Soup #1 - Easy Potato-Corn Chowder

 The Year of Soup

Soup #1 - Easy Potato Corn Chowder

    So, this was a fun recipe. The recipe "Speedy Potato Chowder" is in the Favorite Recipes, Campbell's Creative Cooking With Soup (Over 8,000 Delicious Mix and Match Recipes. The recipe gives you four ingredients and then you select a liquid, canned vegetable and a meat from a chart. For the liquid, I chose milk. For the vegetable, I chose corn. And, for the meat, I chose to use diced potato in lieu of meat. I did also add salt, pepper and paprika to mine. 

   By the way, liquid options were beer & water, milk, milk & light cream and evaporated milk & water. Vegetable options were mixed vegetables, corn, Lima beans and diced carrots. The meat options were hotdogs, chicken, ham and tuna. 

      I'll write out the recipe how I made it. I really enjoyed this chowder. I hope you try it!

Ingredients:

4 slices bacon, diced (feel free to use more)

1/2 cup chopped onion (I used about 1/2 of a medium onion)

2 1/2 cups milk (I used more liquid than the recipe suggests)

1 10 3/4 oz can condensed cream of potato soup

1 15oz can whole kernel corn (The original recipe suggests using an 8oz can; I used low salt)

1 medium russet potato, diced

2 tbsps chopped fresh parsley, plus more for decoration if you wish

1/4 tsp salt

1/4 tsp paprika

1/8 tsp black pepper

Directions:

In a 3qt saucepan over medium heat, heat a tiny bit of oil and add bacon. Cook until crisp. Remove bacon with a slotted spoon and drain on paper towels. You can drain the bacon drippings, reserving 1 tbsp. I did not, because I only had a little more than a tbsp. Add the chopped onion and diced potato to the drippings and cook until the potato is somewhat tender; you don't want it super tender, because you're going to keep cooking and that will make it tender. Add milk, corn with it's liquid, the bacon, parsley, salt, pepper and paprika. Cook on low-medium heat until heated through, stirring occasionally. Makes 4 to 6 servings. 

Easy Potato-Corn Chowder

Easy Potato-Corn Chowder

Casserole #13 - Lemonchick's Scalloped Potato Casserole

 The Year of Casseroles

Casserole #13 - Lemonchick's Scalloped Potato Casserole

    This is my recipe. Feel free to adjust seasonings as you like. This is a version of a scalloped potato casserole that my mother used to make when I was growing up. My mother didn't like much spice (I like spice though), so I mostly grew up without a lot of seasoning in food. My mother also would not have used garlic salt (she'd have used regular) and would not have added onion, like I did. The Pyrex casserole dish I used is a copy of the one my mother had and it brings back a lot of memories. This is comfort food for me. I hope you try this casserole and that you love it!

Ingredients:

3 medium potatoes, washed, peeled and cubed

1 cup ham, chunked (You can leave this out if you are vegetarian)

1/2 cup onion, chopped (Optional)

1/2 cup green pepper, chopped (Optional)

1 1/4 cups shredded or cubed cheese; use your favorite combination of cheddar, Monterrey Jack or mozzarella, divided use

1 recipe medium white sauce (below)

White Sauce:

1/4 cup butter or margarine

1/4 cup flour

2 cups milk, heated (I heat mine in the microwave for two minutes)

1/2 tsp salt 

1/8 tsp pepper

White Sauce Directions:

In a medium saucepan, melt butter on low heat. Blend in flour, letting it get bubbly, before slowly adding the heated milk. Stir constantly until thickened. For this casserole, mix in 1 cup cheese and stir until melted. 

Directions:

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees F. Fill a large pan with water and add potato chunks. Bring to a boil and cook until potatoes are fork tender; adding the onion to the potatoes for the last about five minutes.  Drain potatoes and onion and return to pan. Add ham. Pour cheese sauce over top and stir until all of the potato and ham mixture is covered. Lightly grease a 2 1/2 qt casserole dish. Pour potato mixture into casserole. Sprinkle the remaining 1/4 cup of shredded cheese over top. Bake for 30 minutes. Remove and cool for a few minutes, before serving. Serve with a side salad or your favorite vegetable as a side. 

Casserole #13 - Scalloped Potato Casserole

Casserole #10 - Shipwreck Casserole

 The Year of Casseroles

Casserole #10 - Shipwreck Casserole

    I wanted to be adventurous, so tried this recipe from the Classic Cooking with Coca Cola cookbook. Published in 1994 and 1998, all of the recipes include a Coca Cola product. I write about recipes whether or not I liked them and this was a recipe I did not like. I think if I were to make this again, I would use undiluted tomato paste, not undiluted soup. Along with the Coke Zero (It's what I had on hand and was an appropriate substitute), the finished casserole was way too soup-y. This recipe also did not say to cook the ground beef and I did not want to put raw meat into the casserole, so I browned the ground beef. I would also figure out seasonings to add, because the recipe only had salt and pepper to taste. I sprinkled Italian seasoning when I tested the recipe. Although I did not like the finished recipe, it was pretty easy to make and you might like it. Play around with seasonings and try chili or chipotle powder, Italian or add chopped garlic or garlic powder. 

Ingredients:

1 1/2 tbsp oil

1 large onion, sliced

1 lb ground beef, browned

2-3 stalks celery, chopped

1 green pepper, chopped or 6 mini sweet orange/red/yellow peppers chopped

1 large potato, sliced

1 can red kidney beans

1 can tomato soup (undiluted) or small can of undiluted tomato paste

salt to taste

pepper to taste

10 oz Coca Cola

sprinkle Italian seasoning

Directions:

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Spread oil in bottom of 9x13 baking dish. Layer ingredients in order listed, finishing by pouring the Coca Cola on top. Bake for one hour. Remove from oven and allow to cool for a few minutes. Sprinkle Italian seasoning over casserole when plated. 

Shipwreck Casserole 

Casserole #6 - Lemonchick's Cheesy Sausage & Potato Casserole

 The Year of Casseroles

Casserole #6 - Lemonchick's Cheesy Sausage & Potato Casserole

This recipe is a creation of mine. You can substitute your favorite spicy seasoning in place of Penzey's Arizona Dreaming salt free seasoning if you like. Or even try your favorite seasoning. I hope you like it. 

Ingredients:

3 medium potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks

1 medium onion or 1/2 of a large onion, peeled and diced

1 green pepper, cored and cut into chunks

8oz andouli or Kielbasa sausage, sliced into about 1/4-1/2 inch slices

1 cup Monterrey Jack or Cheddar cheese, shredded, plus more to sprinkle on top

1 tsp or more to taste of Penzey Spice's Arizona Dreaming salt free seasoning

1 tsp Penzey Spice's dried minced garlic or fresh minced garlic

1/4 tsp pepper

2 cups white sauce:

  1/4 cup butter

  1/4 cup flour

  2 cups milk, heated 

  1/2 tsp salt

  1/8 tsp pepper

Directions:

Pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees. Bring a large pot of water to boiling and cook the chunks of potato until they are fork soft (You don't want them mushy and you don't want them hard). Drain the potatoes and pour chunks into a large bowl. Cool while you prepare the rest of the ingredients. Stir in sausage, green pepper and onion. Mix shredded cheese into white sauce, pour over the sausage & potato mixture and store to combine. Pour mixture into a greased, 3-qt casserole. Sprinkle with additional cheese and bake for 30 minutes. 

White Sauce: Melt butter on low. Blend in flour. Slowly stir heated milk. Add salt and pepper and stir. 

Lemonchick's Cheesy Sausage & Potato Casserole
Picture being supervised by Charley The Muffin Man

Pie Number 22 - Lemonchick's Chicken & Vegetable Pie

 The Year of Pie

Pie Number 22 - Lemonchick's Chicken & Vegetable Pie

    This is my creation! 100% mine! I loved it. I really loved the seasonings I chose. The only two things I would do differently, is to bake at 375 degrees, not 350 degrees and I would make a gravy with 1 cup water, not 2 cups of water (it made too much gravy). I baked the pie for 35 minutes at 350, but ended up adding at least 15 more minutes. The crust never did get golden, but it was still a good crust.  If I'd baked it at 375 degrees for 35-40 minutes, I think the crust would have turned out more like how I wanted it to (golden). The first piece out of the pie pan did not come out very, well, but that was because it was still too hot. The second piece I had (the day after) came out just fine. I thought this creation of mine was really good and I hope you like it. 

Ingredients:

1 chicken breast diced

1 medium/large potato, peeled and diced

1/2 large onion, chopped

1 12oz bag frozen mixed vegetables, use the "steam in a bag" kind

1 cup water

1-2 tsp chicken bouillon (I used a low sodium variety)

3/4 tsp onion powder

3/4 tsp garlic powder, 

3/4 parsley flakes, 

3/4 tsp celery salt

3/4 tsp spicy chili seasoning 

3/4 tsp ground sage 

1/2 tsp salt, plus a sprinkle

1/2 tsp pepper, plus a sprinkle

canola oil

cornstarch

two-crust pie crust (unbaked)

Directions:

Heat oven to 375 degrees. Drizzle a bit of canola oil in a large heated skillet. In a saucepan, boil diced potato in water until softened, but not mushy. Drain cooked potatoes and set aside. Season diced chicken with a sprinkle of salt, sprinkle of pepper and 1/4 tsp of each of the rest of the seasonings and add to the skillet. Cook completely and remove from skillet. Add chopped onion to the same skillet and cook until translucent. Return chicken to skillet and turn burner to low. In a saucepan, boil 1 cup water and 1-2 tsp chicken bouillon. Use a little bit of water mixed with cornstarch, to thicken the bouillon into a gravy. If it is not thick enough, add a little more water/cornstarch mixture. 

Combine the gravy, potatoes, onion, chicken and vegetables. Pour into unbaked pastry shell, add top crust and crimp edges to seal crusts together. Cut slits into top crust and bake for 35 to 45 minutes or until crust is golden. Remove pie from oven and let cool. Serve pie with a sprinkle of parsley flakes if desired and serve with a garden salad. 

Serves 8

Lemonchick's Chicken & Vegetable Pie
(cooked by not golden)

The first piece of pie that I took out wayyyy too early.

The second piece of pie that came out wayyyy better. 

Pie Number Three: Pork and Tater Pie

The Year of Pie

Pie #3 - Pork and Tater

     Pork and Tater Pie.  I wasn't sure what to expect from this recipe which comes from the Favorite Recipes From Southern Kitchens - Meats: Including Seafood and Poultry, published in 1967, but it turned out really well. This recipe was submitted to Southern Kitchens by Mrs. A. Tschoepe Jr, of San Antonio, Texas. I adjusted some of the seasoning, because I didn't have any "savory" seasoning and also because I wanted to. Also, I added nutmeg. It is a two crust pie and although I still struggle with making pretty circles when I roll out my dough, but overall, I am doing good with crusts.  I brushed melted butter on the top crust, before baking and it gave it a nice, golden brown color.  Modifications in italics. Note that the original recipe only calls for salt, savory (1/2 tsp), sage (1/4 tsp), cinnamon, cloves (1/8 tsp) and pepper. The original recipe does not include thyme, Italian seaoning or nutmeg. I really liked this pie. I served with a nice garden salad and it was perfect. So, try this pie!

Ingredients:

2 cups flour, sifted

1 tsp salt

2/3 cup shortening

1 lb ground pork, browned

2 cups diced potato, cooked

2 tbsp butter, melted

1/2 cup water

1 tsp salt 

1/8 tsp oregano

1/8tsp thyme

1/8 tsp Italian seasoning

1/8 tsp nutmeg

1/8 tsp cinnamon

1/8 tsp pepper

parsley (optional)

Directions:

Sift flour and salt together and cut in shortening until pea-size crumbles form. Sprinkle 6 or 7 tablespoons cold water over the pea-sized crumbles and mix until dough forms (I used my hands to form the dough ball after mixing with the fork). Separate dough into two halves. Roll out one half of dough until about 10 inches round. Loosely lay dough over a 9 inch round pie pan. Cook pork in skillet and drain off fat. Add seasonings and 1/2 cup water. Mix thoroughly until heated through. Pour the meat & potato mixture into the pie pan. Set aside and roll out the second half of dough. Place over the filling. Crimp top and bottom crust together and trim any excess dough. Cut slits in top crust to allow steam to escape. Brush top crust with melted butter. Bake at 400 degrees for 40 to 50 minutes. Serve with sprinkling of parsley flakes. The original recipe says four to six servings. You can get six to eight servings. 

Pork and Tater Pie

Pork and Tater Pie

Week 34 - Salami-Cheese Pie

 Salami-Cheese Pie

Week 34 of 52

Meat/Fish Entree #5

    Well, this was something I never thought of making. I've never even made anything with salami. This recipe comes from the 1979 seventh printing of Better Homes and Gardens All-Time Favorite Casserole Recipes published in 1977. The recipe is on page 12, in the "home-style casseroles" chapter. I don't understand how it qualifies as a casserole and a number of recipes in this section are not casseroles. But, one of my goals of this year's Fifty-Two In Twenty-Two project, was to use recipes from cookbooks in my collection, which I haven't used. The other goal was to try things I've never had before. I couldn't remember if I had used any recipe from this cookbook, but I didn't think I had, so I kept it in the mix of books to choose this week's recipe from. And like I said, I've never made anything with salami. I am really glad I tried this and I'm very, pleasantly surprised at how much I liked it. 

    Would I make this recipe again? Yes. Is it partly also because I bought the biggest sized package of salami at the store yesterday? Also, yes. The recipe calls for 1 1/2 cups of chopped salami and 1 cub cooked & cubed potatoes. You could probably do a 1/2 cup less of the salami and add a 1/2 cup more of potato.  I used fresh basil as a garnish, which isn't called for in the recipe, but I wanted a garnish, Fresh parsley would be lovely also. Serve with a side salad or vegetable and hot bread or rolls. My notes in italics. 

Ingredients:

Plain Pastry (below)

1 tablespoon all-purpose flour

1/8 teaspoon pepper

1 cup evaporated milk

1/2 cup shredded American cheese (I used my standard Colby-Jack)

1/2 pound salami, chopped (1 1/2 cups)

1 cup cubed cooked potato

1/4 cup chopped onion

2 tablespoons chopped pimiento (I drained juice before measuring)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees (You will turn the oven down to 350 degrees when you take the pie shell and cutouts out). In a saucepan combine flour and pepper. Blend in milk. Cook, stirring continuously until thickened and bubbly. Remove from heat. Stir in cheese until melted, then salami, potato onion and pimiento. Turn into pie shell and decorate the top with the baked cutouts. Bake at 350 degrees for 35 to 40 minutes (I did 40 minutes). You want the center to be nearly set. Cool for at least 5 minutes. Serve with a garden salad or side of vegetables (I had cauliflower), with hot french bread or rolls and butter. It's a pie, so you could get six nice servings.

Plain Pastry

1 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/3 cup shortening

3 to 4 tablespoons cold water (I used 4 tablespoons)

Directions:

Stir together flour and salt. Cut in shortening until pieces are the size of small peas. Sprinkle a tablespoon of water at a time over the mixture and toss with a fork. You want it all moistened. Form a ball and roll out on a lightly floured baking mat, until you have a 9-inch round or if you are like me and your pastry rolling skills are sub-par, you have a large enough piece to entirely cover your pie pan). Gently lay your pastry in your 9-inch pie pan. Prick the bottom and sides with a fork (I forgot to do this before baking the pie shell by itself, but did when it came out of the oven before adding the filling, and it turned out fine). Mash the trimmings together into a ball, roll out and use mini or regular size cookie cutters (I used a mini heart cookie cutter from Pampered Chef) and set aside on a small baking sheet. Bake the pie shell for 10 minutes and the cutouts for 5 minutes. Remove the pie shell and cutouts, setting aside while you finish making the filling.

Salami-Cheese Pie

Salami-Cheese Pie - Take Two

Salami-Cheese Pie w/Fresh Basil Garnish and Cauliflower

Lemonchick's Turkey & Vegetable Soup

 Lemonchick's Turkey & Vegetable Soup

    Well, I had a little bit of an unplanned hiatus. I had planned to make fudge the week February 14th and then we had a major ice/snow storm (It snowed twice that week) which knocked out power for millions of Texans, all over the state. Some had no power for 5 days or more. Some like me, had multiple power outages, which in some cases lasted hours at a time and others for short periods.  My longest outage was about 18 hrs. Some had power on and off constantly the whole time and some never lost any power at all. I won't go into any more of that, but I will say the fact that we had the weather wasn't the issue, it was the power outages causing no heat in freezing temps. So, that is one of the reasons for the delay in another post. 

    Anyhow, back to the business at hand. When I went shopping the other day, I picked up a package of soup vegetables at a Fiesta grocery store, for just over $4.00. Most Hispanic grocery stores will have these packs of soup vegetables.  All you have to do is chop up the veggies, add them to broth, add seasonings and meat if you like. There was plenty of chopped vegetables and it would have been just fine without meat. The pack I got came with onion, a type of Mexican squash that I don't know, a small bit of corn, cilantro, carrot, a small red-skinned potato, cabbage and a piece of celery.  

    I prepped my veggies by washing them first and then chopping them into small pieces. You can chop them as small as you like. I put my carrot, potato and corn into the soup pot which I had poured two 32oz containers of chicken broth and 3 cups of water (I'd turned the pot on to start heating while I was chopping the vegetables) into. I added the cabbage, squash and celery, followed by two cubes of Knorr tomato bouillon with chicken flavor and about 5 cloves of garlic (finely diced). I added a little more than two cups of cooked, chopped turkey meat and 1/4 cup of quick cooking brown rice and boiled everything until my harder vegetables were soft. Honestly I didn't time it. Just cook until your vegetables are as tender as you like. I added chopped cilantro and 1/4 teaspoon and cooked it just a little bit longer, before serving myself a bowl with a sprinkle of sriracha sauce. The verdict? Yummmmmmmmmm.  And, now I have food for the whole week, because it was a huge pot of soup! 

Options: Use vegetable stock and leave out turkey for a vegetarian version.  Change it up and add different seasonings.  I did not use salt in mine, but you can salt to taste. Use beef broth and use chopped beef. Use chicken, instead of turkey. Sprinkle queso fresco or a bit of your favorite cheese on top when you serve. Make it your own!

Ingredients:

1 pack of soup vegetables (Mine had a wedge of a small cabbage, 1 small red-skinned potato, 1 small Mexican squash, 1 piece of celery, 1 piece of corn-on-the-cob, cilantro and about 4 or so good sized pieces of a giant carrot)

2 32oz containers of chicken broth

3 cups water (I used straight from the faucet, because I'm fancy)

5 cloves garlic (or to taste)

1/4 teaspoon pepper

2 tomato bouillon cubes with chicken flavor (or plain ol' chicken bouillon cubes)

1/4 cup quick cooking brown rice

Sriracha or your favorite hot sauce for extra flavor in your bowl

Potatoes, Peasant Style

Potatoes, Peasant Style

    First things first.  I cannot for the life of me figure how this recipe got to be named "Potatoes, Peasant Style".  What I can tell you, is that this recipe is in the 1929 cookbook New Delineator Recipes. I googled "New Delineator Cookbook" and found an article by Linda Albert in The Daily Times from 05/14/2014. Ms. Albert is also interested in old books. She had been handed a copy which a colleague of hers had found in a free bin of books at a used book store in Knoxville.  I wanted to try and add a link to her article in case anyone would be interested in reading it, but I am not sure if that would be allowed.  So, just Google "New Delineator Cookbook" as I did, you will find it.  I actually did attempt emailing Ms. Albert at the email address listed in the article, but it was no longer valid.  I had figured it was a long shot, so I wasn't surprised.  (A little bit about The Delineator.  This was an American magazine for women which was around in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  The magazine was produced by the Butterick Publishing Company. You can find more detail in Ms. Albert's article. Anyhow, I enjoyed the article and wanted you to know about it as well.)  

    So, it seems that I like picking recipes with "unusual", "funky", or "different" names and that trend continues with the "Potatoes, Peasant Style". The directions are to dice your potatoes, after washing and peeling them, fry them in the bacon grease until brown and remove from the pan. After removing the potatoes from the pan, you add the chopped garlic and parsley.  Cook the garlic and parsley in the fat , then add the flour, seasonings and milk and cook until thickened (the directions say that will be about 5 minutes). Add the potatoes to the sauce, stir to coat the potatoes while they re-heat and ta-da, you're done! 

    I prepped everything so it was ready when I came back from an outing with my Little Brother (I mentor with Big Brothers Big Sisters). I measured the flour, paprika, salt and pepper and set that aside in a mini prep-cup. The recipe calls for parsley. I used dried parsley flakes (another mini prep-cup) and that worked out just fine. I cooked up bacon, so I'd have fresh bacon grease to fry the potatoes in. The recipe calls for 6 tbsp of bacon grease to fry the potatoes in. I didn't come up with 6 tbsp of grease, so I used 2 tbsp of vegetable shortening. Don't have bacon grease or you're a vegetarian? Use all vegetable shortening. 

    When I returned from my outing with my Little Brother, I diced up the potato and garlic, while melting the bacon grease and shortening. The recipe calls for three cups diced potato and that ended up being about 1 1/2 medium potatoes. I heated the grease while dicing the potatoes and then followed the directions as above. One thing I like to do when thickening a sauce, is to heat the milk before adding to my pan. It helps the sauce thicken quicker. When the dish was ready, I served myself a side of the potatoes with a chicken thigh and a bit of mashed sweet potato. 

    I really, liked this recipe. Would I make this again? 100%, yes!!!! Like garlic?  Use more than 2 cloves. Like Paprika? Do the same; add extra paprika. Options could be adding diced ham or crumbled bacon. Make this recipe and tell me how you like it. 

5-Hour Stew

 5-Hour Stew

    Alright, alright, alright! This is another recipe from the 75th Anniversary Hy-Vee cookbook. I liked that this recipe was super easy. The first thing I did was prep the vegetables, by cleaning and peeling the carrots and potatoes; cleaning the celery and peeling the outer layer of the onion. The recipe says to cube the carrots and potatoes, so I did as best I could. The onion and celery I just chopped. 

       The stew meat was already cut into chunks, so I didn't have anything to do there.  Why not buy the package of pre-cut chunked meat, if you can? Again, this recipe was so easy. I put the vegetables in my cast iron dutch oven, mixed them around, added the meat, the cup of tomato juice and 3 tablespoons of tapioca. The recipe calls for Minute (brand) tapioca, but I simply couldn't find any brand of tapioca pearls anywhere, so had to buy a box off of Amazon.  The last two ingredients are salt and pepper, which you add to your personal taste.  I prefer to salt and pepper my food when I plate it, so I didn't add any during cooking.  

    So, that's it! I put the cover on my dutch oven and placed it in my oven, which I had pre-heated to 250 degrees.  As I think I've mentioned before, my oven is wonky and I had to guess at the temperature, but I think I did good, because at the end of the five hour cooking time, when I took that lid off, it looked pretty perfect.  I had that stews were "soupy", but this one isn't, there's only one cup of liquid added, so it wasn't "soupy".  I'll have you know my house smelled really good and the stew was delicious. 

    This would make a perfect meal with a nice, crusty french bread, garlic bread or rolls and a side salad.  I really liked this dish, because of how easy it was. The five hours was a long cook time, but the recipe also says it can be made in a crock-pot. There was no time give for making it in a crock-pot, so maybe still five hours? On low? Or maybe, eight hours on low? So, maybe it is one of those things you can prep the night before, toss in your crock-pot, go to work and then come home to a delicious meal all ready for you. 

    Would I make this recipe again? 100% I would make this again and I wouldn't change anything about it. You could get several servings out of this, but I don't like to say how many, because you know we don't all take the same size serving. IF I had to hazard a guess, I'd say at least 4-5 servings.  So, I hope you try this one out.  Let me know how you like it.