Quick Beef Noodle Soup

My husband made this great soup last night. It cured my soar throat and was delicious!

Here's his recipe:

Quick Beef Noodle Soup

2 cans beef consomme
6 cans water
2 star anise
1 cinnamon stick
grated ginger
pepper corns

beef, thinly sliced

thinly sliced:
vegetables (onion, sweet pepper, carrot, cucumber...)
spring onions
fresh hot chile

bean sprouts
fresh basil and/or cilantro
lime wedges

banh pho (flat Vietnamese rice stick noodles, substitute rice noodles, rice vermicelli, fettuccine)

The key to get the texture of the dish right is the noodles of course and to slice the vegetables and meat paper thin. Bring consomme, water, star anise, cinnamon, grated ginger, and pepper corns to boil in large soup pot. Simmer 15/20 minutes until aromatic. Remove star anise, cinnamon stick and pepper corns with slotted spoon or strainer. Add beef simmer two minutes, add noodles and simmer 3-5 more minutes until noodles are done. While noodles boil add sliced vegetables and spring onions to bottom of serving bowls. Serve cooked noodles, meat, and broth onto vegetables in bowls. Top with fresh bean sprouts, sliced fresh chiles, fresh basil and squeezed lime.

Easy homemade mac and cheese

A few days ago my girls were begging for mac and cheese. Not the super rich yummy homemade kind, but that processed stuff in the blue box. Well, I didn't have any blue box mac and cheese. I was down sick with the flu and didn't have it in me to go get any and I wasn't up for making the super rich yummy special homemade stuff, so I whipped up what I could with what I had. This is what I came up with:

I cooked 8 oz of bow tie pasta. I didn't have macaroni, and bow ties are more fun anyway

In the mean time I cubed up about 1/2 cup of medium cheddar cheese and placed that in a small sauce pan.
I added 1/4 cup shredded pecarino romano.
Added 2 tblsp butter
Added 1/4 milk
a couple pinches of kosher salt and a couple turns on the pepper grinder.

I slowly melted this until it was all mixed and liquid then tossed it with the drained bow ties.

My girls loved it! They even said they'd rather have that over the stuff in the blue box! Now that's a compliment!

What's up with those Burgerking commercials?

I don't usually have much control of the remote in our house, so I miss a lot of commercials. I do see enough to wonder "what the hey! what is up with the Viagra and Enzyte commercials right at prime time while my kids are watching tv?" Then I saw the Spongebob Squarebutt ad. I have to admit, I have a sick sense of humor, so I thought it was funny. I was surprised when I went to work and the talk around the water cooler was about how inapropriate this ad was. I couldn't fully disagree, but I couldn't see how it was any worse the the Viagra commercials, and I never heard anyone complain about them talking about 4 hour erections in front of our children, so what's so bad about squarebutts? I found the attitude a bit hyporcrytical. Then the Kingon ad with the nipple twister came on. Hmmmm, that one hit me a little bit more. Maybe it was the violence, the memory of the neighbor boys doing that to me as a child, I don't know, it didn't seem appropriate, but I still laughed my butt off. ( I can't always control my sick sense of humor). And I still couldn't see how it was any more inappropriate then the Happy Guy in the "male enhancement" commercials. Anyway, here's the Kingon ad below. Let me know what you think of these ads. I'm curious. Oh, and I guess I should put in a disclaimer here. I worked for Burgerking back in highschool, for less then a year. I have no partiallity towards them, other then they funded my last summer of fun in my hometown.

This was dinner last night. This is one of those meals that takes me back to my childhood. Steak and potatoes. I spent years rejecting this meal after leaving home. I'd eaten so much steak and so many potatoes as a kid, that I thought I'd never eat another bite of read meat or another potato ever again. Now that I'm in my 40's, I crave this. It was pure heaven for me last night to dive into a creamy baked potato slathered in sour cream and chives. The steak, it was divine! And as always, I have to have something green on my plate, and the asparagus, was unusually tender. Not a stringy piece in the bunch. Oh, man! now I'm hungry again. Off to eat some leftover steak. Excuse the drool.

Cinco De Mayo lite

Normally Cinco De Mayo would be a big deal and a spectacular post for me, but once again, life has got in the way. Time is limited and funds even more so. I usually push for a big potluck for Cinco De Mayo at work, and had planned on bringing Posole this year. It just wasn't within the realm of my pocket book this year, and most of my co-workers felt the same. So, I wondered last night, what can I do to still have Cinco at home? Hmmmm... well, I just happened to have chicken thighgs, Dona Marie mole' sauce, refried beans, rice, peas, chilie powder, peanut oil and onions at home. That could make Chicken mole' with a side of refrieds and Mexican rice. All I lacked was tortilla's. I picked up tortilla's on the way home, and managed a dinner of chicken mole', which turned out just fine. It wasn't as good as my homemade mole' but it still hit the spot!
Happy Cinco De Mayo!

Potato Chip Oven Baked Chicken and more

I was feeling like some comfort food on Monday and this is what I came up with. Potato Chip Oven Baked Chicken:

I crushed one medium bag of Kettle Salt and Pepper potato chips into very fine crumbs and added about a tsp of garlic powder and a half tsp of dried sage and mixed that all together. I took 6 chicken thighs and brushed them with milk and rolled them in the potato chip mixture. I placed them in a baking dish and baked them for 55 minutes. There is no need for salt or pepper because there is plenty on the potato chips. They turned out crunchy and yummy!

Then there was the fresh chard from our garden. The same plants we've had since last year! I chopped them up, removing the stems, sauted them in some olive oil for a bit then added 2 tbsp water and a squeeze of fresh lemon juice and cooked until wilted. I sprinkled kosher salt to taste as the last step. This was fresh and light. A nice contrast to the chicken.

I also boiled a half pound of bow tie pasta, then melted a tsp of butter and drizzled with olive oil parmesan cheese and a pinch of kosher salt.

While I was getting all of this ready I grabed 1 1/2 lbs of the sandwich bread dough I had made a couple of days before and baked a loaf of whole wheat bread. I think I over warmed the milk and messed up the yeast a bit. The bread didn't raise as expected, but it did come out pretty good. I enjoyed a slice for breakfast the next morning with some of my homemade apple butter. Yum! More soothing comfort food before a long day at work.

There hasn't been time to post much of anything. Work is crazy, kids are busy, when not sick, and goats are being born, but here are some pictures of the monster 18 lb ham I baked for all 15 of us on Easter. Even after feeding everyone and insisting everyone leave here with a baggie of ham I'm still feeding my family ham and struggling with new ways to cook it and get them to keep eating it! Tonight, I made shepherd's pie with ham! Seems sacralige, but it was good.