family photo friday: punch and appetizers

1968. From the far left, clockwise: uncle John, mum, uncle Bob, mum's cousin Sue. My mum is 15.

It's almost that time of year again. The time of year when you consider including some velvet in your wardrobe. When you eat way too much delicious food off of makeshift surfaces (e.g. your lap or a folding card table). When you can stop stressing about daily things and worry more about what presents you're going to give to friends and family, what to wear to that christmas party, and which new cookie recipe to try. The countdown is on, for me at least. December 16th is the day I officially welcome the holidays into my life. I CANNOT WAIT!

tomato soup.

Tomato soup. A delicious hearty and healthy meal, appreciated even more so on cold November days. I canned a lot of whole tomatoes in August, but hadn't used a single jar until this weekend. I feel like tomato season is officially good and done now that I've ripped up the plants from the garden. Permission to open the preserves granted!

I wanted a basic recipe, so I looked at the above one from the Joy of Cooking, and this one from Martha. Then I added on from there. 

There's something fantastic about the smell of butter and onions cooking together. Even if onions consistently make me cry every time I chop them up. It's worth it.

This photo has nothing to do with tomato soup, but I just wanted to point out my cute tiny cactus. I love cacti, they're impossible to kill. And Sookie doesn't try to eat them. You can also see the adorable Le Creuset honey pot that Amanda gave us.

Et voila! Tomato soup.

I love making soup because I find that as long as you start with some butter, onions, and garlic, you can do almost anything else and get delicious results.

This particular soup contained:

a big 1L jar of canned whole tomatoes
1 big yellow onion
2 cloves of garlic 
5 tbsp of butter (why not?)


I pureed the onions and garlic after I'd softened them in the butter for 20 minutes, and pureed the tomatoes before adding them to the pot. Then I threw in:


4 cups of vegetable stock
about 1/2 cup quinoa
about 1/2 cup barley 
diced carrots
some paprika
oregano
salt and pepper
and chopped basil and spinach at the last minute.


And brought it all to a boil, then let it simmer for about 20 minutes with the lid half on.

Delish. Best served with a crusty piece of bread spread with goat cheese and topped with some chutney. The smell of this soup was much appreciated when I warmed it up for lunch at school the next day.

cheese louise.

Sampling cheese: one of my new favourite wedding related activities.

a loose recipe for wontons, as taught by Erick.

Erick came home from work today and decided that he wanted to make wontons. We had some Black Walnut Lane ground beef in the freezer, so we used that instead of pork. And in addition to the usual ginger and green onions, we decided to use some produce from the garden. Like these radishes.



And this chard!




Mush some beef, fresh grated ginger, soy sauce, sesame oil, green onions, radishes, and chard together.



Then comes the trickier party: making the actual wonton. Step 1: take a small amount of the meat and place it in the middle of a wrapper. Wet two perpindicular edges of the wrapper with a finger that's been dipped in a bowl of water.



Fold the wrapper sort of diagonally...



...so that it looks like this.



Then magically wrap it around your finger.



Et voila! Wontons galore.



Once you have a whole bunch, toss them (gently) in a pot of boiling water. This is the last picture I took because I was STARVING! Sorry.

After they've cooked for a little while and look sort of wrinkly, open one up to check that the meat is cooked. Then remove them from the water and add them to a pot of simmering stock (vegetable or chicken) that has some soy sauce, sesame oil, and any sort of leafy green added to it (we used lettuce from the garden). Consume as is, or do what I did and add some garlic chili sauce and a tsp of peanut butter. Yum!

butternut squash risotto. yummo.

I feel like I'm lacking in super interesting things to post about right now. So I'll post about food. Erick and I have been in a food rut lately, making the same few things night after night. We have officially overdosed on soup. Specifically squash or potato based soups. We have a surplus of squash/potatoes/root vegetables from our CSA. No more soup! So yesterday I made this recipe for butternut squash risotto that my mum sent me. Except I added imported asparagus (forgive me, for I have sinned). And roasted all the veg together. There are only two pictures because the step that involved making the risotto also called for me to stir it constantly.

It was so good. So click on the link and go make some.

chicken pot pie overload

Erick has been hinting that I should make more of the chicken pot pie that we had back in February. It was delicious, if I do say so myself. So I made some today (as well as some chocolate chip cookies). It was nice and sunny in the kitchen, so the chicken pot pie making process was documented. I used Martha's recipe, but altered it a bit. Hers had mushrooms, but I don't know how I feel about that...so celery took its place.

Chicken Pot Pie

frozen puff pastry (I s'pose you could make it yourself, but no.)

5 tbsp flour

5 tbsp unsalted butter

2 potatoes, peeled and cut into 1'' pieces (though if you're going to freeze the pies I've read that its not a good idea to include potatoes)

4 carrots, peeled and cut into 1'' pieces

3 stalks of celery, cut into 1'' pieces

1 onion, chopped up

1/3 cup brandy (optional)

2 cups of chicken stock

1 cup of milk

2 cooked chicken breasts (approx), shredded

1 cup of frozen peas

3 tbsp coarse salt

1 tsbp ground pepper

2 tsp dried thyme leaves

1 egg + 1 tsp water, mixed together

So, for the chicken, you cook it however you want I suppose. We often have frozen chicken breasts in the freezer, and I found that if you poach the breasts, from frozen, in vegetable broth for 45 minutes, sorta like this, it works great and is easy. And you can use the broth for the pies.

Anyhoo, shred the chicken once its cooked, set the stock aside. Chop all the veggies. Get a large-ish pot and melt the butter in it over med-high heat. Add all the veggies and cook for 10-12 minutes, until the carrots and potatoes are tender. Add brandy and cook for 30 seconds. Add flour and cook for 1 minute, stirring. Pour in chicken stock and milk and stir constantly, bring to simmer, and continue stirring until thick. Stir in chicken, thyme, salt and pepper. Transfer to casserole dish/pie tins/whatever you want to cook the pies in. Cut pastry to fit the containers. Put on top of each pie, seal along the edge of the dish. Cut a hole in the top of each pie, then brush with egg/1 tsbp water mixture.

Place in 425 F oven. Bake for 10 minutes, then loosely cover with aluminum foil and bake for another 25 minutes. If the top isn't as toasty brown as you'd like it, turn the oven on broil for a bit, and carefully watch it until it looks like you want it to. Then....eat!!!

You can also freeze the pies. Freeze them uncooked, and when you want to eat them, just bake them as you normally would, perhaps just for a little longer.

Enjoy!