Andrew Stew

I'm getting Spring fever, so this will be my last soup recipe till Fall... Lucky for you I saved the best for last!  This is hands down my favorite soup. Ever. This is also Andrew's favorite.  We named it "Andrew Stew" after he ate 3 bowls the first time I ever made it.  He was 5 years old at the time... I'm gonna have to triple the recipe when he's a teenager.  Next to Cafe Rio, this is Andrew's most requested meal.  I hope you'll try it before it gets too warm outside... if you don't, a little part of Andrew's soul will die.  You don't want that on your conscience, do you?

I always double this one... don't worry if it looks like too much, the next day reheat is AMAZING.  Oh, and don't be a wuss with the red pepper... 1/4 teaspoon is perfect!  Yes it's spicy, but my 3 year old eats it without complaining... trust me & don't leave it out :)

Andrew wants you to make this soup.

Andrew Stew (adapted from this recipe)

4 cups chicken broth

5 cups peeled cubed potatoes

2 cooked/shredded chicken breasts

2 cups frozen corn

1/4 cup minced onion

1/2 teaspoon seasoning salt (I use Johnny's)

1/4 teaspoon white pepper

1/4 teaspoon ground red pepper

8 oz cream cheese cubed

Combine broth, potatoes, chicken, corn, onion & spices.  Boil on medium heat until potatoes are tender.  Add cream cheese.  Heat, stirring frequently, until cream cheese melts.  Serve with homemade bread.

Yes, there's a lazy version... this is me we're talking about!  Throw everything (including uncooked chicken breasts... frozen work great!) except cream cheese in the crockpot… cook all day on low.  Last hour of cooking, shred chicken, add softened cream cheese, and heat through.  I use this cheat when I know I've got a busy day... works like a charm!  Just make sure you use a large crock pot if you're doubling it!

Taco Soup aka: Monkey Brains

Hey there!  I don't have time for a really clever blog post today (boldly assuming you find my blog posts really clever).  My house is buried in dust from a weekend of remodeling, and I've gotta clean it... but I do have time to share a quick soup recipe with ya!  This is my quickest, easiest soup recipe.  It's from my good friend Karen Haskell, and yes, it's in the amazing ward cookbook that I've mentioned numerous times... the best cookbook in the world, the one you wish you had, the one that I will probably wind up selling on ebay for thousands of dollars.  That cookbook.

Taco Soup

15 oz can petite diced tomatoes

15 oz can pinto beans

15 oz can kidney beans

15 oz can corn

8 oz can tomato sauce

1 taco seasoning packet

1 cup water

1/2 pound ground beef cooked/drained or 2 chicken breasts cooked/cubed (we prefer chicken)

Combine all ingredients in a crockpot (do NOT drain liquid from cans!) Cook for 4-6 hours on low.  Just recently I got REALLY lazy & threw in two frozen chicken breasts at the beginning... it worked BEAUTIFULLY!!!  I just removed the chicken right before serving, shredded it up & threw it back in.  I will be doing this EVERY time from now on!  Top each serving with sour cream, cheese, and crushed tortilla chips. Serve with cornbread muffins. 

It doesn't get easier than this, and it's super yummy!  We have it on Halloween every year & call it monkey brains.  If that doesn't convince you to try it, I don't know what will.

Cheesy Broccoli Soup & Rolls

Did I promise to post soup recipes once in a while on Mondays?  Looks like once in a while means once a month ;)  In my defense: I was wretchedly ill for most of December.  I was also crazy busy getting everything ready for another awesome year of Primary!  I'm all better now (no longer "sickie" as Mel calls it) and Primary yesterday?  Well, it was awesome!  Mission accomplished!

So, funny story about our cheesy broccoli soup.  It's my teenage Trev's favorite.  It's his requested birthday dinner every year. One year he almost didn't get it.  A huge snowstorm hit our valley.  HUGE.  It was Trev's birthday that day... I had just picked him up from school when the storm started going from bad to worse.  It would've been a good idea just to come home & stay home at that point, but Trev was turning 8, and he didn't want to miss his first day of Cub Scouts.  He was also at this time in his little life TERRIFIED of storms, but he insisted on going.  In one of my less than brilliant parenting moments, I drove through white-out conditions to the church.  Couldn't  see a foot in front of the car... I kept thinking to myself, "This is ridiculous... I should just go back home."  Well... we made it to the church, barely getting into the parking lot because the snow was so deep.  I walked him through the blizzard to the front doors & handed him off to his den leader.  "See you in an hour buddy!"

Nope.  Try three hours :(  When scouts was over, both of the den leader's minivans got stuck in the afore mentioned snowy parking lot.  Really stuck.  They herded all the boys back into the church, and had to wait hours to get rescued!  Finally a couple Dads from the neighborhood were able to get their trucks over to the church.  They picked up the boys one by one & carried them to the trucks (so heroic!).  They drove them home & again carried each boy to their front doors.  I admit to crying when they "delivered" my poor little birthday boy!  Here's where the soup comes in:  Trevor walked through the door, smelled the soup & rolls, smiled, and didn't utter one word of complaint about his harrowing ordeal :)  I'll never forget that day.  By the time Trev finally got home, the wind had stopped, and the snow was falling in huge flakes to the ground. It was a beautiful night, and we were warm inside. 

This amazing recipe is from my friend Kristin Barlow... I've tweaked it a little for my fam & for my lazy self.  What?  I like shortcuts!  Kristin's original recipe in is the ward cookbook.  You know, the best cookbook in the world?  The one you wish you had?  I'd be willing to lend mine to you, or make copies if you so desire.  Holler.

Cheesy Broccoli Soup

1/4 cup butter or margarine (melted)

2 Tbsp dried minced onion

2/3 cup flour

3 (14.5 oz) cans chicken broth

3/4 tsp salt

4-5 cups peeled cubed potatoes

1 (16 oz) bag frozen chopped broccoli

1 lb Velveeta cheese (cubed)

2 cups half & half

Melt butter completely in microwave.  Transfer to a large crock pot.  Add onions, flour & salt.  Stir together until combined.  It will be a little crumbly, that's ok... it all dissolves.  Toss potatoes & broccoli in the pot, and pour chicken broth over everything. Cook all day (6-8 hours on low or 3-4 hours on high).  One hour before serving add the chopped Velveeta.  Stir until it's completely melted, then add the half & half.  Serve with homemade rolls.  Or Trevor will have a fit.  These rolls to be precise:

Dinner Rolls For Bread Machine

 

1 egg slightly beaten + enough warm water to make 1 1/2 Cups

1/4 Cup oil

1/2 Cup sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

4 1/4 Cups flour

3 1/2 teaspoons yeast

Add all ingredients to bread machine and choose dough cycle. When cycle is finished, shape dough into balls, and place on a cookie sheet lined with kitchen parchment.  Let rise until double.  Bake at 350° for 11 minutes.  This recipe is our family favorite!!  Makes about 2 dozen rolls.

Soup. It's What's For Dinner.

I don't have anything particularly clever to blog about today... feeling kinda tired & calorie deprived.  I have a love/hate relationship with the "Hunger Games" fitness challenge I'm currently competing in.  On the hate side: 1420 calories a day & a ton of exercise during the holidays is making me the teensiest bit cranky.  On the love side: This challenge makes me feel good most days.  Fitting into my clothes and recognizing the fact that my bad eating habits could be the death of me, is a good thing. Love/hate.  I refer to it most days as "My Stupid Calorie Challenge." I think the worst part is that my children have turned into the calorie police.  Andrew said to me the other day at Brick Oven Pizza: "Mom, you're getting a lot of calories!" 

Thanks son.

Fall and Winter, or as I like to call them: "Comfort Food Seasons", are my favorite.  I can explain my current crankiness best by describing it thus:  I want to eat four bowls of soup, not one.  Self control is not one of my better qualities :)  I'm working on it.  Stupid calorie challenge.

Monday is soup night at our house during Comfort Food Season.  It's the best night of the week!  I thought I would share some of our most loved recipes with you over the next few months... sound good?  Not every Monday mind you, just when I get two free seconds to take pictures of my food before inhaling it... and another two free seconds (two hours) to blog about it.

Today I want to share "my" recipe for Easy Peasy Chicken Noodle Soup.  I call it "mine" because I've tweaked the original version so much it's silly.  My favorite food.com contributor is MizzNezz.  Her recipes never fail me. Ever. This is her chicken noodle soup recipe, and I want to give her proper credit.  The original recipe is here.  It is the highest rated chicken noodle soup recipe on food.com, and deservedly so.  You really must check out her other stuff as well... she's great :)

All the easy peasy ingredients... yes, I enjoy posing my food.

Easy Peasy Chicken Noodle Soup

2 teaspoons butter

1 cup sliced celery

1/2 cup chopped onion (I use a couple shakes of dried chopped onion)

1 teaspoon thyme

1 teaspoon poultry seasoning

4 (14 oz) cans of chicken broth

2 chicken bouillon cubes

2 cooked chicken breasts cut up

Half a package wide egg noodles (about 6 oz)

Regular Instructions: Saute celery, carrots, and onion in butter for two minutes.  Add thyme, poultry seasoning, chicken broth, and bouillon.  Bring to a boil.  Add chicken and noodles.  Cook on low for 20 minutes.  Serve immediately with warm homemade bread.

Easy Peasy Instructions: Throw almost everything (butter, celery, onion, thyme, poultry seasoning, chicken broth, bouillon, 2 raw chicken breasts, but NOT the noodles) in the crock pot & cook on low all day (4 hours on high).  Remove chicken, chop, put back in pot.  Add egg noodles, and let cook for 15- 20 minutes longer on low.  Do NOT let the noodles cook for too long... you will have mush for dinner instead of yummy delicious soup. Learn from my mistake.  Serve with a loaf of Rhodes Bake & Serve bread that you set out to thaw when you started the soup!  There's no shame in doing that once in a while.

Here are even more shortcuts with the crock pot:  

- Use frozen chicken breasts.  Just throw them right in the pot.  Easy!  

- Chop a TON of celery and carrots the first time you make this soup.  Put a cup of carrots & a cup of celery in a quart size freezer Ziplock.  Freeze for later use.  Throw them in the crock pot frozen.  They cook up just like fresh.  Again, so easy!

No seconds of soup for you.

Now go ahead... let's see if you can eat just one bowl of this heavenly soup & not be cranky.  You're gonna want three more bowls sista... it's THAT good :)  Happy Monday!

Becky For President

A note before we begin:

This post is a satire.

The definition of satire is:

"Wit, irony, or sarcasm used to expose and discredit vice or folly.  A literary work holding up human vices and follies to ridicule or scorn."

In other words, I'm just trying to be funny.

Everyone say it together now:

SATIRE.

Moving on.

Campaign promises... Zzzzzzzzzzzz.  A good seventy-five percent of them are about as exciting to me as a trip down the plumbing aisle at Home Depot.

I wait with baited breath for the day when Obama is finally able to strengthen the International Atomic Energy Agency, and establish IAEA verification procedures that go beyond the additional protocol to strengthen the agency's ability to detect clandestine facilities and actives!

That will be so awesome!

I'm going to throw a party if Romney is elected and has the chance to organize all of our diplomatic and assistance efforts in the greater Middle East under one official with the authority and accountability necessary to to train all our soft power resources thus ensuring that Arab Spring does not fade into a long Winter!

Riveting.

Why don't presidential candidates ever promise stuff like this:

"If I'm elected, I will ensure better regulations on peanut quality control, so that no one ever has to eat the one nasty peanut M&M in a hundred that tastes like death."

That's the kind of candidate I would be.  I've got a little list going of stuff I would change if I became leader of the free world.  Here goes:

- Immediate legislation to make all tin cans pop top.  Seriously, we live in a world with FANTASTIC technology, yet I still have to whip out a can opener with an archaic crank mechanism if I want to open a can of tomatoes.

- It would be against the law to put gooey stickers on ANYTHING.  You know what I'm talking about.  The kind that take fifteen minutes a piece to remove from that set of ten plates you just bought... and there's STILL a stupid gummy residue when you're done.  Arghhhhhh!!!!

- Death penalty for improper use of four-way stops.  At the very least, a severe flogging.

- Dippable (what do you mean that's not a word?!) ketchup thingys (also not a word) in EVERY fast food restaurant.  I eat at Chick-Fil-A for their dippable ketchup alone... OK, and the decaf DC.  And the food.  I'm hungry.

- Speaking of restaurants, Cafe Rio would be required to put in drive up windows.  The times I need Cafe Rio most, are typically the days when I've been pushed to the limits of sanity and look like a zombie from the Thriller video.  Better yet, they would be required to deliver.  Yeah, delivery's good.

- I would demand that BBC have normal television seasons.  No more of this four episodes a year thing they've got going on.  I promise to work closely with the Prime Minister on this one.

What changes would you like to see in the world?  Longer lasting flavor in Bubba-licious bubble gum?  A law that does away with county, state, and country reports in elementary schools?  I'd love to hear your ideas!  Together we can make a difference!

If you write me in for president, I promise to do whatever it takes to make all your wildest dreams come true.  

I'm Becky Halls, and I approved this blog post.

Now, one more time... repeat after me:

SATIRE.

The last time I posted something "political" people rioted in the streets. 

The Book Was Better

There are few things I enjoy more in life than reading a good book.

Maybe eating chocolate while reading a good book... yeah, I enjoy that more.

I love losing myself in a different world... three different worlds at the same time.  This could explain my extreme scatterbrained-ness.  I'm very rarely on our planet earth.  

I want my kids to feel the same way about reading, but that's not always easy.  Reading sometimes feels like a chore for them, something they have to do for school.  

Most parents give this lecture to their kids: "I walked five miles to and from school uphill both ways in the snow."

I give this lecture: "I would give anything to have someone force me to sit down for twenty minutes a day on a comfy couch to read."

Seriously.  I read for ten minutes at lunch, five minutes while I'm waiting for the kids to get out of school, and TMI moment of the day: one minute in the bathroom a bunch of times a day... but that's usually accompanied by someone pounding on the door shouting "Mommmmmm!!!  Can I have an otter pop???".

Anyway... there are a handful of little things I do to keep my kiddos excited about books.  It works for us, I hope it works for you too!

1. We Love The Library

We go to the library a lot. We get comfy there.  The librarians know us by name.  

When we moved to Utah County I discovered that their library system was..... I'll be nice: Less than stellar.  Consequently, I pay an $80 a year non-resident fee to use the Salt Lake County Library System ($5 more per individual card for ride-on kids). It's only a 20 minute drive to the Draper Library, and well worth the $$$.  Online renewals, never waiting more than a few days for popular books, free DVDs, friendly employees, amazing facilities... I could go on all day.

2.  Reading before school

I'm a meanie.  I make my kids get up waaaaaay before school starts.  Showered & ready for breakfast by 7:15.  After breakfast they read and practice piano.  Any extra time leftover, they can play the ipad, computer, legos... whatever.  I have found over the years that if the required reading doesn't get done before school, it doesn't get done at all.  We are just too busy after school... so many other things pulling us this way & that.  Side note: Waking your kids up early, makes them tired enough to zonk out at 8:30. Mommy free time anyone??!

3. Incentives

A few years ago my friend Natalie mentioned that she paid her kids a penny a page for books.  I thought that was about the most brilliant thing I had ever heard.  I started it right away.  My rules for getting a penny a page are this:  It has to be a chapter book at or above their reading level, and it has to be a book they haven't read yet.  My kids LOVE the penny a page reading incentive.  Trev got over $15 for reading the Lord of the Rings trilogy.  More important than that?  He discovered a love for reading at the same time.  I almost got choked up just now...  I don't know if it's because I'm so glad he likes reading, or if I'm just so thrilled it was Lord of the Rings that did it.  You can track their pennies a page however you want... I used to have my kids write their pages on a Post It note, but that got too messy.  I made a spreadsheet, but it was boring.  Today I designed a cute little freebie printable, 'cause I love ya :)  Download it HERE.  (Click "Actions", drop down to "View all sizes", click "Download large 1024 size".  Print!  Easy peasy :)

4.  Movie Night

Let's face it, the book is ALWAYS better...  But, the movies can be fun too. So if there's a movie version of the book my kids are reading, they get a special movie night with me when they finish the book (even if it's a school night)!  Me & Spence just watched Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Askaban last week... it was awesome, and it was special one on one time that we rarely get :)

5. Be a good example

If you want your kiddos to love reading, let them see you read!  Suggest your childhood favorites to them, get excited about book releases & their movies. Show your children by example that reading isn't a chore, it's a privilege :) 

Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey Stuff.

I have something in common with David Tennant (insert girlish squeal here)!!!

Before we go any further: In order to get the most out of this bloggie post, you absolutely must read it in a British accent.  It was written in one, so it won't sound proper at all if you don't.  

I used to watch the old Doctor Who series with my brother Doug when we were teenagers.  Sitting in the basement of our old house watching The Doctor on a TV that didn't even have remote control... dang! (or should I say blimey!) Those are some good memories.  We watched Star Trek re-runs too... but that was mostly to make fun of Captain Kirk.

A while ago Doug told me I needed to watch the new Doctor Who series.  My sis Deb raved about it too.  I put it off forever because I was crazy busy.  

ALL THE WASTED YEARS!!!!!!!

It's official: I'm hooked.  I'm a Whovian.  I'm geekier than I've ever been before. 

- I love Doctors 9, 10, and 11 (emphasis on the 10... more girlish squealing).

- I think Daleks are hilariously evil.  Plunger arms & all.

- Do you think it's too late to re-name my two year old daughter Rose, Martha, Donna, or Amy? Trev, would you mind if I nicknamed you Rory?

- I'm outraged that TARDIS isn't accepted as a real word in "Words With Friends".

- American accents are beginning to sound foreign.

- Forget about pinning home improvement & recipe ideas on Pinterest, I'm all about the geek boards baby.

- I'm frightened to death of weeping angel statues.

Speaking of weeping angel statues, true story:

I watched the episode "Don't Blink" for the first time whilst running on my treadmill.  I was so completely freaked out when the first angel moved, I almost fell off.  If I hadn't grabbed the rail, I would've hit the wall with an unceremonious smack.  As it was, I completed my run with one hand covering my eyes (peeking through only just), with the other hand firmly gripping the rail... I'm not making this up.  Freakiest. Thing. Ever.  Don't say I didn't warn you.  Oh, and whatever you do, don't blink!

So I watched all 6 seasons of Doctor Who (rather quickly... I run 5 days a week) thinking that season 7 was already out. To my horror, I just discovered that season 7 doesn't air till Fall 2012!!!!

What the?!  If I had known that I would've watched them slower... savored them!!! Yeah, whatever...  Boromir said it best:

Told you I was a geek.  I love Lord of The Rings almost as much as Doctor Who.  Which reminds me:  My favorite Doctor Who episode is "The Shakespeare Code" in which Harry Potter is referenced a bunch of times... Freaking brilliant!!!  Here's my Geeked Out board on Pinterest... it's an oddball mix of Potter, Star Wars, LOTR, Doctor Who, Pikachu, and such.  

If you want something fun to watch, something different, something so campy it's golden... look no further.  It's fantastic.  It's brilliant.  It's magnificent.   Seasons 1-6 are streaming on Netflix.  What are you waiting for?  Allonsy!!!