by Susan Lobb Porter | All things Chocolate, Food, Recipes |
OMG!!! I died and went to heaven this week. Really. Here you thought I was taking time off to rebuild the blog–and, as you can see I did do that–but it was a stretch. A strain on my non-tech savy psyche.
And so I called out the old girl in distress helper…tada…comfort food!
Disclaimer # 1: There’s a recipe here somewhere.
Best cookie ev-ah!
In this case, home made chocolate chip cookies. This is the part where heaven comes in. OMG, if they served these instead of communion wafers I’d be in the front row EVERY Sunday. Yes. I. Would. Little nip o’wine, little bite of these babies and I’d be signing up for the altar guild in no time flat.
Because they are THAT good.
Disclaimer # 2: I did NOT eat them all. I took some to work. Held them in front of my co-workers and told them the price for a bite o’heaven was an Arty Life appearance. Really, would you rather see photos of ingredients or appreciation?
Besides, I didn’t want to clean my kitchen for a photo shoot.
Here’s Dieter. She’s strangely...pink in this picture. And Greg lurking in the background like a Calvin Klein commercial.
See what I mean? Romancing the cookie.
And then there was Leland. No one can romance a cookie like he does.
A serious case of tasty bliss. The real deal, or so he said. He SWORE he was not faking. He also promised photos in a pink dress if I would bring in more cookies.
Which is a good time to introduce the newest Arty Life category and regular feature, What Leland Wore Today. Stay tuned for future installments.
Disclaimer # 3: The recipe is down below. Is that a cool recipe card or what? I filled it out as best as I could but when it comes to cooking, I cook like I paint. Which means, umm… by the seat of my pants when it comes to ingredients and measurements. A lot of eyeballing and palm of the hand stuff. To my recollection this is kind of sort of the way these came together.
So print out the card and give them a try if you’re so inclined. And I’m thinking you can review the recipe too, judging from the Write a Review link.
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As always, please share this with your friends if you like what you see. Got those handy dandy social share buttons down below.
And you KNOW how much I live for your comments, they’re even better than cookie batter. Well, almost….
Oh look! An emoticon, imagine that!!!
by Susan Lobb Porter | Food, Recipes |
January. You know what that means…soup covers!
Soup covers? Umm-hmm…check out the women’s magazines. Practically every one of them sports bowls of steaming soup or chili on the cover this month. Because they KNOW a good many of us porked up over the holidays and want nothing more to do with food. Ever. Except comfort food. There’s always room for comfort food.
And what’s more comforting than soup?
Pause here for flashbacks of the Campbell kids. Rosy cheeks. Runny noses. A bowl of tomato soup with a side of grill cheese and that about sums up my childhood memories of winter. That and the tablespoon of wine Mama always gave us when we came in from the cold. “To warm us up.” We did a lot of running in and out of the house during those days.
Now fast forward to the present. Because this is about the soup I made tonight. My I-can-figure-this-recipe-out kale and white bean soup. I will tell you straight up that it was way better than last week’s supper nightmare. The one I talked about here.
Tonight’s soup was quite nice, actually.
First thing I did was admire an onion. Because I’m an artist and can focus in on almost anything. Which annoys Mr. Spouse to no end.
Just look at that texture. At the way the stem twists. And that round little body all covered in paper thin sheets. Luscious, luscious, luscious, I tell you. The artist in me had brief fantasies of forgetting about dinner. Of running off to the studio and having my way with Onion O’Mine and some charcoal.
But Hungry Girl took a deep breath and chopped it up instead. And then threw the bits in some olive oil and browned ’em. Just like that, without flinching even. Because Hungry Girl isn’t into anthropomorphizing vegetables.
Alas, no fresh garlic. Mine had seen better days and needed to go away. So I used garlic powder. How much? I dunno. Enough to fit in the cup of my palm.
The next step was to add one of those big boxes of chicken broth. This is a work night dinner, no homemade stock tonight, no overnight soaking of beans. I used two cans.
And then the spices. Oh my, thyme or rosemary? A search of the spice rack reminded me I’d used the last of the thyme so it became rosemary by default. Another handful measure. And salt and pepper.
And wine. White.
I let it cook for a bit, enough to soften the rosemary leaves. Then I put a bunch of it in the blender. Umm..note to self…the cover must be on securely before operating the blender. And don’t forget to put the laundry in the dryer before going to bed.
After I mopped the counter and the surrounding floor, I poured the pureed soup back into the pan. Gave it the taste test. Sigh…okay but something was missing.
Sausages! Smokey goodness. Of course!
I chopped them up, thinking all the while about a post I wrote earlier in the month. Don’t click on the link, fellas.
Puppies came running when they heard the kale. Yes, they know the sound of those leaves. They cannot get enough of it. By the way, the bean crusted jacket is in the wash right now.
I threw the kale in the soup, covered it and turned off the heat. Then I fed the horses, went down to the studio and fell asleep with Studio Quat on my lap. About an hour later I came back to the house. The soup was still hot and the flavors had had time to blend together just right.
Parmesan cheese on top, some sourdough bread on the side and dinner was delicious.
I ate two bowls.
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by Susan Lobb Porter | Food, Life, Recipes |
Made stew tonight. Forgot the bay leaf. FORGOT THE BAY LEAF!!!
Forgot the freakin’ bay leaf.
But it was GOOD. In fact, I never would’ve known…if I hadn’t already known, that there was no bay leaf in the stew.
So what is a bay leaf anyway? What magical flavor does it impart if I couldn’t even tell it was missing?
And since you asked (you were going to, you know) here is my recipe for beef stew.
Susan’s Beef Stew
- Shoot a cow. Remove a pound or two of stew meat. Do something with the rest so as not to be wasteful. Apologize to it’s mother and feel remorseful. Tell yourself you’ll go vegan in a few days. Then don’t do it.
- Coat the meat in flour. Brown over low heat with some olive oil. Feel absolutely no remorse for squeezing those little olives until they burst. They can’t feel anything…or can they? Tell yourself you’ll never eat olives again. Now get back to cooking.
- Remove meat from pan, add more olive oil and brown (not brown brown, just cook) a couple of chopped onions. When onions are nice and perfect the way you like them…
- throw in most of a small can, the little bitty size can, of tomato paste.
- and some beef broth.
- and some red wine. wine is good. add some more.
- add a handful of thyme leaves. some salt and fresh ground pepper. garlic powder because you forgot to chop garlic with the onion. DO NOT ADD BAY LEAF OR YOU WILL GO TO HELL (just kidding…)
- mix it all up, bring to a low boil and toss in the meat.
- set oven to simmer, partially cover and walk away. tell someone else to stir every 15 minutes while you go do something else.
- come back in a couple of hours. congratulate helpers for not burning the stew or the house. add some red potatoes and baby carrots.
- go away again but make sure the helpers are still on board.
- give it a half hour, forty minutes for the potatoes and carrots to cook. add a bag of frozen string beans because really, do you have the time to deal with fresh vegetables tonight? didn’t think so… this is a good place for more wine. have a glass and/or dump some in the stew.
- start warning people dinner is ready in 10 minutes.
- tell mr. spouse he doesn’t need to watch the rest of the show on the history channel, we know who won that war.
- dish up. serve with sourdough baguette and butter. because there aren’t enough fat and carbs in the stew.
- eat it again tomorrow night.
- by the third night, add some more wine and broth. throw in some barley. call it soup.
by Susan Lobb Porter | Food, Recipes |
Autumn is here, for sure. Mr. Spouse and I readied for the first winter type storm due to blow in sometime early in the week. He did the gutters, I raked pine needles and cleaned up down at the barn. Don’t need pictures of any of that, trust me. Grumpy husband, piles of pony poo. Really. Some things are best left to the imagination. Or better still, forgotten entirely.
After two hours of barn work I was hungry. And cold. And tired. And craving eggs and oatmeal. Go figure. By that time Mr. Spouse was on his way to the airport and Daughter Dearest, being an opportunistic self-feeder, had polished off the remains of the chicken in the fridge.
But I couldn’t have just eggs and oatmeal, right? Even though I really wanted ’em. This was dinner. And what’s dinner without veggies? Don’t say breakfast–too easy.
So while the oats were cooking–steel cut, by the way, solid substantial oats–I washed and chopped up some baby spinach. I’ve always got some in the fridge, kale too, because I loves me my greens. Look how pretty they are.
Then came the oats. And a little bit o’butter.
Couple of poached eggs.
Chopped ’em up, mixed it all together. But wait–that’s when the lightbulb went off inside my head and I knew, I just knew what it needed–
Shredded Parmesan! Garlic powder! Salt and fresh ground pepper….
It was absolutely, positively, INSANELY delicious.
YAY!!!
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