Sample at the grocery store are awesome. Couple weeks ago at the 27th and Pine Lake Super Saver they were giving out samples of Cheesy Chicken Tortilla Soup from Taste Traditions of Omaha. It was pretty good.

We have been trying out a couple new recipes for soup and I want to keep trying more. I was planning on making my own version. Looked cheesy tortilla soup recipes and they varied a bunch. Theresa said we should just try the taste traditions one first and see if it would be something she would like and get ideas to make our own version. We checked Russ’s and they carried it for around $7.

It comes in a boil in bag. I split it in half and sucky bagged them. Prep time was about 10 minutes and we poured right from the bag. I enjoyed it, but Theresa found it a bit odd and nailed it when she said it was like liquid chicken tacos. They have a good range of offerings and we look forward to trying others.

I have found a new favorite food blog called Food Wishes. John makes some amazing meals and his videos are top notch. I have been drooling over his vids for a while and wanted to try a simple one first. Being cold outside we turn to winter meals and nothing beats a thick potato soup. I have my own potato soup method, but it is time consuming and makes too much. I wanted a fast soup and we shot for just two bowls worth. It was amazing.

Food Wishes – Ham and potato soup recipe with video.

It was simple and fast. I really cooked down the onion, celery, and carrots because Theresa does not care for them in the soup. I wanted them to pretty much dissolve, and they did. I was not following the recipe exactly since we only wanted a small batch. It turned out so good that I am going to continue tweaking the recipe.

We roast chickens often and normally make chicken noodle soup, but I thought a soup with rice in it might be good. Used the pressure cooker to make a stock from the chicken leavings with onion, carrots, celery, garlic, peppercorns, bay leafs, and water. An hour cooking made it very flavorful. Made the rice with canned chicken broth and it turned out pretty decent. The rice just sinks to the bottom though.

^ Before pressure cooking ^ Did not get an after, but it pretty much obliterates everything. Strain, rince to get all the god stuff, and remove the fat with a separator.

I have picked up a baking stone and made my third batch of dough. For tonight I made some dinner rolls and they were really good, but a bit small. I did some other cool stuff with the dough and will let you know after lunch Monday if it all works out.

Mixed in some black pepper, garlic salt, and parsley when I made the noodles. Was darn good.

So we went to best buy and decided we should pick up something for dinner while we were out. Got to the supermarket and still had no clue what to make. Theresa suggested potato soup and it sounded like a cool thing to make. We have made potato and bacon soup a couple times. Our attempts have been hit and miss. Could not find a smoked ham hock so I decided to pick up some smoked turkey legs. Figured I would try and tweak this one so I put some celery, garlic, onion, peppercorns, bay leaf, and a piece of bacon in the pressure cooker. The broth was intensely flavored.

Peeled and diced these potatoes. boiled for a long time with some milk added to the broth. Dug them out and blended them up.

Some bacon. Two kinds

It was still really flavorful and kind of salty. Asked Theresa if I should throw some corn in there and some cheese. She thought that sounded awesome so in they went.

More potato cubes and slowly cooked it till they were ready. It was the best soup I have ever made. So packed with flavor. Oh man. Going to try that again and again.

We got a pressure cooker as a gift and had no clue what to do with it, but now we love the thing. Took about an hour to make a killer chicken noodle soup.

First we cooked all the leavings from a roasted chicken for 30 minutes to get a good broth. The carcass, skin, and meat leavings turned into a spent glop.

used a separator to get the fat off

celery and carrots are done separately just in case. I let the pressure build and then release after 1 minute. Soft as heck.

did not pressure cook the noodles, just boiled. Add back the veg and chicken chunks and serve.

We wanted to taste the penzeys chili 3000 so did not add chili beans, just went straight up kidney beans, cut up chuck, chicken, petite diced and crushed tomatoes.
Usually we add chili powered, some garlic, and cumin. The Penzeys is loaded up with all sorts of other stuff.

It says to add 1 tablespoon to each quart. Well I am not using the metric system so we put in 1.5 tblspns and it was not enough. I added more to be about 2 tblspns. Wife tasted it and said it was missing something. So we added some garlic powder.

The flavor was really good because it had more spices than what we normally use. Just a good balance of everything. Pretty impressed. We will add more of the spices though.

So here is the kicker. I saw that Theresa did not eat most of the beans in her bowl. All that was left was a pile of beans when she was done. I asked her why and she said she does not really like them, but if one makes it in her she does not mind. She thought I liked them. So when I said I would prefer they not be in there we easily have become a no bean in our chili household.

Mmmmm… stew. Perfect cool weather food. We make it in a few different ways. (stew 1 / stew 2)

A butter and flour roux
Swanson and campbells beef broth
Cheap beef cubed
bay leaf, pepper, misty’s seasoning, pepper, salt, cayenne
carrots
potatoes

We were going for a mega batch so I was only able to pressure cook the meat and we just boiled the potatoes and carrots. Got8 servings and Theresa froze 6 of them for lunches.

after our bowls it filled two of these pans.

We had a hankering for some potato soup again and figured we would skip the whole pork hock and just have a bacony potato soup. Well I forgot about the smokehouse in Super Saver and well they had hocks.

I figured I would kick the stock up a bit with some veg. So busted out the usual stuff and threw all the stuff in the pressure cooker with some of the chicken stock we made from our last roast chicken. Cooked for an hour and took out all the solids after a good squeezing. Used some cheese cloth to get the chunky bits out and separated the fat off. What was left was a really dark brown liquid which scared Theresa. It was like concentrated pork and veg evil. The white enamel and flash make it look a bit light, but trust me it was powerful. We decided to melt the other bag of chicken stock in there and split it up into two batches of soup worth.

The potato soup was pretty good, but I goofed while cooking it and the milk curdled, which was a bummer (keep an eye on the temp I learned once again.)

Yup That is an onion in the bag. I think I have finally overcome my fear of onions.

I asked here and over on the forum. My main question was how will I thicken it. It simmered for 7 hours and thickened up just fine on its own. It was rather pork flavored and made a fine meal.

The night before Theresa said “pressure cook that hock”, which was an excellent idea. The hock was from Hollenbeck Farms and really well smoked. I found the chicken broth can to be rather comical, it was huge. One hour and the hock gave up its goodness.

I picked apart the leavings of the hock. Theresa really did not want any of that meat in the soup, But I thought it would of been awesome. Used my fat separator to get the fat off and threw it in the fridge.

Ran into a friend at Ideal and she had been following the post over on the forum and suggested using a mix of taters. So I picked up some gold taters. Loaded up the pot with the porkified chicken stock, a pint of half and half, one russet and a gold potato sliced thin and got it simmering.

About an hour later I smooshed the taters up good by running them through my fine mesh strainer. Added some bacon ans simmered for hours. Towards the end I added a bit of table cream and more taters.

The dairy thickened up good, the taters added their thickening power as well. It was very strongly flavored since I used uber bacon and the hock. It was awesome.