Chicken Noodle Soup

Happy New Year, everybody!  I apologize for the lack of posts in the last couple of weeks, Howie and I have been diving head first into the wedding planning which is a lot more time-intensive than I could imagine!  Anyway, I hope you all had a happy and healthy holiday season filled with family, friends and traditions!  If you're like many of us (myself included), you succeeded in the happy but not the healthy part because of that lingering cold that seems to be going around!  Chicken Noodle Soup is always my go-to if I'm feeling under the weather, so I thought it would be a great recipe to kick off 2016!  But then again...it's also pretty perfect for the twenty and thirty-something degree days that have finally hit Cleveland!  Enjoy!  

Chicken Paprikash Soup

You guys...today marks the official start of my favorite time of year!  Fall!  Although, let's be real - I bought a pumpkin cinnamon candle, pumpkin spice coffee and had pumpkin-flavored ice cream from Mitchell's last week.  I guess you could say that I've never been one to appreciate the present.  But now that the temperature is going down into the mid-50s every night and I've been waking up freezing every morning, I think I can justify some cozy cool weather food!   Like soup.  Like Chicken Paprikash Soup.  Oh my gosh, I think I love fall so much because soup season officially commences.  And trust me, this Chicken Paprikash Soup is the ultimate comfort food!  It's creamy - but not heavy -and full of roasted chicken, potatoes, onions and garlic in a light herb broth filled with a delicious paprika flavor.  It's the perfect one-pot-meal for a chilly fall day!

Italian Wedding Soup

There is nothing better than soup on a cold day.  Scratch that.  Nothing better than Italian Wedding Soup made on the Saturday morning of a cold weekend so you can reap the benefits for Saturday and Sunday's lunch and dinner!  Howie and I have been loving every minute of it!  I know it's starting to warm up...and all you can think about is how much you want to bust out your grill...but you gotta try this Italian Wedding Soup.  How could you resist homemade, oven-baked meatballs soaked in a savory broth with tiny little pearl pastas?  I can't!  And besides, the highs are still around 40.  Despite the fact that every car I've driven past today has had it's front windows cracked open, it's still pretty darn cold outside in any non-Clevelander's eyes!  Warm up with this delectable creation. Mmmm!

Garlic Rosemary Beef Stew

Even though it's finally March, which is spring in my books, I spent the weekend sick as dog!  I was lucky to have my awesome boyfriend Howie by my side from Friday after work to Sunday night.  We tried to make the best of my soft foods diet with homemade Tortellini Soup on Friday night (and Saturday for leftovers, of course!), and and an ahhhmazing Garlic Rosemary Beef Stew on Sunday night.  It was super easy to make and let us be lazy on the couch watching Maleficent and the Cavs Game all afternoon without lifting a finger...except little test tastes to get the seasoning just right!  We started prepping the stew at 1:30, and everything was perfectly tender by 7:00 for dinner.  YUM!

Grilled Cheese and 10-Minute Homemade Tomato Soup

Even though I cook all sorts of extravagant dinners, fancy desserts, and appetizers to please a crowd, there is nothing I like more than grilled cheese and homemade tomato soup.  I'm like a kindergartner!  Ask Howie, I even order it from any restaurant that has it on it's menu!  My record is having it 4 times in a 5 day period (if that isn't true love than I don't know what is)!  One of my favorite things about grilled cheese and tomato soup is how fast you can whip it up after a long day.  You know those days I'm talking about right?  The days when you wanted dinner a half hour ago and your stomach is eating itself on the drive home.  Good news!  You can forever ditch the crummy canned tomato soup that's loaded with sodium and preservatives and make my homemade version instead.  I promise, 10 minutes.  Well, maybe 15 if you include making the grilled cheese too!

Savory French Onion Soup

Let me start off this post by saying that soup is my favorite type of food.  I think it's so underrated!  Why would a warm, hearty, comforting bowl of goodness be reduced to a lunchtime dish or appetizer only?!  It blows my mind because I crave all types of soup all year long, and even make huge pots of it on 80° summer days.  I'm either really odd, or have really good recipes (I'm guessing the latter).  I made a batch of my Savory French Onion Soup today, and it's seriously out of this world delicious!

Roasted Cheesy Potato Soup

I love Sundays!  It's my hands-down favorite day of the week for cooking or baking because I have the entire afternoon to relax and move at my own pace...a.k.a. experiment with new recipes and do things like bake focaccia bread for the second time in a month!  Howie and I have been testing out soup recipes all fall, and were really in the mood for a creamy, hearty potato soup to get us through the cold day.  It may not be our healthiest creation, but it was definitely one of the most delicious!  Actually, it was so delicious that I felt the need to box twice in 24 hours and consume green smoothies and kale salad for the majority of the next day.  Worth it?  Duh.

Autumn Favorites

Howie's parents came to visit over the weekend, and we had the best time taking them apple picking out in the country!  We went to Burnham Orchards, an apple farm in Berlin Heights, OH, a little southwest of Vermilion.  You pay $16.00 for 1/2 bushel, and literally can squeeze 50 apples inside of it!  Obviously I've been eating them for snacks, but I LOVE trying to cook with fresh produce.  I made the epitome of a fall meal: butternut squash soup, garlic rosemary focaccia bread and apple crisp.  Surprisingly, both the apple crisp AND the butternut squash soup use apples!  But the thing I like most?  How easy it is to make them!

Roasted Red Pepper Tomato Bisque

It finally felt like fall yesterday!  Yes, I'm one of the weirdos that actually prefers sweater weather over the 80 degree days.  In honor of the first chilly (and rainy) day of September, Howie and I both thought it was appropriate to make a classic cold weather dish: grilled cheese sandwiches and a hearty soup.  We spent a little too long debating what kind of soup to make, but decided that the prerequisites were that it had to be a) thick b) filling c) ideally include some veggies (since soup is the only way Howie can eat them) and d) taste good with grilled cheese.  We ended up choosing one of my favorite homemade soups, a roasted red pepper tomato bisque that my mom started making a few years ago.  The creamy, herb-filled soup paired with the crunchy grilled cheese paninis that Howie made was a truly unbeatable combo!

Slow Cooker Stuffed Pepper Soup with Homemade Croutons

I know it's the middle of August, but for some reason, I had the biggest craving for stuffed peppers this week!  I'm not sure if it's because the summer green bell peppers are PERFECT right now, or if packing up my sweaters and coats for my move in 2 short weeks is secretly making me excited for those cool fall days.  What I didn't have time for this week was spending a couple hours at dinner time preparing the peppers, baking them and making a tomato sauce to serve on the side.  So I decided to get creative and turn the dish I've been craving into a crock pot stuffed pepper soup.  All you need is 20 minutes of prep time, 8 hours of daytime activities (like that's hard to find!), and an extra twenty minutes to finish off the dish with homemade croutons and a little salad.  I don't care if it's 80 degrees out, this is just plain old delicious!

Tortellini Soup

If you saw my last blog pot, you can imagine that I was looking forward to a Superbowl Sunday filled with snacks, beer, and friends.  But by the time the weekend got underway, Howie and I were both feeling under the weather.  Since we didn't want to go anywhere, we made the best of a bad situation and stayed in with all of the essentials: cable, big bowls of tortellini soup, cheesy garlic bread, and Blue Moon with gigantic oranges to get some Vitamin C.  Unlike many soups, this tortellini soup can be made in less than 45 minutes, and always hits the spot on a cold winter night (the leftovers hit the spot anytime...the recipe tastes even better the second day)!  The only thing that could have made the night better would be a football game with 2 teams playing well!