My baby girl is 10

She was born 3 1/2 years after my first born son. In those 3 1/2 years, I would have 2 miscarriages. I remember sitting in the living room of our 100 year old farm house crying and asking Elliott if this was it. What if I can't have anymore? He just held me and told me everything would be all right and we'd cross that bridge if we get to it. Then she came along. A ray of sunshine in the early morning. She was born at 6:45 am and Elliott has called her his sunshine ever since. She's a lot like Elliott's great aunt 'Iwie' who was a spitfire until the day she died at 92. She's developing quite the sense of humor and loves a good practical joke. Yep, she's a tween now, I guess. I asked her if she knew what that word meant and she couldn't really tell me. Just that she was proud to be one.

She mentioned that her favorite food was 'Chinese' and I just happened to have made it last night so I thought I'd share the recipe, if you can call it that. I first learned of this dish when I married into my husband's family. At that time, it was just hamburger meat, green beans, celery and spaghetti topped with soy sauce and it was called 'Chinese' food. I'll always refer to it with quotes because the only thing Chinese about it is the soy sauce. I've added more veggies over the years and it's become a favorite of the kids.

 Brown a pound or two of ground beef in a skillet. Set aside.

Next, you're going to take whatever vegetables you like or that your family will eat or anything that looks like it's going bad in your icebox, and chop it up. You might need to saute it in batches, depending on how big your skillet is and how much stuff you end up with. I started with onions, celery and bell peppers.  Then I continued with cabbage and broccoli. I let them brown a little in some spots and then I added some soy sauce because the broccoli and cabbage don't really sweat that much when you saute them and the extra moisture helps soften them.

 Then I added some shredded carrots and let them cook until semi-soft.

Here it is. All mixed together in a bowl. Oh, yeah, don't forget to boil some spaghetti while you're doing all that other stuff. It's served over spaghetti. Sounds really oriental, doesn't it? Believe me, I've tried to convert my family to rice, quinoa,  soba noodles, anything but spaghetti. They never go for it. They always complain and ask where the spaghetti is. I give up.

So there you have it. Anna's favorite meal. 'Chinese' food. And there's mine without all those silly, unnecessary carbs. ;)

Olive Garden's Zuppa Toscana: an illustrated recipe

Y'all know how I love a good illustrated recipe, right? Well I've got one for you. This is what my son requested for supper tonight. It's his favorite and I love it when I can do something special for him. He's 13, you know, and lately, everything I do gets a dramatic eye roll, but not this soup. Personally, I think he wants to kiss me after I make it, but instead he flashes that cute grin at me, eats 2 or 3 bowls full and I'm a happy momma.

This is my version of a soup called Zuppa Toscana and it's served at The Olive Garden. The Olive Garden isn't my favorite restaurant, I'm more of a Carino's kind of girl, but they do make a mean soup and paired with their salad, it's a perfect meal. I found the recipe by doing a search about 10 years ago and found that there are a lot of versions out there. Whatever version I started with, I've tweaked it into what I'm sharing today.

Here's a group shot of all the participants.

There's 1 lb sausage, 6 strips of bacon, an onion, a clove of garlic, 2 medium baking potatoes, a quart of chicken broth, 1/3 cup whipping cream, 2 cups of kale.

Start by browning the sausage and setting it aside.

Take your onion, dice it and add it to your soup pot. Next, take 6 slices of bacon and cut them into one or two inch pieces. Add this to the onion and brown until the onion is translucent. Don't you love that word? Translucent. It's almost too fancy a word to describe the color of an onion.

Once your onion is, say it with me, translucent, add the garlic and cook another minute.

Here's a little something I've learned with garlic. The only garlic I could find was a couple of cloves in the bottom of my fruit bowl. They had become quite accustomed to that bowl and were getting ready to sprout when I so rudely decided to use them for my soup. See that little sprout coming out?

Some people may not be bothered by such things, but I find them to be a little bitter. So here's what I do. I just cut the suckers in half and remove that sprout. They come out pretty easily. Then I just dice as normal and add them to the pot.

 

 

 

 

Mmmm, here's the bacon, onion and garlic cooking away and making my kitchen smell like Italian heaven.

How you do this next part is entirely up to you. You can add a quart of water and then add whatever chicken bouillon you prefer, or you can just add a box, or can, of chicken broth. I started out with the water and bouillon method and later added some broth from a box to make more because I have a big family and they like to eat soup.

 

This is the bouillon I like to use, for what it's worth.

Unfortunately, I was down to only a couple of tablespoons and I was having a hard time getting the last tablespoon out of the jar because this stuff is pretty pasty. If this ever happens to you, just add a few spoonfuls of your broth to the jar, screw the lid on tight, and shake, shake, shake.

Then you can just pour that last bit out. Viola! But you probably already knew that.

Now that the broth is going and getting hot, take the potatoes and cut them first lengthwise, and then into 1/4 inch slices. Add these to the broth and let it simmer for 15 minutes.

While the soup is simmering, get the kale ready to add. This is kale.

If you're not familiar with kale, it's a leafy green vegetable that's full of vitamins and minerals and I think might even be a super food. It's really dense, but when you add it to this soup, it softens and turns a beautiful bright green color and frankly, makes the whole soup.

The kale I bought was organic and therefore covered in dirt. I decided to cut the leaves away from the stem and then rinse them in the sink. The stems are really fibrous and tough.

After you've rinsed the leaves, roll them up and cut them into slices. This is called chiffonade. I don't know if you can put an 'ing' on the end of that word, but that's what it's called. Another fun word to say if you want to impress people. But basically it's just an easy way of slicing a leafy green so you don't have to slice each individual leaf. Just gather up as much as you can and roll it all together and start slicing.

You'll end up with something like this.

As a side note, I have found that you can't buy just a little kale. It's sold in big bunches and you may not use it all the first go around. If that's the case, my friend Ali has a recipe for you. She's the co-author of The Cleaner Plate Club blog in my sidebar and the book by the same name and she makes the yummiest kale chips. I've witnessed several small people in my house literally fight over them until they were gone, 2.5 seconds after I set the plate down!

Here's where I decided I didn't make near enough soup and added a box of chicken broth. This is where I also realized that most of the sausage I had set aside to add at the end had been eaten. I know what you're thinking. And there's nothing I love more than crumbly sausage, but I didn't eat it all. I'm not the only one living in this house, you know. No worries, I just browned another tube of it and added that to the soup. It needed to be doubled anyway.

There. That's much better.

At the end of 15 minutes, the potatoes should be done since they were sliced so thinly. Doesn't that look delectable?

I know it does, but there are 2 key ingredients left to add before it's really ready. It's time to add a cup  1/3 cup whipping cream and the kale strips.

Here it is, folks. A veritable souply masterpiece!

And here's Mr. Park, eating the kale outta this soup!

Here's the recipe all written out:


Pam's version of The Olive Garden's Zuppa Toscana

1 lb. sausage
6 strips of bacon, cut into 2 inch pieces
1 onion, diced
1 clove of garlic, minced
2 medium baking potatoes
1 quart of water and chicken bouillon or 1 quart chicken broth
1/3 cup whipping cream
2 cups of kale

Brown sausage in a skillet. Drain and set aside.

In a large pan, saute bacon and diced onion until onions are translucent. Add minced garlic and cook for another minute. Add broth.

Cut potatoes lengthwise and then into 1/4 inch slices. Add to broth and simmer for 15 minutes.

While the soup is simmering, cut the kale into strips. After 15 minutes, add sausage, kale strips and cream.

Serve while hot.


Linking up here:

52 Bites: A schedule

Alright, I've made a decision. In keeping with my 'fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants' theme for this blog,  I've decided that starting this coming Monday, I'll be posting the current 'bite' I'm working on for the 52 Bites project. This all started back in November when I discovered this wonderful guide to simplifying your life. I love the idea of working on something for 52 weeks and hopefully, at the end of the year, I'll have a completely transformed and simpler life. You can read more about the e-book here.

If you want to follow along with my progress and maybe even do a little simplifying yourself, you can get the book for a whole dollar off until next Tuesday, January 10th. Click here and enter the coupon code HAPPYNEWYEAR and get it for $4! Your copy will arrive in your inbox and all you have to do is download it, print it out and put it in a binder or read it on your desktop. What could be easier?

Get it here!

On Monday, I'll be starting with bite #29. This bite has been quite an experience so come back Monday for all the gory details!

My favorite Christmas cookie. Period.

Hey, everyone, I'm guest blogging over at Tales of a Clyde Woman today. I'm sharing my favorite holiday cookie recipe. They're yummy and easy so you need to be making them this season. And Leilani is posting cookie recipes all this week so if you don't have a go-to cookie recipe, you need to go to her blog. ;) That, and the fact that she is a really funny woman with stories that will keep you snickering to yourself all day long!

The rolls you'll want to make for Thanksgiving this year. cont'd

Hi! If you're just joining me, I'm talking about yeast crescents. Basically, making them and eating them. If you missed the first part, it's here.

Here's how the dough looked when I got up this morning. That's how it should look.

Next you're going to be rolling out the dough so you want a large floured surface so it doesn't stick.

(Just a side note. See those tomatoes in the background? Those came from my aunt's garden. They were picked green right before the first freeze we had a couple of weeks back. I really had my doubts that they would ripen, they were just so hard and green. But what do you know, they're actually ripening. In fact, some of them are rotting. I'm hoping I can get to them before they're a total waste.)

Just plop the dough ball onto the floured surface. It will start to shrink a little when you handle it because the risen dough has lots of air in it and when you start to mess with it, that air comes out. 

Now divide the ball into two balls. 

Take one of the dough balls and begin to roll out into a large circle. I'm sorry a lot of these pictures are blurry. I had 3 cups of coffee this morning so I'm a little shaky.

Here's the dough all rolled out into a nice, big circle. You want to shoot for 12-15 inches across, but it's not important enough to get out a ruler. Just make it look like a large pizza crust.

Now, speaking of pizza, this next part is kind of fun. In fact, if you have kids around, and you're not a control freak, you can let them help with the next couple of steps. Take a pizza cutter and cut the circle into 12 pieces. 

This is what it should look like when you're done cutting. Of course, if your kids helped you out, it may not look like this, but it's no big deal because each one of those pieces will make a roll and they can be any size. Technically, this recipe makes 2 dozen rolls, but you may end up with more or less than a dozen and that's perfectly fine.

Now we're going to make crescents. Take one of the triangle pieces and spread out the top two corners a little and then roll it toward the small end.

Hey, look, a crescent!

Now you can curve the ends around so you'll have more room on the pan.

And here they are, ready to bake. You know, I've never made a batch this small before. In fact, tomorrow, when I make these for our Thanksgiving dinner, I'll be making 8 dozen. There's a sea of bowls and pans and there's flour and melted butter everywhere. It's quite a sight.

Set your oven to 375 degrees and while it's preheating, cover the rolls with a tea towel or plastic wrap and set it somewhere warm to rise again. If you wanted to freeze these for later, you could do that now.*

I put them on top of my stove because the warmth from the oven preheating was just enough heat to help them rise. I left them there for about an hour and a half. Are you're wondering why there are twice as many rolls now as in the previous picture? Remember when I separated the dough into two balls? I forgot about the other ball. Now there are 2 dozen rolls instead of 1.

When I took the towel off to check on them, they looked like this. Aren't they just so cute and chubby?!?

You can butter them before putting them in the oven or you can wait and butter them afterwards, OR you can butter them before and after. In fact, that's what I would suggest. Then put them in the oven and set your timer for 12 minutes. If you're not sure how your oven performs, check on them at 10 minutes and then every few minutes after that until you get the brownness you want.

After 12 minutes in the oven, this is what mine looked like. I used my little oven on top and apparently, it doesn't cook very evenly, but that's no problem because in our family we have two teams - team doughy and team done. So there's something for everyone on this pan.  I can't believe I just made a reference to the Twilight series. I'm not even a fan, but it's all anyone can talk about right now.

Don't forget to butter them again. This is just my opinion, but where bread is concerned, I don't think you can over butter.

Now would you look at that. That's perfection, right there. In fact, if you don't feel like you have enough things to be thankful for, make these rolls at once and you'll have one more thing to add to your list. ;)

Happy Thanksgiving!

*Put the pan in the freezer just like it is and leave it in there long enough to flash freeze them, then you can put them in a ziploc bag and they won't stick to each other. When you get ready to thaw them, just lay them out on a pan like they were and set them somewhere to rise.


Here's the recipe in case you just want to copy it:

Yeast Crescents

1 package dry yeast
1/2 cup sugar
1 cup warm milk
2 eggs, beaten
1/2 cup butter, melted
1 tsp salt
4 cups flour

Put warm milk in a small bowl and sprinkle yeast and sugar on top. Let rest for about 30 minutes. It should be foamy if the yeast is good. Pour milk mixture into a large bowl and beat together. Mix in eggs, butter and salt. Add half of the flour and mix well. Add remaining flour and mix until smooth. Cover bowl and let stand overnight at room temperature. The next morning, divide the dough in half and roll each into a 9 to 15 inch circle. Cut each circle into twelve equal wedges (a pizza cutter works great for this) and roll up beginning at the wide end. Shape them into crescents and place on a greased baking sheet and let stand until ready to bake. (Rolls can sit for up to 6 hours at this point.) Bake in a preheated, 375 degree oven for 12 to 15 minutes. Remove from oven and brush with butter if desired. Yield: 2 dozen