Fall Weather Fever: Lentil Soup

There are so many things I love about fall, but making lots of soup is very, very high up on that list.

I don't have a picture to accompany this post because I haven't made dinner for tonight yet, but this recipe was given to me by a good friend, and it has become one of our favorite soup recipes. I included her parenthetical notes because they make me chuckle when I'm preparing this soup.

So here it is:

Jill's Lentil Soup Recipe

2 tsps oil
2 onions diced
3 carrots grated
3/4 tsp marjoram
3/4 tsp thyme
1 28 oz can of diced tomatoes w/juice
7 cups broth (if you use chicken broth then it's like it has meat in it..)
1 1/2 cups lentils- rinsed and picked over
1/2 tsp salt
1/4-1/2 tsp pepper
6 ounces dry white wine (guzzle the rest while the soup simmers)
1/3 cup chopped parsley
4 ounces shredded cheese (we usually use cheddar)

1. Heat oil in a large saucepan and saute onion, carrots, marjoram and thyme. About 5 minutes.
2. Add tomatoes, broth and lentils. Bring the soup to a boil, reduce heat and cover. Simmer for 1 hour.
3. Add salt, pepper, and wine. Simmer for a few more minutes.

Serve with cheese and parsley on top.

I do have one side note and that is that I often am too lazy to buy parsley and since Joel is not a big cheese fan, we usually don't serve this dish with cheese and parsley on top. I imagine it tastes even better that way, but it is still so yummy without!

Dancing and Muffins

Lucy decided to skip naptime today in favor of dancing. She's learning some pretty impressive moves! You may want to skip the first 20 seconds in which Lucy attempts an exercise in futility.

In other completely unrelated news, I've been on a bit of a muffin baking spree. I love making something that's quick, healthy, and fun for Lucy to snack on. Obviously not all muffins are healthy, but that's why I've been working on finding recipes that have less fat, more whole wheat, plus extra special ingredients like flaxseed. Today Lu and I are baking up a batch of these muffins. A few weeks ago I decided to try making up my own recipe, and they turned out delicious!

2/3c. Sugar

1/4 c. flaxseed

2 c. whole wheat flour

1 t. baking soda

1 t. baking powder

1/4 t. salt

1 (6 or 8 oz) container strawberry yogurt

3/4 c. fat free milk

2 T canola oil

1 t. vanilla

1 egg, beaten

some strawberries. I actually can't remember how many I used. Maybe 4?

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Mix flour, sugar, flaxseed, baking soda, baking powder and salt.

Make a well. Combine yogurt and next 5 ingredients Add to flour well, stir just until moist.

Spoon into 12 muffin cups, sprinkle with sugar.

Bake for 15 minutes.

Rainy Days

Second post of the day! This is what happens when you've got a sick kiddo who decides to nap the entire day away. Well, that and a lot of much needed laundry.

We get a lot of rainy days here in Eugene, and for some reason whenever the clouds roll in my mind instantly turns to baking.

These energy balls (who are we kidding, let's just call them cookie balls) were my solution to today's rain-clouds, and since they're no-bake it was easy for Lucy-lu to help as well (although we won't be sharing them with anyone since she's sick; keep the germs in the family, you know).

And yes, it has chocolate chips and coconut flakes, but it also has flaxseed and peanut butter so I'm not completely guilt-ridden when Lucy swipes big clumps out of the bowl to munch on while we make them.

Here's the link to the recipe: http://smashedpeasandcarrots.blogspot.com/2011/08/no-bake-energy-bites-recipe.html

Warm bread on a cold day

I haven't made home-made bread in a long time. Partly because my artisan bread-making was put to a complete standstill when my dutch oven was recalled. That was a great tragedy. Hopefully Martha Stewart comes up with an inexpensive, non-exploding replacement soon.

In the meantime, I'm back to my very basic bread which Joel likes better anyway, and which freezes nicely and is about as easy to make as Kraft mac-n-cheese.

Especially if you have a Kitchenaid and don't have to do any kneading by hand.

I used to really enjoy hand-kneading the dough, but that was back in my pre-Lucy days when I had more time and wasn't chasing down a little mischief-maker while making bread. Ah, multi-tasking.

Here's the recipe:

3 cups all-purpose flour (I do half whole wheat so that it's healthier)

2 tsp. instant yeast

1 1/4 tsp. salt

3 T. sugar

4 T butter

1/4 cup nonfat dry milk

1/3 cup potato flakes

1 1/8 cupes lukewarm water

Combine all ingredients and mix and knead them together until you have a soft, smooth dough. Add more flour or water as needed (I usually have to add more flour). Cover and let rise for 1 hour or until puffy.

Transfer dough to a greased work surface and shape into an 8-inch log. Transfer log to a loaf pan, cover the pan, and let bread rise until the outer edge has risen about 1 inch over the rim, about 1 hour (or 2 hours if you forget about it like I did).

Preheat oven to 350. Uncover pan and bake for 35ish minutes, tent lightly with foil for the final 10-15 minutes if it looks like it's browning too fast.

I usually double that recipe and freeze one loaf for later in the week. This is great sandwich bread, but it also goes great with soup which is what we're doing tonight!

Fallish Things

Happy Late Halloween! Here's a picture of our little Lu enjoying herself some marionberry pie at our pumpkin carving event.



And here is the pumpkin we carved. (Mom, I know you're probably shuddering right now.)




And our adorable little Piglet! She actually did have a blast going around to some of the stores in the 5th street market and getting to pick out a candy from the different merchants.




Also, in other fall news, tonight I made something amazing, and I think you need to go out, buy the ingredients, and make it also.

Stat.

Bree calls it Sea Salt and Vanilla Bean Caramel Sauce. I call it nectar of the gods. So enraptured was I by this stuff that I didn't even pause to take a good picture. So here is the one she posted with the recipe. One thing you can do with this sauce is pour it over ice-cream. But I'm also envisioning it in coffee. And on these blondies I'm about to go make.

The best things in life

I love baking. I also love eating what I bake, which can be dangerous, and which is why I don't bake all that often. I love excuses to bake for others (like our after-church social times), and since it was my turn to bring treats this week, I decided to make cinnamon rolls.

And it made me realize: is there much better in life than home-made dough coated in butter, sugar and cinnamon?



Here, let's lean in for a closer look:



And then after it's rolled up:




And cut into pieces:



It's baked and drizzled with more sugar. I mean, talk about blessing upon blessing.




I love to bake because it is therapeutic and rewarding: hard work that turns into glorious aromas spilling out of the oven and filling my house. Not all hard work reaps such immediate, tangible results. And in that sense, baking helps remind me of God's promise to bless all hard work that is done to His glory. Even if my work doesn't immediately show results like warm, doughy cinnamon rolls, I can rest in the fact that those blessings will come. Praise God from whom all blessings flow!

Channeling the Bayou

We've been on some whirlwind vacations these past two weeks, but instead of posting pictures of those I'm going to go the easy route and post a recipe first!

Lucy and I watched the Princess and the Frog yesterday and all that New Orleans jazz had me in the mood for some Cajun Cooking.

So I found this recipe on the Pioneer Woman for Cajun Chicken Pasta and, trust me, it was INCREDIBLE. I was tempted to lick my plate afterwards. I have a big container of Tony Cachere's creole seasoning and only one recipe that uses it, so I'm thrilled to have another excuse to pull out those yummy cajun spices. I used more of the seasoning than she suggested, but hey, we like our food spicy.

I was too enraptured by the dish to even bother taking a picture so here's one from Pioneer Woman's blog. And here's a link to the recipe. You have to try it!

My best friend

Okay maybe this isn't my best friend EVER, but it's pretty close. I don't know how I survived three years of marriage without my dutch oven. I think I use it at least once a week, if not twice.



Where else can you take this (yes those are chipotle peppers on top, yum!):



And then six hours in the oven come up with this:

Which then gets shredded into this:

And served up like this (sorry this pic is rotated for some reason blogger insisted on rotating it every time I tried to upload it):

Delicious! And I submit that if I had made it in a slow-cooker it wouldn't have tasted nearly as good. Although I have no good argument for why that would be except for that my slow-cooker burns all my big cuts of meats. So that was our dinner last night, and it took maybe 15 minutes of my time to prep. The recipe is called Spicy Dr. Pepper shredded pork and is on my new favorite food blog here.

Oh, and Whiskey wanted to wish everyone a Happy Easter. She likes Lucy's plastic eggs almost as much as Lu does.

Springtime!

I love that my birthday often falls on the first day of Spring. It's such a rejuvenating time of year: flowers waking up from the dead ground (stirring dull roots with spring rain, if you're Eliot), birds finding their songs again, new life, etc.


In Moscow and in Spokane I was often disappointed by the first day of Spring. Quite frequently there was still snow on the ground, or even snowfall. But here in Eugene I really can believe that springtime has come. The trees that line the road up to our house are beginning to produce little pink flowers. Last night Joel and I sat outside on our back porch and ate dinner. I watched two hummingbirds duke it out over a flower trough, and I watched our cat dream of leaping off our balcony and eating them. I suppose she has her own reasons for loving spring.


Here's another stellar recipe from over on Baked Bree. I made these Italian Drip Beef Sandwiches for our outside dinner last night, along with some sauteed asparagus. It was delicious!

Picture and full recipe found here.

Here's what's cookin' at the Cohen house

I tried this recipe that I found over on The Pioneer Woman for Tikka Masala Chicken, and it was incredible! And not too expensive if you already have the spices. For some reason I have a giant container of Garam Masala just sitting in my pantry. You can control how spicy the dish gets by adding chili peppers or a dash of cayenne pepper.
You can find the recipe here. Another reason I'm such a big fan of this recipe is because of the step by step pictures. That's right up my alley!

The secret ingredient

Have you ever had a dish that pretty much everyone you know loves, so you can't help feeling bad that you secretly despise it? That's how I feel about mashed potatoes. Okay, despise might be a bit of an overstatement, but I don't think I've ever made them for dinner, and at holiday meals I either avoid them or take only a small portion to be polite.

But that has all changed.

Today I discovered a recipe for mashed potatoes that uses one simple ingredient that completely changed my view towards mashed potatoes: Lawry's seasoning salt.

Honestly, if you are like me and you find pretty much every mashed potato recipe bland and uninteresting, you have to try adding seasoning salt! I'm confident that mashed potatoes will now begin showing up regularly on dinner menus at the Cohen casa.

Here's what I'm serving with the mashed potatoes: a good old fashioned pot roast. Can you say comfort food??

Dinner

These days I've limited myself to feeling accomplished if I get one thing done during the day (besides feeding Lucy/entertaining Lucy/changing diapers/making dinner). Yesterday I tried a new bread recipe and it was delicious! That has been a major perk of being home most of the time: I actually have time to make bread! So here's the original recipe, and here's my version (it looked much prettier in person, I promise).



I served it with slow-cooked tuscan pork, a recipe I found here that was equally good. Her picture is a lot prettier than mine, I didn't think about taking it until after we'd eaten. Oh well!



And on the topic of keeping Lucy entertained, she has found a new favorite toy: the glowing sea horse.

Delicious Pulled Pork Tacos

I wish I could remember what website I pulled this recipe off of... but it escapes me. But since the gal who posted it said that she had adapted it from Real Simple's recipe, I don't feel too bad. I made this dish for dinner tonight and it was the perfect dish to serve after an 8-hour work day! All I did was pop it in the crockpot in the morning and then chop up some condiments right before serving.

Slow-Cooker Pulled Pork Tacos

Ingredients

2 cups store-bought salsa, plus more for serving
2 tablespoons chili powder
2 tablespoons dried oregano
2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
salt
1 2 1/2-pound boneless pork butt or shoulder, trimmed of excess fat- I halved this for just the two of us.
flour tortillas

Serve with:
cilantro
lemon/lime
cabbage or lettuce
cheese
avocado
black beans

Directions

1.In a 4- to 6-quart slow cooker, combine the salsa, chili powder, oregano, cocoa, and 1 teaspoon salt. Add the pork and turn to coat.
2.Cook, covered, until the meat is tender and pulls apart easily, on high for 4 to 5 hours or on low for 7 to 8 hours (or 9.5 in my case).
3.Twenty minutes before serving, heat oven to 350° F.
4.Stack the tortillas, wrap them in foil, and bake until warm, about 15 minutes.
5.Meanwhile, using 2 forks, shred the pork and stir into the cooking liquid.
6. Serve with whatever you love best on tacos!

Thrifting and Blogging

I was thinking about things that I've loved getting at yard sales and I remembered this table-runner that I found this summer, and this green tray that I found last year. Combined with my Pottery Barn candles they make our coffee table very cheery and summery.



I think my recent (almost) obsession with yard-sales and thrift-store finds has a lot to do with all the home decor blog reading I've been doing. There are so many fabulous blogs out there, and I get inspired to try new things each time I visit them. But trying new things usually involves buying new things. And it's a fun challenge to find beautiful things at very low prices. Here are some of the blogs I've been following (most of them introduced to me by my friend Kathryn)

Eat Drink Pretty

Little Lovely

ISLY

The City Sage

Thrifting Paradise

Today was my day off work (hurrah!) so I took the opportunity to go thrift-store shopping with my friend Morgan. We hit stores in both Moscow and Pullman. Morgan made off with some fabulously adorable shoes, which I do not have a picture of. And I was very pleased to find this rug for a mere $10 at Palouse Treasures in Pullman!



Don't look too closely or you'll notice a few stains, and granted the woven ends are a little ragged, and there was one ripped corner of the rug. But in my part of the decorating world that's all known as "shabby chic". Besides, it was $10, and Joel and I had wanted a floor rug like this since we got married, but were unwilling to cough up the hundreds of dollars that they cost new. Now I just need to find a proper centerpiece for the table since those flowers do not match at all. But I can't think of what would look good on the table that would tie in the rug! Hmmm... time to start scouring the home decor blogs.

Someone else has really taken a shine to this rug, so you'll get a close-up on her as well.



And then for dinner I successfully made a very yummy French bread, after fabulously bombing my first attempt at Challah Bread a few weeks ago (recipe said 3/4 stick of butter, I translated as 3/4 cup of butter).



Now, I was brave and took a picture, even though I somehow managed to get a square/misshapen loaf instead of the beautifully round loaf that the original poster's picture shows. So no laughing. It was my first try. And square or round, it still turned out delicious! You can find the recipe here:

http://ivoryhut.com/2010/01/baking-bread-made-easy/

Joel loves the bread too. I served it with baked pesto chicken and corn on the cob. Delicious!

Fantastic French Fries

I was making a steak and salad dinner last week and I decided to be daring and make homemade french fries. They were delicious (and so good for you, I'm sure, right mom?). So here's the recipe. I could honestly put this batter on just about anything it's so good.

2.5 Pounds Peeled russet potatoes (or however many you want, I didn't use that many for the two of us)
1 cup flour
1 t. garlic salt or garlic powder
1 t. onion salt
1 t. salt
1 t. paprika
1/2-1 cup water
1 cup vegetable oil

1. Slice the potatoes and place in cold water (if you're worried they'll discolor)
2. Heat oil over medium high heat
3. Combine flour through paprika. Stir in the water as needed to form a paste (for dredging the potatoes through)
4. Dip slices in batter and place in hot oil so they aren't touching, one at a time (if they touch they stick together).
5. let cook, flipping over halfway, until they are browned on the outside and soft on the inside (I just taste-tested so I have no set time for you).
6. Drain on paper towels.

Kale and Kielbasa Soup

In the mood for some kielbasa, kale, and a host of yummy herbs? Then kale and kielbasa soup is the one for you!

I tried this recipe off of our friends the Church's blog, and absolutely LOVE it. This is definitely my favorite fall soup so far!

You can find the original recipe here.

In other news, this was my week of graveyard shifts at the hospital. 5:30pm to 5:30 am Monday-Wednesday. I am now in the recovering stage and very grateful that that will not be my regular schedule. The only member of our household who benefited from my crazy shifts was Whiskey. She got to go out romping in the early hours of the morning when I got home.

And a teaser: I've been working on an Advent calendar and it's turning out great! Pics will be coming soon.

My Fall Resolutions

I have given myself two resolutions for this fall: make more soup and finish my quilt. I also have all of these wild ideas for fall decorations, like this and this and even this but I'm forcing myself to be reasonable. Two resolutions is enough to begin with.

And so, I stuck to my resolution today and made soup for one of our first really fall-ish days. It's called Lentil Soup with Italian Sausage and Escarole. You can find it here, although I made several changes so I'm going to reproduce it on the blog with my own suggestions. Joel loved it so much he said he would eat it every night.

Lentil Soup with Italian Sausage and Spinach (Yes, I even changed the title!)

Yield: Makes 6 to 8 (main course) servings

Ingredients:

• 16 ounces of lentils, rinsed well
• 5 cups water
• 3 1/2 cups reduced-sodium chicken broth
• 1 Turkish bay leaf
• 4 garlic cloves, finely chopped, divided
• 2 tablespoons oil
• 1 pound spicy ground Italian sausage.
  
• 1 medium onion, finely chopped
• 2 medium carrots, finely chopped
• 2 celery ribs, finely chopped (okay, I didn't actually add these because we both hate celery, but I'm sure it would be better with it.
  
• 2 tablespoons tomato paste
• 1/2 pound spinach, chopped.
  
• 1 to 2 tablespoons red-wine vinegar

IN THE MORNING:

Simmer lentils, water, broth, bay leaf, and half of garlic in a 4-quart pot, uncovered, 12 minutes.

Meanwhile, heat oil in a wide heavy 5- to 6-quart pot over medium-high heat until it shimmers. Brown sausage and break into chunks, about 7 minutes. Transfer sausage with a slotted spoon to a bowl.Drain most of grease.

Reduce heat to medium and cook onion, carrots, celery, remaining garlic, 1 teaspoon salt, and 1/2 teaspoon pepper, stirring occasionally, until softened, about 5 minutes. Stir in tomato paste and cook, stirring, 2 minutes. Add sausage and lentils with cooking liquid and simmer, uncovered, until lentils are tender, 3 to 5 minutes.

Put in the fridge until about 5, then reheat. 5 minutes before serving...

Stir in spinach and cook until tender, about 3 minutes. Stir in vinegar to taste and season with salt and pepper. Discard bay leaf (yes, I did keep the bay leaf in all day. Daring, I know).

Serve with crusty bread.

The reason I made it in the morning and then reheated for an hour is because a lot of the reviews complained that it was a little bland. But some daring cooks let it simmer on the stovetop for like three hours, adding water the whole time, and said it was fantastic. And since I get off work at 5 and do not have time to prepare a three hour meal, I thought I would make it in the morning and let the juices mix all day and see how it worked. And it was fantastic1

So there you have it. Yummy soup number one. Now I have my eye on the butternut squash currently decorating my coffee table. Its days are numbered.

Sangria Recipe

I've made this recipe twice now for parties and both times received rave reviews. In fact, this last time for a party of 12 I quadrupled the recipe and we still ran out! It's a cinch to make, as long as you remember to start it the night before.

* 1 Bottle Red Wine (I've used Zinfandel both times)
* 1 Lemon, cut into wedges
* 1 Orange, cut into wedges
* 1 Lime, cut into wedges
* 2 Tbsp sugar
* Splash of orange juice or lemonade
* 1 Cup of raspberries of strawberries (thawed or frozen)
* 1 small can of diced pineapples (with juice)
* 4 cups ginger ale

Pour wine into a large pitcher and squeeze the juice wedges from the lemon, orange and lime into the wine. Toss in the fruit wedges (leaving out seeds if possible) and pineapple then add sugar and orange juice (you could add a couple shots of gin or triple sec, although I never do). Chill overnight. Add ginger ale, berries and ice just before serving.

For doubling, tripling or quadrupling: I would do it by taste.... not everything in the recipe needs to be doubled, tripled or quadrupled (like the ginger ale, and probably the sugar).