Thursday, December 30, 2010

Great foods, lots of cooking, no pictures to be found...


So, I don't like putting posts up without pictures, so here are a few gratuitous shot of family to  make up for my lack of food photos.

Over the last week I have cooked and baked and been generally speaking- happier than I've been in ages. Since May really.

I've also been sick, with a nasty cold that abated just for Christmas eve and then crept back so that on Monday and Tuesday all I could do was sleep and blow my nose....
 This means we've made soup.  Lots of soup.  Saturday we had Chili (not quite soup, but same theory)... Monday we had tomato soup.  Tuesday - I was so sick, I have no idea if we even ate anything.  But last night I felt a little better and got up and made my mom's Potato soup and the kids gobbled it up-- so did we.

Ingredients:
5-6 large potatoes
Half gallon of milk ( i used some mild but also threw in a cup of heavy cream cause we had some leftover)
Half a stick of butter
Flour
celery salt, pepper and salt to taste


Basically, I hard boil 4 eggs.  Cut them into pieces and set aside.
Peel and Dice the potatoes.  Boil until soft (this takes very little time if you have them cut into bite size pieces).  Drain the potatoes, in the bottom of the pot, make a little roux by melting the butter and adding few tablespoons of flour.  Whisk that together and cook until the flour starts to brown a little and is less raw...( or my mom likes her soup fairly thin, so she skips this and just whisks a raw egg into the milk instead-- this too is a thickener, but less so than a roux).   After the roux is ready, pour in the milk, add the potatoes back in, add the egg and season with celery salt and pepper (potentially a little more butter if you like).

We eat it with a ton of saltine crackers, a dash or two of hot sauce-- or tonight we had some bacon and cheese we threw in when we reheated it.  It was delicious last night and tonight.  Soup make me feel better. :)  Simple but delicious...
Hope ya'll have a healthy and peacefilled new year.

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Not a food post

So-- tonight I realized that i have two polity classes, two worship classes, two MS classes and loads of papers standing between me and the end of the semester.  But-- that sounds way better than my life sounded back in September.
And-- tonight my hubby suggested that we should go see the National Christmas Tree (and all it's little tree friends-- apparently there's 50+)... which is pretty exciting, because it reminds me that we do live near DC now.  Why I can't seem to remember this most days- is- well, clearly related to my not being there much.  But this will not last forever.  And-- this will be our first Christmas spent at our DC house and thanks to a fantastic sister-in-law, and great in-laws all around-- I will get to be in Derwood and really enjoy Christmas day.  I am very, very excited about this.

Finally-- tonight Ike got to go to Barnes and Noble and sing with a bunch of other 6year olds.  He's a little performer that's for sure.... And he loves a Christmas song.  As a whole, having him and Max in our world makes everything so much brighter - especially the holidays.

Christmas 2007, just before a little sister arrived
Hope to have a post of some deliciousness again soon-- but in the meantime... enjoy your advent friends! Till next time...
J