A FRIDGE FULL OF FOOD...

Slow Cooker Reuben Chowder: Corned Beef, Potatoes, & Cabbage

 

My name is Glenna and I'm a huge Reuben addict.  Love the combo of corned beef and saurkraut. There's just something deliciously sweet, salty, crunchy, cheesy wonderful about it!  Imagine my pleasure when I accidentally stumbled on a recipe for reuben chowder...and then Googled for more recipes...and then took all the things I liked out of each one and made my own--in the slow cooker!

Heaven...I'm in heaven....

Creamy Vegetable Soup for the Crock-pot/Slow Cooker

 I love soup. I particularly love cream soups, although I often feel guilty for eating them.  There's something ultimately wintery and comforting about soups with creamy heartiness that feels so good and yet so decadent.  But.  Using a trick I learned from a Pinterest recfpe for creamy chicken chili, creaminess doesn't have to equal loads of cream, flour, and butter. It's amazing what cream cheese can do in a slow cooker to transform a simple vegetable woup into a creamy feast on a cold winter's day.

Creamy Crock-pot/Slow Cooker Vegetable Soup

Recipe by Glenna Anderson Muse

Ingredients:

• 4 medium Yukon Gold (or russets or red-skinned) potatoes
• 1 cup green beans
• 1 cup carrots, julienned
• I cup celery diced
• 1 mdium onion, diced
• 1 red or green sweet pepper, cut into strips
• 1 cup broccoli florets
• 1 14.5 oz can Kidney, Pinto, or Navy Beans
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• 1 15.5 oz can chicken broth
• 8 oz pkg light cream cheese
• 2 tsp dried thyme
• 1 tsp dried basil
• 1 tsp dried oregano
• 1 tsp paprika
• 2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp black pepper
• 1 tsp red pepper flakes

Directions:

In heavy-bottomed skillet over mdium heat, saute garlic and onion in olive oil.  Add celery and pepper and saute for 3-3 minutes.  Add all  to crockpot along with rest of vegetables, beans, and spices.  Pour over chicken broth and lay cream cheese on top.  Cook on high for 2 hours and hten turn to low for 6-8 hours. Stir to mix cream cheese.

Makes 10 cups.

Nutrition per 1 cup serving:  Calories:    167;   Protein:    6.3;    Carbs:    16;    Fat:     6;       Fiber:     4.2;    Weight Watchers Points:      3

 

 

Good & Good For You: Ground Beef, Potato, & Veggie Chowder

 

There's something about cold, rainy nights that demand soup, isn't there?  Something warm and comforting on the inside to combat the dreariness of the outside.  This soup started out as a simple potato and milk soup but then Hubby Gene said "Can you put hamburger in it?" I thought "Why not?"  I knew I'd put lots of onion and celery in it, but on the heels of the ground beef addition, I also chopped fresh parsley, sweet red and green pepper, carrots, and fresh mushrooms so that our Yukon Gold simple potato soup became a very hearty and tasty ground beef, potato, and tons of veggies chowder, so yummy it's a pleasure to eat leftovers the rest of the weekend. 

 

 

Slow Cooker Creamy Chicken Chili over Rice

From my Pinterest board to yours....

Found this recipe from Rita's Recipes on Pinterest and it looked like the perfect no work Crockpot/slow cooker recipe for dinner tonight, on this cold and dreary rainy day in the Ozarks.  It was! 

It's  a little different style from most of the dishes I make but Gene's always game and always honest.  Not rude, but honest. If he doesn't like something, like the stuffing I made the other day, he'll be honest and and reply to my "Did you like it?" with a simple and direct "No, I did not. But thank you for making dinner tonight."  The reason why I make a point of telling that is that I was curious to see how he'd react to this new recipe.  He chose to heat up leftover mashed potatoes instead of spooning it over rice, but he cleaned his two chicken breast bowl like a big boy begging to get dessert.  He even said about halfway in, with a full mouth no less, "This is surprisingly tasty!"  (I think he assumed that creamy would mean boring but it's not)   Lots of flavor and perfect comfort food.

I made a few changes to the recipe, mainly spicing from my spice rack since I don't keep packets of ranch dressing mix on hand, more chicken for my meat-eater hubby, and I used chickpeas instead of kidney beans. It was delicious. I think any type of bean would work well in this dish.

Thank you to Rita for blogging this dish (Gene thanks you too).

Folks Who Use My Recipes: No Work Crockpot/ Slow Cooker Chili

My sister, Suzanne, posted this photo to Facebook tonight after posting this morning that she'd come home from a great night's work and decided it was chilly enough for...well...chili!

Yummy.  My recipe, the result of an experiement several years ago, makes a chili with a texture where the meat and beans become very harmonious.  It sounds like an odd thing but by putting the extra lean ground beef difectly into the pot instead of browning it and addit last, the resulting texture is one that even people like me who aren't huge meat texture fans can love.

Excuse me, I have to make a trip across town to see if there are leftovers.

Good & Good For You: Creamy Tomato Soup

 

 After such a long hot summer, fall is a welcome relief!  With fall, come the cravings for great fall foods:  pumpkin and apple dishes, warm chewy breads, and thick soups.  Two of my favorites are leftover from grade school:  beef vegetable soup with peanut butter sandwiches and creamy tomato soup with grilled American cheese sandwiches. 

Campbell's or Progresso?  I could do that but for just a little bit more time I can have creamy tomato soup from my  pantry that still has tomato-y goodness but with a much more complex herby fresh taste I yearn for as an adult. 

 

Welcome Fall: Pumpkin and Roasted Red Pepper Soup

  I woke up this morning to a chilly house with open windows and a definite fall breeze wafting through the air and guess what I said?  "Yipeeeeee! It's finally fall!", which just happens to be my very very favorite season of the year.  I love the crispness, the colors of the "dead or dying leaves" as a friend calls them for the  tourists who travel to see the fall colors, the smell of wood fires, wearing hoodies, and even the slight decay in the air.  Spring, Summer, and Winter are all great, but Fall is, by far, the best time of the year.

And the cooking? Ahhhhh, the cooking:  Crockpot Chili, pumpkin fudge, Apple Pie in Finnish Cream Pastry, Baked Acorn Squash with Apple Butter, cranberry bread-- all the good stuff, Baby.  Here's to pumpkin-flavored EVERYTHING!

This Pumpkin & Roasted Red Pepper Soup is one I found on Jackie Mills' blog:  Delcious Diabetes Cooking.  Great soup recipe and fabulous blog. Stop by when you get a chance. Diuabetic or not, you'll find lots of Good & Good For You recipes to make throughout the year.

 

 

 

 

 

Taste of the Ozarks: Beans & Greens

Even I will admit that maybe that doesn't look all that delcious, but I swear on a stack of Bibles, it's delicious.  Beans & Greens has long been a down-home dish throughout most of the southern U.S. and we're no exception.  We love our "brown" (pinto for the uninitiated) beans and cornbread, which btw, form a complete protein. Couple that with kale, collards, or spinach, and you're really looking at a protein/vitamin powerhouse. To be completely honest, you see the green but you don't really taste it.  Until I told him, Gene thought I'd just gone really nuts with the parsley.

This is my version using country sausage with lots of sage, collard greens, and pinto beans.  It's an easy-peasy workday recipe where you throw everything from the pantry/freezer into the crock-pot and either go to work, or like me, go to sleep. Dinner is ready when you are.  Add crackers or cornbread or dinner rolls and you've got a happy Gene, I mean, whatever your spouse's name is.

Give Peas a Chance: Split Pea & Sausage Soup

 

Brain:  "Are you pondering what I'm pondering?"

Pinky:  "I think so, Brain, but if we give peas a chance, won't the carrots get jealous?"

 

I've always thought that split pea soup couldn't be split pea soup without chunks of ham in it until the other day when I had no ham in the freezer but did have a roll of light country (sage) sausage.  I may never use ham again!  The sausage and all of its seasonings added a depth of well-roundedness to the soup that the ham just doesn't quite make.  Viva la sausage!

 

Snack Time: Seasoned Oyster Crackers

 

Having a couple of bags of oyster crackers leftover from Halloween chili, I decided to play a little. I've tried hot, sweet, salty.... but my all time favorite has turned out to be this recipe.  Not only are the great as a handful straight out of the bag, we've now topped more chili with them, potato soup, and stew--all delicious.  I also crushed 2 cups of them and topped a ham/potato casserole one night for the crunch--yummy!  They're yummy, cheap to make, and versatile. They've also stayed fresh in a gallon zip baggie with as much air removed as possible each time we get into them.  This is a keeper.