Best Ever Chicken Noodle Soup And Our Watch Dogs

With Bev in Florida, Cindy and me are trying to have leftover soup in the fridge for ready lunches and since the last of our vegetable soup is now gone it was time for another soup. When Cindy made the Creamy Chicken Stew a short while ago, I posted that the broth would be our go-to for future chicken broth dishes and this chicken noodle soup is the first one.  The following recipe is a combination of the chicken stew and my dad’s chicken noodle soup which are similar except for chicken preparation.

Loaded Chili Baked Potato

When I saw Pam’s recipe for Loaded Chili Baked Potato on her “For The Love Of Cooking” blog I thought it would be perfect for our Friday group on a cold winter day.  Rather than duplicate Pam’s recipe here, I’ll just refer you to the link above for the recipe and Pam’s great pics – as always.  We began the meal preparation by making a batch of chili on Friday morning using our normal recipe.

Authentic Mexican Posole

We had pulled pork left from our Loaded BBQ Pork Potato Casserole  and decided to turn it into Posole which we hadn’t made in a long time.  After looking around, I selected the recipe for Authentic Mexican Posole from Food.com because we had most of the ingredients on hand and it used canned chiles.  I changed the instructions quite a bit as I was starting with cooked meat but the original can be found by clicking on the above link.

Best Potato Soup Ala Chef Dennis & Eggs In Purgatory

Sandwiched between a Thursday of 72F and a predicted Saturday of sunny and mid-50’s was a Friday of rain and 42F which seemed perfect for a fire and soup.  Plus, Bev and Pat would be coming home at an unknown time from a few days in Gatlinburg making eat-anytime-soup the ideal meal.

Chicken Pot Pie Soup

We love chicken pot pie and we love soup so when Pam posted the recipe for Chicken Pot Pie Soup on her “For The Love Of Cooking” blog, I knew we had to make it.  We opted to make it on a cold Friday for our card day.  My only changes were using corn starch in place of flour to make it gluten free,  less butter to saute the veggies, and I cooked some of it the day before.  Click on the above link for Pam's original recipe and pics.

Once-In-A-Lifetime, Delicious Vegetable Beef Soup & Pups Ancestry

Be sure to read the verdict below.

Bev loves to have vegetable soup when it’s cold so with temps in the low 40's, it was on the menu for our Friday get together.  When she went to the store, I asked Bev to get a four-pound chuck roast but somehow she ended up with a 1½ lb. London broil (we’re old you know).  Since that was not enough meat for our soup recipe, she went freezer diving and came up with a 2¼ lb. chuck roast that we had marinated some time ago and the only beef broth she found was a quart of 2012 brisket broth.  I did a taste test and it was still fine.  I used the go-to soup recipe that I had developed recently but adjusted for what we had.

Go-To Vegetable Beef Soup and Me and The Pups

The boys and me watching a little Saturday football while the girls are in Florida.  Sometimes it's one between my legs and one on each side.

In my effort to reduce our frozen food inventory, I found a chuck roast and several bags of frozen vegetables and with cold weather and our weekly get together coming up, vegetable soup made it onto the menu.  We normally don’t use a recipe and just dump whatever we have into our vegetable soup but this time I decided to start with a recipe from Cooking Classy, which I doubled to get the one below.  I also adjusted some of the ingredients and added some.

Chili Verde Supper & Breakfast and Top Gun: Maverick

Thanks to be introduced to it by our Colorado friend, Chef Lea Ann (Cooking On The Ranch blog), we made our first batch of delicious Chili Verde eight years ago and I could not find we’ve made it since then and I can’t believe it.  So, it was time to change that and I decided to make a batch for our Friday get-together but first I needed some pulled pork.  Our first batch of verde turned out so well using BBQ pulled pork (rather than oven roasted) I opted to go that way again and just happened to have a pork butt in the freezer.  See previous post.

I made the chili using the same recipe as previously but I used fire roasted tomatoes and chicken broth for this batch.  You can click on the link for the recipe I used so I won’t reproduce it here.

Creamy Crockpot White Chicken Chili

With my girls all gone, only friends Kathy and Joe were available for our Friday get-together and we all have various food restrictions and dislikes so for this meal I chose keto friendly, no gluten white chicken chili for a rainy day.  I think we have always used the chili recipe from local restaurant chain, Calhoun’s, but I opted to try a different recipe this time and I chose the recipe for Creamy Crockpot White Chicken Chili from The Chunky Chef blog.  Since I wanted more than the recipe makes and a heartier soup, I amended the recipe to get the one below but you can click on the above link to visit Amanda’s blog for the original recipe and more pics like this one, loaded with toppings.

Excellent French Onion Soup

Many years ago, I used a recipe for French Onion Soup that cooked the onions in the oven for hours and it made a delicious soup.  When we wanted the soup again recently, I couldn’t find the recipe (I must have made it pre-blog) so I used another one and it wasn’t very good.  After a warm spell, a cold front came through and it was once again soup weather, so I went on line searching in earnest for the recipe and I found it.  The recipe is titled “French Onion Soup: The Cook’s Illustrated Way”  and it is shown below.  I followed the soup recipe as written but deviated for the crouton.

Cowboy Chili

After a very warm December, January has been below average cold and all things soup are finding their way onto our menu.  On this particular day with a high temp of 33F, it seemed like a perfect day to try Chef Lea Ann’s Cowboy Chili from her “Cooking On The Ranch” blog.  Since I made several recipe revisions, you can click the above link for Lea Ann’s original plus more photos like this.

Egg Drop Soup

Rather than canned dog food, we mix the dry food with cooked chicken for our pups and, as a result, we make a lot of good chicken broth and Bev decided she wanted to turn some into egg drop soup.  I went online and found a recipe from The Woks Of Life that sounded easy and good.  I followed the recipe as written except as noted and I increased it by 50% to match our amount of chicken broth. You can click on the above link for the original recipe and more pics like this.

Beef Stew For A Crowd

With Bev coming home on Saturday and friends Joe and Kathy coming on Friday, I wanted enough food on hand for several days without cooking.  I wanted to use on-hand beef so I found one skirt and two flank steaks in the freezer totaling five pounds.  So, I scaled up a recipe that we like from Taste Of Home to get the following.  Since my meat was thinner than a roast, I cooked it differently than the original recipe.

Green Tomato and Country Ham Soup

We’ve made and posted about this soup previously, but Bev wanted to make it a little differently this time so I updated our recipe to reflect that.

Bean With Bacon Soup

Based upon reading about the healthy Mediterranean diet in the past, we continue to try to eat plenty of beans so when I saw the recipe forSlow Simmered Bean with Bacon Soup on Pam’s For The Love Of Cooking blog, I knew it needed to be tried.  I followed the recipe as written and shown below, but you can visit her blog for some of her always good pics.

Baked Haddock, Salmon Taste Test, and Awesome Chowder

My girls are now on their annual junket to Marco Island and once again I am animal sitting for two weeks – I would have flown down for one week had it not been for Covid-19 concerns.  While they are gone, I’ve decided to try out some different fish dishes beginning with one I know Bev is not particularly fond of – baked haddock.  I rarely see haddock in the local Food City and when I did, I had to buy a few filets and try to replicate the delicious baked fish dishes I’ve eaten in New England.  

The first one I tried was Crispy Baked Haddock from Julie on her Table For Two blog  and I decided to make one per the recipe and another with added shredded cheddar.  I liked them both but the topping was a little too powerful for my thin fish filets.

White Chicken Chile

We’ve made this recipe several times and I’ve previously blogged about it but after this batch we decided to make some changes to the recipe to make it more hearty by adding more chicken and more & different beans.  Since my blog is my main recipe file, I wanted to post this.

Vegetable Soup For A Dreary Day

Every now and then, Bev needs a vegetable soup fix and with the many cool, rainy days we’ve been having, she decided the day had arrived.  We had a full compliment of veggies on hand plus several packages of various beef cuts that needed to be used from the freezer.

She pressure cooked the meat to get it tender enough to remove from the bones then shredded and diced it for the soup.  Along with the meat, broth, and veggies, our basic recipe includes canned tomatoes, garlic, thyme, bay leaves, and S&P.

Tomato Soup & Grilled Cheese Sandwiches

Cindy had bought a loaf of jalapeno cheddar bread at the Greenback Farmers Market this week and Bev decided she wanted to use it for grilled cheese sandwiches to go with the homemade tomato soup she wanted to make.  I’d tried a couple of soup recipes from the web and they all contained significant chicken broth which left the soup tasting like tomato flavored chicken broth to me – no offense intended for those of you who make it this way. 

So I went in search of a recipe without the broth and found one from The Pioneer Woman that looked like what I was looking for.  Her recipe uses both tomatoes and juice and makes a big batch so I scaled it back for the 28 oz can of tomatoes we wanted to use to get the one below – click on the link to check out her site for the original recipe and a video.

Greek Lentil Soup (Fakes Soupa)

Continuing with my weight-loss, low-carb, Blue Zone, and around-the-world meals, I made up a pot of Greek Lentil Soup using the recipe from Sarah and Tim on their Curious Cuisiniere blog as it seemed to have the right stuff in it.  Since I had 2 cups of lentils, I adjusted their recipe to get the one below with a couple of other revisions.  Check out their blog for the original recipe and more shots like this.