Lasagna Soup

So, you may have noticed, if you've been around me at all this past week-and-some, that I've been obsessed with soup and sandwiches. Well, today is the first REALLY cold day (for me). Wunderground says it's 42 degrees out! So, soup seems to be an appropriate theme. Warm soup, that is. And I REALLY wanted to get rid of all that leftover mac'n cheese from Jeff's Meaty Mac'n Cheese.

I checked out several lasagna soup recipes and adapted them to my I-refuse-to-go-to-the-store criteria. Here's what I came up with:

Cut up 1/2 an onion and a clove of garlic
Saute them along with your meat (I used some precooked sausage and bacon grease)
Add broth (I used 2 cups of water and a chicken and a beef bullion cube)
Add tomatoes (I used a can of "Italian Style stewed" and chopped up a fresh one)
Add seasonings (2 bay leaves, 2 tsp oregano, a dash or two of garlic salt and pepper)
Heat to a boil
Stir in pasta (I had probably a good.......4 cups of leftover mac'n cheese)
Boil until pasta is tender or heated.
NOM

And ta-da! With the ingredients that I used, it didn't taste too much like lasagna. However, with ground beef and an 8oz can of tomato paste added, I could see it working just fine. To serve it in real lasagna-style, the recipes have you add a dolop/serve the soup on top of a mixture of cottage cheese/ricotta and parmesan/mozzarella. I can see that being delicious!

Potato Soup

What do you do when you don't want to go to the store, but you want to use up potatoes that are going bad and other scrapings of the cupboard? You make soup! I was going between a simplistic recipe that was basically "boil potatoes in water, then add milk, salt, and pepper. Heat until warm" and a much more involved potato soup recipe that involved baking the potatoes first, then adding them into the soup last....Confusing. Basically, I started out dicing all the potatoes I wanted to use, a half an onion, one pork sausage, and some garlic. I sauteed the onion and garlic in butter. When they were "limp"/clearish, I added in a cup or so of water and all of the potatoes. I boiled them for maybe......10 minutes, then added in almost 2 cups of milk and the sausage (pre-cooked). That didn't seem to be thickening, so I mixed up some water/flour slurry and added that. Kept it on the heat, stirring it and not letting it boil. I ended up adding some more of the flour slurry, and it eventually thickened up. For taste, I added garlic salt and.....some random things. A little dry mustard, paprika. Maybe some basil and parsley. What really was a good idea that I added was a little dill.

The dill taste really stood out in the end, I liked what it did. Maybe because I heated it too long trying to get the soup to thicken, but the meat seemed to have very little taste. I wish that it had more flavor to it. I liked the taste it added to the soup, but I wished the chunks had more. My mother gave me a thought--don't start out with water, but a broth! That would probably add a lot of overall flavor. Bacon would also go well in this. ^^ And maybe some celery? Oh! I served it with some grated cheese on top. Might be fun to stir in a cup or so before serving.

Random Soup

I made delicious soup today! I started with a base of beef bouillon, then threw in some onion, carrot, and potato. For meat, I cut up two hotdogs. With some leafy spices like....ummn. What did I use? A little basil, parsley, a smidgen of paprika. Maybe some oregano. Boiled it all together......delicious. A bit....loose? Maybe something to give it a little more body? I'll look into this. Oh! Bits of seaweed, like in miso? Would be amazing! 

As it was, I made some herb-y rice to go with it. Rice, butter, spices, a half splash of soy sauce, and garlic salt!

Meaty Mac'n Cheese

Jeff came up this weekend and made me a delicious! We made two FAMILY SIZED boxes of Kraft Mac'n Cheese. (This is not too easy. It FILLED up my biggest pot!) While I was making that happen and practicing my amazing mixing skillz, Jeff was creating a pile of delicious MEAT. He browned up a pound of ground beef in a bunch of bacon grease, cut up 3 hotdogs, and tore one piece of bacon (all that remained from that morning). Then we took our bowls and mixed up some deliciousness.

Salmon Fillets and Herb Rice

So this morning I got it into my head that I needed to cook the salmon before Jeff left (why would I cook it just for me?). I'd bought some at the market on Saturday. I looked up a few recipes, ran to the store for a few things, and voila! Delicious! As a side, I made some herb and butter rice. Sooooooo full but yummy.

To make the salmon, I greased a baking pan and put the fillets in it. Then I mixed up a sauce--3 tbsps each of butter and lemon juice, 1 and a little tbsps of fresh dill paste stuff, 1 tbsp of sour cream, and a bit of minced garlic--and poured that over the fillets. Added a little pepper, covered it in foil, and baked for 20 mins at 375. It was great! Jeff thought it was a bit too lemony, but I liked it. More of a sour cream base would be interesting; that tasted really good with the dill.

To make the rice, I just boiled 2 c. of water, one tbsp of butter, and one chicken bouillon cube. When it boiled, I added the rice, a little soy sauce, and several random herbs--basil, thyme, chives, a little onion--and cooked for 15 mins. It went really well with the salmon. ^^

Yay for a successful first time cooking fish!