Beef Soup

I love cooking, and I have promised to post some of my recipes.

This is something my mama used to make us every winter. I love it so much.

Ingredients

• 2 onions
• 2 gloves of garlic
• 5 stalks of celery
• 4 carrots
• 4 parsnips
• 4 potatoes (peeled)
• 1 pound of stewing beef, or any type of beef
• 8 cups of beef broth
• salt and pepper
• 1 tsp parsley
• 1 tsp orageno
• 1 tsp basil
• 1 tsp thyme
• 1 tsp rosemary
• 1 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
• 3 bay leaves

This recipe serves about 12, which works for me because I live with four other people. Make some adjustments if needed.

I cook this in my crock pot, and I’m able to cook everything inside the pot of the crock pot. If anything you might need to use another pot to cook everything in.

Directions

1. Peel and wash the carrots, parsnips, and potatoes.
2. Next slice them into smaller pieces.
3. Wash and slice celery, onions, and garlic.
4. Cut the beef into smaller pieces.
5. Heat up the crock pot, or cooking pot on medium-heat. When hot enough, begin browning the beef. Add a bit of salt and pepper
6. When it’s no longer pink, add the onions, and garlic
7. Let that cook for five minutes.
8. Add celery and let that cook for another three minutes.
9. Add carrots, parsnips, and potatoes, let that cook for five minutes.
10. Add the spices, and Worcestershire sauce.
11. I actually use 4 beef bouillons, and eight cups of water. Although I add the water first, and let it get hot, before adding the cubes.
12. Give it a taste test, and sure you are satisfied.
13. Add in your bay leaves.
14. I would recommend that you let it cook on low for at least six hours, you can even do eight, or ten hours, if you have the time. Although if you are pressed for time, you can cook on high for four hours.
15. Once done, remove bay leaves, and serve immediately!

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Chicken Noodle Soup

My roommate, who is my boyfriend’s friend asked me to make us chicken noodle soup, because he loves when I make it. And who doesn’t love chicken noodle soup?! My ingredients make about 10 servings, so you can increase or decrease your ingredients.

Ingredients

3 chicken breasts (or more depending on how many people there are), although you can make this with any type of chicken (thighs, leftover rotisserie chicken)

2 onions

6 carrots

6 potatoes

4 stalks of celery

Garlic

Olive oil

Salt and pepper

1 tsp Oregano

Basil leaves

Bay leaves

1 tsp Parsley

Chicken bouillon cubes and water or chicken broth

Rotini pasta noodles

Ingredients are ready to go!

Directions

1. Peel the carrots and potatoes
2. Wash and cut them. I cut my potatoes in eighths, and my Grandma taught me to slice carrots on angle, so the sugars stay in tact.
3. Thoroughly rinse your celery, and begin chopping into small pieces.
4. Begin dicing the onions. My tip is after you remove the outer skin, I like to run it under cold water before slicing it. I feel like that prevents your eyes from watering.
5. After that I begin cutting my chicken, although others may have their own methods of slicing and cooking the chicken.
6. I begin heating up my crock pot. When heated, I add olive oil and wait a few minutes to add the chicken. Once the oil is hot enough, I place the chicken in my crock pot. I then season it with salt and pepper.
7. When it is no longer pink, I add the onions and garlic.
8. Once the onions and garlic become fragrant, I add the celery. Be sure to move everything around after you added a new ingredient.
9. I begin adding in all of my spices (except for the bay leaves).
10. I add the potatoes and carrots, and let that cook for a few minutes
11. Add in the water. I use six cubes of chicken bouillon, so I have to add 12 cups of water. Once the water is boiling, I add the cubes.
12. Once the cubes dissolved, I give everything a final stir, before I add a handful of bay leaves.
13. I program my crock pot on low for eight hours (or you can even set it on low for five hours, if you are pressed for time), or on high for four hours.
14. After it has cooked for its programmed time, I add about 2 cups of noodles. I do my final taste test, to ensure the broth is just perfect. Now is the perfect time to make any adjustments. If you added too much salt, you can add a few drops of lemon juice, or a couple of squeezes of a lemon in the soup. Or if you feel like there isn’t enough spices, feel free to add more. The acidity of the lemon removes the salty taste. Cook on high for 30 minutes.
15. After the 30 minutes are up, it is ready to go.
16. Discard the bay leaves.
17. Serve with some dinner rolls or crackers, if desired.

Cooking up the chicken, celery, onions and garlic.

Carrots, potatoes and spices are added! Picture before the broth is prepped.

The final product after our first serving.

My scrumptious bowl of soup!

Ratatouille

Hi again! Today, my boyfriend and I made ratatouille. It is such a delicious meal. It is all vegetables so it’s also healthy for you as well.

Ratatouille is a stew that originated from Nice, France, and it is the perfect summer dish.

We normally make this in the oven, but today we made it in our crock pot. I will provide the instructions if you don’t have a crock pot below.

Ingredients

1 medium eggplant

2 zucchini

3 stalks of celery

3 bell peppers (yellow, orange and red), although you could add a green pepper if you like, but this is what I had on hand, at the time.

1 tomato

2 onions

Garlic

Pasta sauce, or diced tomatoes, your preference

Basil

Orageno

Parsley

Salt and pepper

Directions

1. Wash all of your vegetables.
2. Start chopping all of the vegetables.
3. My crock pot allows me to fry up my ingredients before I begin to slow cook my food. So I began to preheat my crock pot. If you don’t have a crock pot, a frying pan works fine, too.
4. Once preheated, I added the oil and wait for it to heat up, before I added the onions and celery.
5. Next, I began frying up the onions, once fragment, I added the garlic and celery.
6. Add about a teaspoon of each spice (basil, parsley, oregano, salt and pepper).
7. Once evenly coated, I add the eggplant, and allow that to fry up a bit.
8. After that I added the sauce and tomatoes or you can substitute for just diced tomato.
9. Finally I added the bell peppers.

Since I bought a huge eggplant, my boyfriend sliced them in quarters.

I diced the bell peppers.

My boyfriend sliced the tomatoes since they would shrink when they are cooking.

I thinly sliced up the zucchinis in slices.

My boyfriend diced up two onions.

I forgot to take a photo of the chopped up celery, but at least it is in this photo. The finished touches of dinner.

The crock pot settings I used are Brown to 15 minutes on low temperature. This is what I used to heat up the vegetables.

In here I added the olive oil, onions, garlic, celery, spices, eggplant, and the zucchinis. In that exact order.

This is what it looked like after adding the sauce, tomatoes and bell peppers.

Cover it for four hours on high or six hours on low.

The finished touch!

Bon appetite!

If you don’t have a crock pot, it’s a very similar process. Begin by preheating the oven to 350 degrees. You still cook your onions, garlic and celery in the frying pan. You can even heat up your sauce with the onions if you like. In a oven safe tray, coat the bottom of it with olive oil and a little sauce (enough to just cover the bottom of the tray). You can also get decorative about how you place each vegetable in the tray., totally up to you. I’ve always done a pattern. I would place it on the outside of the tray, and work my to the centre of the tray. Top off with the remaining sauce or diced tomatoes. Cover the dish with aluminium foil and cook for 45 minutes. Or you can cook it for 35 minutes, uncover and shred cheese on top and broil for 10 minutes, if desired.

Some recipes allow you to cook this in frying pan, if you prefer that instead. What I love about this recipe is the many options you can cook this dish. And you can add many different vegetables. Feel free to add your own pizzazz to this. It’s one of those dishes where you can express your creativity. It’s also a good dish to use up your vegetables if they are about to go bad.

It’s a tasty vegetarian dish, too or even one to have on Meatless Mondays.

I love having a baguette or some dinner rolls with this dish.

Vegetable Enchiladas

My boyfriend and his family and I made this dish for dinner.

We fried the onions with the bell peppers and then set that aside. Next we used another frying pan to boil tomato soup with vegetable stock, cumin, garlic powder, onion powder, salt and pepper.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

Then whilst that is boiling we put the onions and bell peppers in a tortillas with shredded cheese. Rolled it up and dip it in the sauce and then added more cheese on top.

And then place in the oven for 15-20 minutes. It was delicious.

Spaghetti Noodles With Bell Peppers

Earlier for dinner I made spaghetti noodles with bell peppers.

I wasn’t able to write down the recipe because I did by taste.

First you cook the spaghetti with water and a bit of salt. I cooked my noodles longer than I usually would with pasta.

You can use which ever vegetables you wish (peas, carrots, broccoli, mushrooms, bell peppers etc.,). I only had bell peppers on hand since I didn’t plan this in advance. I sliced that up into thin slices. Then I fried them in olive oil.

For the sauce I used hoisin sauce, teriyaki sauce, soy sauce, balsamic vinaigrette and grated ginger as well as garlic. I tasted it as I went and thought of what would make it taste awesome. I peeled the ginger before grating. Use your discretion. Place ingredients in a medium sized bowl and whisk.

Once the noodles are done, drain and then add them to the wok to fry. After five minutes add the sauce and let it dry for another five minutes.

Serve immediately. You may even grate some ginger on top.

My favourite part was eatingt this with my sister.

 

Garlic Parmesan Potato Wedges

Last night for dinner, my boyfriend and I made this. We chopped the potatoes after we washed them into quarters whilst the oven was preheating at 375 degrees.

Afterwards we grabbed our spices (basil and salt) and placed them in a bowl. We didn’t have oil so we melted galic butter (but normal butter would work fine). And then we drizzled it on the potatoes and then added our spices on top.

Then we placed them onto a greased tray (we used butter). We placed them on the skin side down.

We cooked them for 27 minutes but they needed more time so we cooked them for another three.

Garlic Parmesan Chicken Bites

My boyfriend and I had these chicken bites coated with Olive oil, Parmesan cheese and garlic. It was delicious.

Spaghetti

Earlier today my mama and I made dinner together. We made spaghetti with hamburger meat, celery, garlic and spices.

We also added bread with melted cheese since it is National Cheese Day (well the 20th).

It was delicious!

Chicken Noodle Soup

Last night I made myself and my boyfriend’s family soup. Everyone loved it. It wasn’t homemade but it was still delicious.

It comes with noodles and chicken broth so I added garlic, oregano, salt and pepper.

Garlic Chicken Noodle Soup

Since I’ve been sick I have been adding more soups into my day as well as teas.

My boyfriend made it for me. I chopped the garlic and I found the oregano leaves and salt and pepper.

This soup contained noodles, chicken, carrots and onions.

It tasted even better than the day before I had soup because my boyfriend made it for me.