Yesterday for the Superbowl, I wanted something out of the ordinary... so I went back to my old favorite, homemade Chinese. I considered homemade dumplings for a while, but in the end passed on that to make something old, and something new.

( Something old: Kung Pao Chicken )

With the overblown failure of an overspicy glazed ham on Christmas, I found myself with an overabundance of leftover and somewhat too spicy ham. I put out a request for soup suggestions to use it in, and got more than a few suggestions for ham and potato soup. A little bit of Google-fu later, I had a printed out recipe. I tweaked it, added a few ( Read more... )

With the chilly weather coming on, I find myself more and more in favor of comfoting, savory soups. This weekend is no exception -- and with a Penzey's Spices quarterly/recipe book in hand, I decided to try a variant on chicken and dumplings.

( Spicy Baked Chicken & Dumplings Soup )

This morning I woke up with a tenacious headache, and with the weather outside grey and gloomy I decided to crack open my old soups cookbook (Maryana Vollstedt's Big Book of Soups & Stews) and find something tasty I hadn't made before. In the end, I settled on

( Reuben Soup )

Last night, as the chill of autumn was starting to set in, I found myself in the mood for something satisfying yet not too difficult to cook up. I tinkered this together off of the foundation of a similar recipe from a soups-n-stews cookbook I bought some time back, and despite the dumplings just turning out OK (I always seem to have trouble ( Read more... )

I'm feeling a bit under the weather, and I have been since yesterday. Today I called in sick to work. Yesterday, though, I gutted it out and went in... but all day I was dragging about and feeling like crap. As the day ended, I found myself thinking fondly of soup... specifically, chicken and dumpling soup. I swung by the grocery store on the ( Read more... )

So, this morning I woke up -- still congested, still running a mild fever, still feeling under the weather. It's circumstances like these which drive one to cook soup -- warm broth filled with nutritious meat and veggies, which hopefully will bolster the immune system sufficiently to kick the snot out of colds and viruses. Looking on my bookshelf ( Read more... )

After having made really good pad thai and meatballs in Paenang curry for friends this past Sunday, I was in the mood to do some culinary experimentation... largely because I'd been reading through my Thai cookbook while waiting for them to get home and got intrigued by some of the soups ( Read more... )

So here's what I made earlier today. (Recipe from the aforementioned Big Book of Soups & Stews, by Maryann Volstedt.)

( Chicken and dumplings, perfect comfort food on a wintry day. )

This recipe definitely needs a little work, in my opinion, but it's certainly not bad by any means. I modified it from the "Cabin Chili with Meat" recipe from Maryana Volestedt's Big Book of Soups and Stews.

( My current attempt at chili. )