch of ground thyme
- a pinch of ground sage
- 2 cups water
- 1 and 1/2 cup milk or half and half
- 1 cup chicken broth (or a bouillon cube dissolved in 1 cup boiling water)
- 1 cup chopped greens.(I used red and green lettuce mix from the garden)
- 1/2 tsp black pepper
- a pinch of red pepper flakes (optional)
This looks like a lot of ingredients, but half are seared vegetables and half are the liquids and spices (I combined the spices and cornstarch into a bowl to add it all at once). You add them in that way, preparing the vegetables in the pot with the oil on high heat, just searing the edges about three minutes. Add the potatoes along with the seasoning mixture, stir it all in for a few seconds to let the herbs bloom a bit and the corn starch stick to the vegetables. Right away add the water and stir until the bottom of the pan cleans up a bit from the seared vegetables and spice mixture. Let those caramelized flavors brew into the water, add the other liquids, and let everything simmer together for about 30 minutes. All the individual ingredients add their own special pizzaz.
Let the pot of soup cool for about ten minutes before serving and get ready for a mouthful! With everything cut in tiny pieces in the beginning, everything in the end is sufficiently intermingled with everything else. The result is so much flavor throughout each bite and each bowl you won’t believe it! Warm, rich, savory, sweet, bright, satisfying and delicious; this soup’s got it all.
Creamy Mushroom and Leek Soup
These wintry days call for warm soothing meals at home. Soup with savory leeks and mushrooms in a creamy broth is the ticket. Leeks are of the mildest among the onion family. They cook up to be so tender and tasty and paired with the mild taste of mushrooms, this soup will melt away those chilly winds and give you plenty of energy to shovel the sidewalk yet again. It’s so easy to make too. All you need are:
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 2 leeks cleaned and chopped in 1/4 inch slices
- 5 mushrooms (any kind) thinly sliced
- 1 clove of garlic, finely minced
- 1 quart low sodium chicken broth
- 3 cups milk
- 3/4 cup cream (I used heavy)
- 3/4 cup instant mashed potato flakes
- 1 teaspoon dried parsley flakes
- a pinch of red pepper flakes
- Salt and pepper to taste
First saute the leeks and mushrooms in the olive oil until tender. Add the garlic and stir it in to bloom the flavor Add the broth, milk and cream and stir in the potato flakes. Stir in the remaining seasonings and let it simmer about 3 minutes.
Now at least six of you can have a nice hearty bowl of soup to warm you up all over. For extra hardiness you could add some left over chicken cut into cubes or add more pepper flakes to clear the sinuses during a nasty cold. This soup will provide relief and give you energy to muddle on through all that snow.
Steak Soup
A while back Mr. Delicious and I bought a portion of a grass fed cow. We have a freezer full of a nice variety of meat now…some of the best meat I’ve ever tasted. Even the cheaper cuts turn out to be something special. I’ve already posted a 
recipe for Swiss Steak made with the round. It was so good I had to make another one. I did it the usual way, pounding and pricking, salting and searing, adding flour then liquid, then onions and mushrooms and letting it braise for hours in the electric skillet. Being a rather large piece of meat there was plenty left over.
You could never overcook round steak. Cooking it only makes it more tender and that’s what makes it the perfect meat for a hearty soup.
I began by cutting up the remaining steak into tiny cubes. The gravy made by braising the steak really offered tons of good flavor so I made sure to reserve a bit of it to add as well. In a heavy 
enameled pot, I sauteed the usual vegetables…carrots, celery, and onion. Frozen green beans cut in small segments were also added. I want this soup to have good body so I sprinkled about three tablespoons of flour over the vegetables, stirred it all in and let it cook a minute or so to form a brown layer on the bottom of the pan.
A few more seconds and this brown layer could turn to a burnt layer so I quickly poured in some water to capture this perfect stage of golden brown and prevent it from going over the edge. 
The water soon began to blend everything together and thicken. I added the rest of the water, totaling two quarts then added the meat and remaining gravy with all of its sumptuous flavor. At this point some final seasoning needed to go in the mix.
Red wine added a deeper color as well as deeper flavor so about a quarter of a cup went in. As the soup began to boil, two teaspoons of salt and a teaspoon of pepper didn’t hurt. 
Finally, to give it a hit of zippy tang I added about three tablespoons of A-1 sauce (I would never put this on a steak but I love how the stuff adds brightness to sauces and soups like this).
All that this soup needed now was to simmer and let its variety of colors and flavors blend and become a very special tasting soup. In the wintertime in St. Louis (or really anywhere) enjoying a soup like this is a perfect way to stay happy and warm.
More Dehydrating
As I have posted before, dehydrating is a great way to store food. When you dehydrate, you only take out the water…all of the flavor and most of the nutrients stay in the food. This week there was a great sale on green peppers, onions, and mushrooms. These are things that I use a lot in my cooking…especially in cooking stews and soups. Stews and soups are the foods that are really easy to make, and great to prepare when the weather is not the best. In the summertime I hope to have food from the garden on hand that won’t need cooking. Even so, the surplus from the garden with all its fresh flavors can be dried and stored as well.
We have a snow storm coming our way just now and besides stocking up last week, we have dehydrated several bags and trays of mushrooms, onions and green peppers to use another day. Dehydrated foods last far beyond the shelf life of regular canned items, decades beyond even. To do this we have sterilized mason jars with lids, and a special attachment that hooks to our Food Saver vacuum bagging system. It cost about 25 dollars but is worth a lot more because we can seal up food that we purchase on sale that ten years from now will be maybe ten times the price.
The mushrooms we dehydrated cost us 69 cents per container, and the onions were on sale for 79 cents per bag (7 medium onions in each). We use a lot of onions so roughly a dime an onion is a great deal. Having them ten years from now because we dehydrated and stored them at that price seems even better.
So you might see that purchasing vegetables and even some meat when there is a really good sale makes for some super savings in the future. It also takes up so much less space storing these foods when you take out the water. We love to store food this way and store lots of vegetables from the garden this way, food on sale from the store, and food that our relatives have hunted and shared like deer meat. I’ve posted on how to dry deer meat and beef before, also how to store vegetables like broccoli, tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, corn, apples, also herbs like parsley, cilantro, and basil.
In this photo you will see four containers of mushrooms in one Mason jar, also a bag of onions in one jar as well. You could fit at least three pounds of dehydrated meat in one jar, and a whole two bags of frozen broccoli in one as well. Ten green peppers chopped and with the stems and pith removed can fit into an 8 oz jar…yes, this is ten chopped green peppers we can preserve up to 25 years! At any time we might toss a portion of these jars into a soup or stew and enjoy all the flavor it had on the day we dried it. People all over the world have been doing this for thousands of years!
If you ever try to dehydrate apples, good luck getting them in storage. They are so delicious that we can hardly help ourselves from eating the whole batch. I think that they are the best treat of all from the dehydrator. A close second is corn and the tomatoes are third I think. Corn makes a great crunchy snack and tomatoes are great when baked into bread and bagels. We’ll have a tons of snack food some day if stores can’t provide fresh veggies for what ever reason…snow storm, power outage, or the proverbial “Zombie Apocalypse” . We’ll be OK by having prepared just a little beforehand. Anyone can do this if they put their mind to it.
Bacon Potato Green Bean And Tomato Soup
You don’t have to go to a soup kitchen for free soup…at least I didn’t have to today. I just went to my trusty old refrigerator and cleaned out the leftovers. In there I found all the ingredients in the title of this entry, added a few spices like minced garlic, onion powder, freshly ground black pepper, and a pinch of salt.
The green beans were already cooked with onions and bacon which seasoned them nicely. The potatoes were left over boiled and peeled russets, and the tomatoes were from a partially used can of Ro-tel tomatoes with green chilies… plenty of heat and flavor there. I added a splash each of cream and milk , mashed it all together with the potato masher, heated it in the microwave, and this lovely and delicious soup was the result. Just what is needed on this cool day.
A Hearty Soup To Cure What Ails You
This year is winding up in a tough way with snow and sickness all around. Seems like everyone I talk to lately has some affliction. It is true in our house too. A nasty cold, 
cough, sniffley thing is going around. I’m doing well but trying hard to stay out of everyone’s germy way, so that means I’m in the kitchen a lot with my nose over a nice pot of steamy something or other. Today with already an inch and a half of snow on the ground and a husband to cure up before a long midnight shift, I made a stew with some things from the fridge and pantry.
I wasn’t sure what would happen but here’s what I had:
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1 teaspoon paprika
- 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
- 1/2 of a Johnsonville summer sausage (1/2 cup cubed)
- 1 medium onion
- 1 green bell pepper
- 1 red bell pepper
- 2 ribs of celery
- a handful (2 tablespoons chopped) fresh cilantro
- 1 package of Uncle Ben’s long grain and wild rice, original flavor
- 2 and 1/2 cups water
- 2 swai fillets
- 1 32 oz. carton vegetable stock
- 1 15 oz can of fire roasted diced tomatoes
The first thing I did was heat the oil, dice up the vegetables and sausage, and toss them in a big stock pot. I let the onions get clear then added the spices and cilantro. I let that saute a bit then add the water and wild rice package along with the 
seasoning packet that comes with it. I put the lid on, put the flame on simmer and let that go about 25 minutes or until the rice absorbed the 
liquid. The swai fillets were chopped into 1/2 in chunks and tossed in. A good rolling boil was achieved just until the swai was cooked through and all white. 
This only took about three minutes. I turned down the flame again and added the vegetable stock and tomatoes. This was now let to simmer a few more minutes.
It all came together and was a nice seafood gumbo type soup…warm and 
soothing. The spice was 
just enough to open sinuses but not cause a sore throat to become more sore. It was just what the doctor diva ordered this cold snowy day.
Soup For A Snowy Day
When the in laws were in town over the Thanksgiving holiday I made this delicious tortellini soup. Snow is in the forecast for Christmas and I want to have a big pot of
The meaty part of the soup
soup ready for the next set of relatives that might happen by. Today this Christmas eve, with wind chills in the 20’s and a leaden sky, it’s the perfect day for a flavorful savory soup like this. I’m making a huge pot to feed as many cold and hungry travelers as I can in the next couple of days. It’s so easy to make too.
The Italian part of the soup
These are the ingredients you’ll need to put in a good size stock pot:
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 1 onion diced
- 3 links of salcicca Italian sausage, casings removed
- 1 32 oz. box of beef or chicken stock
- 1 tsp. Italian seasoning
- 1 15 oz can of Italian style diced tomatoes
- 1 tsp. salt
- 1/2 tsp garlic powder,
- 3 quarts water
- 1 9-12 oz. package of fresh tortellini
- 2 cups fresh spinach chopped
- salt and pepper to taste
Brown the onions, the meat, and deglaze with a bit of broth
First, heat the olive oil in the pot, add the onion. Let it get a bit browned on the edges and add the sausage. Cook it thoroughly,
When the soup is boiling add the pasta
breaking it up while it browns. Add a bit of the broth to deglaze the pot. Stir, scraping the bottom of the brown bits until it is all
Add the spinach and let it all boil for about 10 minutes before serving
dissolved into the liquid. Add the rest of the broth, tomatoes, water, salt, and spices and bring to a boil. When the soup is boiling add the tortellini and spinach and boil for about 10 minutes. Lower the flame, serve some up, and let it warm you all up on the inside. With this in your tummy you’ll be able to tolerate scraping off the windshield, making snowmen, and shoveling off the walk so much better. Have a very Merry (and warm) Christmas everyone!
Looks so Christmasy!
And Now For Some Creamy Mushroom Soup
I’ve been cutting back on calories lately in the hopes of dropping a few inches around the middle. There’s the insurance physical and a vacation to Houston coming up and I’m always looking for food that won’t hinder my progress (10 lbs now, woot!) but is big on flavor. Here is another soup that is absolutely creamy, savory, and quite satisfying… even though each bowl is a mere 150 calories.
The next few pictures will show you how easy it is to achieve this rich and flavorful soup. 
In a 5 quart saucepan, I saute the onions and mushrooms in a tablespoon of olive oil. 
I like to use Baby ‘Bella mushrooms. They have a meatier texture.
From the spice rack I grab the salt, pepper, garlic powder, corriander, thyme, cayenne pepper, and paprika and give a few healthy shakes of each. Man, it smells good!
Keep everything moving over the high heat until the onions and mushrooms are golden brown. 
Quickly add 32 oz of your favorite broth. I used chicken, but beef or vegetable broth will also be fine. The broth lifts that caramelized goodness from the bottom of the pan.
I measure 1/2 cup cream and add three tablespoons flour and mix well then add it to the pot. I also add an additional cup of cold water and three more tablespoons flour…it needed more thickening. Always dissolve flour into cold liquid before adding to the hot liquid or you will end up with little floating white lumps in your soup.
Let it come to a boil, and turn down the heat to simmer. It will thicken a bit after a while. In the meantime I go outside to snip some fresh parsley.
Now add the freshly chopped parsley to the pot, let it simmer about 15 more minutes and soon you will have a bowl of the most delicious soup.
You’d think that while we are experiencing 108° temperatures outside, soup would be the last thing I’d want to eat. I’m outside a lot and quite used to the heat. 108° is and all time record for St. Louis, in June and it is a bit extreme. I have no desire to go out and do yard-work, but inside, in the air-conditioning, I find myself feeling a bit chilly. So to strike a balance this soup really hits the spot.
It’s time to get a bowl now…I like my soup with a little extra pepper. 
Have a cool weekend!
I Just Started Cooking Vegetables And It Turned Into Tortilla Soup
Today, I wanted a lunch that could be done quickly, would satisfy my veggie craving, and be bursting with flavor. I didn’t know what I wanted but I wanted it to have big flavor. I just started chopping stuff up and tossing it in a pot with some olive oil. It would turn into something eventually. I added some broth and spices and it turned out to be tortilla soup before I knew it.
Here are the ingredients that went into my soup du jour:
- 1 carrot thinly sliced
- 1 small onion in tiny dice
- 1 rib of celery in tiny dice
- 1/2 bell pepper also in tiny dice
- 1 small head of broccoli using only the florets
- a dash each of salt, pepper, and garlic powder
- 1 15 oz. can diced tomatoes juice and all
- 32 oz. beef, chicken or vegetable broth (I used beef)
- 1/2 packet taco seasoning mix (or two good tablespoons of a taco seasoning blend of your own)
- 4 corn tortillas
- 1 tablespoon for cooking veggies and 2 to fry the tortillas
Start by heating a pot with 1 tablespoon of the oil on high and add the aromatic vegetables (onion, carrot, and celery). Cook them until they are soft and browned slightly. Add the bell pepper and broccoli and continue stirring on a lower flame, add the seasonings, stir them in and then add the tomatoes with the juice to deglaze the pan of all those caramelized flavors. Now, add the broth and the taco seasoning (you can make your own with chili powder, cumin, cayenne pepper, paprika, onion powder, garlic powder, salt and pepper to avoid the MSG and other weird stuff) and let everything simmer a while.
To make the tortilla strips, stack 4 on top of each other and slice into strips. Heat the other 2 tablespoons oil in a skillet, toss in the tortilla strips one third at a time, and fry them until they become crisp and golden brown. Drain them on a paper towel and salt them immediately.
Now all we need to do is dip up a bowl and garnish it with a handful of crispy tortilla strips. This old recipe I just made up takes about 20 minutes start to finish and tastes really good. Even though it is summer and nearly 100°, I love it when something is spicy enough to make my brow sweat a little. The thing about making your own food is that you are in control of how much heat, salt, and sweetness. This diva likes it hot! 
Back to Normal
There’s just the family to feed…but at all hours of the day. That’s the norm when the whole family’s together. A good way to manage so many appetites and so many schedules, are soups and sandwiches. One is able to find a meal for the next two days when there’s a big pot of soup and a big sandwich in the house.
For the soup: Turkey noodle.
- Start with bits of turkey leftovers like (cooked) legs and wings and boil in 4 quarts salted water for ten minutes. Take turkey out and set aside to cool.
- If you have leftover gravy put some in the boiling stock ; about a cup, or use chicken stock with a tablespoon or so of corn starch.
- two carrots sliced
- one onion diced
- Two ribs of celery sliced
- A dash or so each of salt, pepper, garlic powder, or minced fresh garlic, chopped parsley, and Cajun seasoning powder.
- A pinch each of thyme and sage
- One bag of wide egg noodles. In this soup I used 3/4 lb. farfalle (bow-tie pasta)
Straight from the fridge to the pot of boiling salted water went the turkey leftovers, bones and all. In a skillet with a little olive oil I cooked up the carrots, onions, celery with garlic, salt and pepper. After the turkey boiled ten minutes, I took it out of the broth and set it aside to cool. When the veggies were browned a bit on the edges I added a ladle of stock to the skillet to deglaze then added everything in the skillet to the stock. I adjusted the spices, adding the thyme, sage, and Cajun seasoning. For the next ten minutes I boiled the noodles. I removed the now cooled turkey from the bones and cut it into small dice. All that simmered until it thickened slightly from the pasta’s presence. It was good as the evening got chillier.
The Sandwich: Poor Boy
For the guys and the ones who work up more of an appetite, or the one who just wants a little slice of something to snack on, the two foot poor boy sandwich is the thing to make. You could use leftover turkey and ham for this. Or you could purchase a package of deli sliced meats you like and use it. I like jack cheese on a sandwich. Pepper cheese …even better. Start piling on the meat, cheese, tomato, olives, lettuce, mayo and/or deli mustard on a loaf of French bread. Wrap everything up in butcher’s or wax paper and refrigerate. Now, really good food is just a slice and a minute in the microwave away for anyone who’s hungry for the next couple of days. Tomorrow I’ll make a pot of chili and another long sandwich to get us to New Years Day.
Pretty Festive Potato Soup
This is one for the holidays with its red and green roasted peppers decorating a creamy white potato soup. Besides, cold weather means you gotta have soup! The roasted peppers also add more than decoration. Another layer of flavor is always called for. To make this I used:
- 4 medium russet potatoes (would have loved new or Yukon but didn’t have any at the moment) cooked in microwave, cooled then cut in 1/2 inch dice
- 6 cups milk
- 1/2 cup heavy cream
- 4 oz. Neuftachel cheese (cream cheese will also work)
- 1 small roasted green pepper
- 1 small roasted red pepper
- 1 small onion (all vegetables in tiny dice)
- a good dash each of : garlic powder, parsley, black pepper, crushed red pepper flakes
- 1 tbsp salt or salt to taste.
Prepare the potatoes and set aside. Prepare the peppers also by roasting them directly over the flame.
♫♪ Green peppers roasting ♫ on an open fire ♪♫
For electric stoves use a sturdy long set of tongs to hold the peppers until they are black and blistered all over. Place them in a paper bag to steam, and set it aside with the diced potatoes. 
Using 3/4 of the potatoes, put them in a stock pot or dutch oven with a cup of the milk, and the cheese. Heat that over medium heat until the cheese is melted and mash the cubes of potato until you have basic mashed potatoes. Add remaining milk and stir well and often. Lower heat if you need. Add dashes of the spices and salt.
Remove the peppers from the bag, rub off all the black skin and rinse off. It’s OK if a few black flecks remain. 
Cut in tiny dice. I used the equivelent of 1/2 red pepper from a jar and diced it (no red pepper in the frige) the same as the green pepper. In a spot of olive oil brown off the diced vegetables. 
Add dashes of the spices to them as well. Add also the diced potatoes and let them gain a bit of brown on the edges stirring everything in the skillet on high heat. Pour the contents of the skillet into the milk and potatoes when veggies are done, and stir everything together. Simmer for a few minutes to blend all the wonderful flavors.
Warm up with this festive Christmas colored soup this season with family or friends …or both!
A New Kitchen Tool Well Worth Having
You know, I love Craig’s List. I’ve found so many bargains on things that are brand new and never used, that have been so useful to me. Kitchen things are on sale by the ton every day. I have found such things as dehydrators, coffee makers, a wheat grinder, mason jars, cast iron skillets, …you name it. All these things purchased new or nearly so were done so for usually 25% of what the cost would be in a retail store. 
My most recent purchase was a Wolfgang Puck signature electric pressure cooker for $30. New it was $90. The man who owned it previously said he used it once. This baby is worth it’s weight in gold to me! 
I have a stove top one but I’m not sure the seal is so secure these days. The rubber is old and I don’t know where to go to replace it since it is 65 years old. Not only that, but it doesn’t have a thermostat or a pressure release valve like the electronic one. 
I have used it but I think she’s ready for retirement. I’m not as confident with it as I am with this lovely modern one with all the safety features.
Several days ago I volunteered to cook a luncheon for 30 pastors having a meeting at our church. Using the pressure cooker took the pressure off of me and made it very easy and very delicious, saving hours of cooking time. The main course was BBQ pulled pork sandwiches, using a very good recipe I found on YouTube to cook the meat which received many compliments (Thanks Noreen!). 
I made bean soup with the cooker as well, which gave me time to make corn bread, slaw, Caesar 
salad, and a pretty platter of fruit with the help of my friend Carolyn. The thing that surprised me the most was how fast the pressure cooker cooked the beans. I would normally have soaked them over night, then spent at least three hours cooking them on the stove top but the pressure cooker made it happen in just one hour start to finish. It was amazing how tasty tender and creamy the beans turned out to be. I’ll never cook them any other way.
The pulled pork was done almost the same as in the video except I used 1/2 cup broth and 1/2 of a beer and omitted the garlic because some have a sensitivity to it. The beans were the easiest thing I’ve ever made though. 
The ingredients were as follows: 4 cups Great Northern beans, 2 thinly sliced carrots, 2 stalks of slice celery including the foliage chopped, one onion diced, a teaspoon of pepper, a teaspoon of liquid smoke, and one gallon plus 4 cups of water (water to beans 5 parts to 1). The salt is always added at the end to beans to not make he hulls too tough. I used 1 and 1/2 tablespoons for this amount of soup and let the men add more at the table if they needed.
In the cooker I browned off the vegetables or aromatics as they call them in a spot of olive oil. I added the beans after sorting and rinsing them then added the water, seasonings, and closed the lid. I set the thermostat for 350° and let it cook for about 45 minutes. After turning off the heat I let the pot rest until the pressure released which took about another 15 minutes. After that time I checked to see if there was still some pressure using the release valve and there was still a bit more steam to release. I did so, removed the lid. and gave the pot a good stir. Everything looked great and so I gave a few beans a taste test. They were as tender as could be with creamy insides and the broth was quite nearly perfect. That’s when I added the salt, but not too much. When cooking for a crowd of various aged people I like to leave room for those who have sodium restrictions. Adding salt in the beginning tastes no different than adding salt at the table so in some cases it’s good not to take salting very far in the begenning.
It was a good meal all in all. Everyone had plenty of good food to eat (including the helpers), and then had plenty of energy to continue doing God’s work.
Potato Soup in Fifteen Minutes
Today had a chilly start, and that always gets me in the mood for soup. I had these ingredients staring at me from the vegetable drawer so I gave them a wash, a peel and a chop, and voila! In no time I was enjoying a bowl of warm and tasty goodness. Mmm!
Well, to begin, that giant potato had a go in the microwave for about 7 minutes.
This gave me time enough to wash, slice, dice, and saute the veggies. When the potato was done, I opened the skin to allow it to cool to a point where I could handle it. While it was cooling, I got back to the pot where the vegetables were getting nicely browned and smelling heavenly.
I had a jar of roasted red peppers in the ‘frige as well and I thought a piece of that diced up would look pretty among all the green, white, and brown color.
So now heat was building quickly and it was time to add liquid to deglaze all of those caremelized flavors into a saucy base. 
I added about 1/3 cup of dry white wine, I let that reduce for about a minute, then added some light cream for richness.
Then it only took 5 minutes more to add 2/3 cup of potato flakes from a box of instant mashed potatoes,
a cup of milk, and let that bubble. Then I added about a cup and a half of beef broth.
Chicken broth would work as well, but I just wanted to use up what I had in the ‘frige. While that was coming back to a boil I cut the now cooler potato into small cubes.
That was tossed into the soup, then everything was about ready to be served. I gave it a taste and found that a little more salt and pepper was in order as well as a half a teaspoon of Tabasco for that special zing to make it complete. Just what the Diva ordered!
Alligator Sausage Gumbo…Yumbo!
OK, this is a good one if you have a cold, if you are cold, or are just plain sick of cold weather. My brother brought up some alligator sausage from New Orleans for me to try. Half way up the Mississippi in St. Louis we don’t get ‘gator meat. I was quite pleased though with how good it was. I was even more pleased when I made this great spicy gumbo to celebrate.
There are a lot of fresh ingredients to this dish. I used fresh tomatoes, garlic, poblano pepper, red bell pepper, onion, celery, chicken breast and the alligator sausage. Okra could only be found frozen here this time of year but it turned out fine. In addition I used a quart container of beef broth, a can of diced tomatoes with the juice, a cup of white rice, and spices: One tablespoon paprika, one heaping teaspoon cayenne pepper, one half teaspoon black pepper, a tablespoon parsley flakes, and one teaspoon of salt. Finally I added just a dash of liquid smoke. 
I diced the vegetables and in a large pot I added about two tablespoons of olive oil then gave the vegetables a bit of a saute.
Next, when the vegetables began to get a little brown on the edges it was time to add the spice.
Now, the spices began to bloom and some liquid was called for right away. In went the beef broth and about a cup and a half of water. The next thing to add was the rice so in it went…about a cup.
While that got back to boiling I needed to get the sausage and chicken started. 
They both needed cook a bit before adding to the mix. So in another skillet. I diced up the sausage into bite size pieces and let them sizzle a while. When they were a little browned I added them to the pot. The sausage was blended with pork and that allowed it to render a bit of fat. The fat was used to cook up the chicken breasts and once all of the meat was done, I diced up the chicken and added it too.
The last thing to do was to add a can of diced tomatoes, some sautéed mushrooms, and a dash of liquid smoke. I cooked everything until the rice was tender and let it simmer a while longer.
I’m sure the neighbors had to wonder what on Earth was going on over here because the smell of wonderful food was overflowing the whole house. I couldn’t stand it anymore, I had to dive into a big bowl of the stuff! It was amazing!
So amazing, so warm and spicy, I had to have a tiny bit more.
Christy Drake Diva of Delicious 