Warm Your Soul Soup

It's been cold and raining lots here in sunny California. This weather just makes me want to sit around in sweats, drinking coffee and watching the Food Network channel all day. Wait, how's that different from what I want to do every other day?

When we're all chilled and I don't mind hanging out over the stove for a while, soup is a great option for lunch or dinner, or both. Here's one I whipped up and thought I'd share....


Italian Sausage and Bean Soup
6 servings

1/2 yellow onion, finely chopped
2 carrots, peeled and diced
2 stalk celery, diced
2 medium zucchini, diced
1 lb sweet Italian sausage, casings removed and broken into small bits
1 Tbl olive oil
1 can dark red kidney beans (15 oz), drained and rinsed
1 can light red kidney beans (15 oz), drained and rinsed
2 cups canned or jar spaghetti sauce (not tomato sauce)
3 cups chicken broth (more if you want it "soupier")
2 sprigs fresh thyme

In large stock pot, my favorite to use for any soups and stews is this enamel coated cast iron pot, add olive oil and brown sausage over medium heat. Make sure you break up the sausage as much as possible while it's cooking. When it's cooked through, remove it from the pot and keep it on a plate until you add back into the soup later. In the sausage drippings (I had very little fat; if it looks like a lot, take some out before adding vegetables.), add onion, carrots and celery. Saute over medium heat until vegetables are browned and partially tender, about 20 minutes. Add in the zucchini and saute another 5 minutes or so. To the vegetables, add beans and sausage. Add in the spaghetti sauce and broth. Start with the 3 cups of broth and decide if you want to thin it further a little later on. Stir everything well, add the fresh thyme and cover. Cook over low heat for at least an hour. When veggies are nice and tender, remove the thyme sprigs and serve. Garnish with a sprinkling of grated parmesean cheese.

**If you don't have fresh thyme, don't worry. There are enough spices in the sausage and spaghetti sauce that the soup will be nicely seasoned. I didn't even have to add salt and pepper. This soup tastes really good the next day!

Christmas Goodies

The boys helped me create these yummy goodies for the office staff at the school. Just a sweet little way to show our appreciation for all they've done this year and who doesn't love some sweets at the holidays!

These bags are filled with "Muddy Buddies", taken directly from the Rice Chex box, but I will include the recipe below. You might want to whip up a batch to give to someone as a little sweet treat this year.... Enjoy!


Chex Muddy Buddies
18 Servings

9 cups Chex (Rice, Corn or Wheat)(I used Rice Chex)
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup smooth peanut butter
1/4 cup butter
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar

Measure cereal into a large bowl; set aside.
In microwave safe bowl, melt chocolate chips, peanut butter and butter for one minute. Stir. Microwave for another 30 seconds or until it can be stirred smooth. Stir in vanilla. Pour mixture over cereal and toss to coat evenly. Pour into ziploc bag and add powdered sugar; shake until completely coated.
Spread on cookie sheet to cool and dry. Store in airtight container in refrigerator.

Yummy Cheesy Potatoes

Tonight I've got a recipe to share.... Yummy Cheesy Potatoes. I made these for dinner and they were a big hit. Even the big boy who HATES potatoes actually ate several bites and said they were pretty good. That is huge.... from the boy who was moved to tears when we told him they served ONLY potatoes in Idaho, our destination for a summer vacation this year. He was heartbroken, we were amused.... he may need therapy later in life. So when he was willing to try my creation tonight and said that he didn't hate them, I knew I had a winning recipe on my hands. The other boy was scarfing down his second helping at that point.

Cheesy Potatoes

4 Servings

3 medium Russet potatoes, washed and peeled

2 Tbl butter

2 Tbl flour

1 1/2 c milk

1 1/4 c shredded cheese (I used Colby Jack)

onion powder

salt

pepper

Heat oven to 400 degrees and grease a glass baking dish with a little butter. Slice potatoes very thinly. I used this mandoline that made this job a snap! Spread out 1/2 of the potatoes in the prepared dish; lightly sprinkle onion powder, salt and pepper. (I didn't measure, I just lightly sprinkled.) Layer the rest of the potatoes and sprinkle with a little more onion powder, salt and pepper. Set aside.

In a saucepan on the stove, melt butter and flour. Wisk it together as it melts and let it cook for about 2 minutes. Add in milk and wisk to blend all together without any lumps. Cook this over medium heat, wisking until it thickens. You're going for the consistency of egg nog or Pepto Bismol, whichever one your most familiar with. Add in cheese and stir. Sauce will come together really nicely when all the cheese is melted; remove from heat. Pour the cheese sauce over the potatoes and cover with foil. Bake it at 400 degrees for about 1 1/2 hours. For the last 1/2 hour, I took off the foil and the top got nice and bubbly brown.

**Note: If you haven't made a simple cheese sauce like this, don't be afraid to try it. It's actually really simple. This is the same way you would make your own macaroni and cheese. There are lots of recipes using canned soup and other creamy bases, but I think it's healthier and probably cheaper just to whip it up yourself with stuff you have in your fridge and pantry! Maybe you can even add this dish to one of your holiday meals..... Enjoy!

Family Christmas Card

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas! The lights are up, tree is decorated, the smell of cookies baking in the oven.... I love this time of year. The boys are getting so excited and they've really good the last few days because they know the "Big Guy" is watching!

I'm not proud to admit that I don't always send Christmas cards. I know, I know.... I love cards, I make them all the time.... why oh why can't I seem to get them in the mail to send Christmas greetings to our family and friends? It's a mystery to me, but because of my years of neglect in this area, I am especially proud that I am on it this year. Now, I did streamline the process a bit... it's actually just a postcard or card front and there isn't a lick of stamping on it, but I'm proud nonetheless. To further help myself along, I skipped the stress of trying to get a good family picture of all four of us together.... someone's always blinking, looking elsewhere or just giving the cheesiest smile, so instead, I did a "filmstrip" look for our individual pictures. I created the text on the computer and added a little Christmas paper. The snowflake and faux stitching brings it all together and tada.... there you have it!

Did you hand-make your cards this year or send store-bought? Or did you just skip it all together? Either way, I hope you're in the holiday spirit.... Enjoy!

So Much to be Thankful for

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! We enjoyed a great family day.... my parents were with us and we drove to see my brother and his family. We ate lots of turkey and all the fixings and of course finished it off with yummy pie!
In long standing tradition, my mom and I set out Friday morning for some Christmas bargains and just a good time together. I did get some great deals, but not the deals that were snatched up by the die-hards camping outside of Target and Wal-Mart the night before.
Today is a recovery day.... getting the laundry caught up and ready for Monday. I will be venturing up to the Crafty Corner to begin mass production of our Christmas card and some other holiday ideas floating around in my head.
In the meantime, here is a Thanksgiving Thank You card.... Enjoy!

Turkey, Turkey.... Gobble, Gobble

Oh, the joys of having a Kindergartener..... all the fun new songs, the fantastic art work brought home by the truckloads and of course the holiday celebrations! Last night we celebrated with the little guy by joining all of his classmates for a Thanksgiving feast followed by an amazing performance of Thanksgiving songs sung to classic childrens tunes. It was very cute and of course my guy was the star of the show! I wanted to contribute something for decoration, but to also give the kids something fun to take home, so I made place settings for each of them. These were made from a really old Stampin' Up! set called "Turkey Talk" and the names were printed on the computer. My advice when you are mass producing things is to take the shortcuts you can, such as printing the sentiment or names on the computer and incorporating that into your project.
Are you getting ready for your Thanksgiving feast? My parents are arriving today and staying for the week. Our boys are out of school all week next week, so for a few days they will be spending some great time with Grandma and Papa. We will all travel to my brother's house on Thanksgiving for a great family gathering.... I'm really looking forward to it! I will sneek in another post before then, so in the meantime, enjoy your weekend!

Not Too Sick to Craft!

I'm scrambling to get these photos posted..... I played with the color some, but decided I'd get them posted. If they look yellow to you, well maybe you have a case of the flu settling in. It is that time of the year, right? We are down hard at the Crafty Corner..... first the little guy, then me and now the big boy is going down quick. I've been home for the week, running around with the thermometer and children's Motrin, trying to keep everyone calm and comfortable. We broke down and went to the doctor, luckily testing negatively for the flu. So, while we don't test positively for the regular flu nor the piggy flu, we have all the symptoms.... who knows, maybe we've got cases of the Ostrich Flu or perhaps the rare strain of Roly-Poly Flu. That's probably it... both of those boys were playing with Roly Poly bugs in the driveway last week. I told them to put them down!

So once I was reassured we would all be fine, although perhaps a little miserable for the next few days, I did what any good mommy would do. I dosed them up with Motrin, plugged in a movie and made a mad dash for the craft room. I had to stop at the top of the stairs because I can't take 5 steps without being winded and exhausted, but I was not going to let that stop me from having some time in the Crafty Corner! Enjoy these projects I made and then go sanitize your hands, would ya.....

I made a little Top Note box full of Christmas gift tags along with a little notebook. The box came from a great tutorial over at Splitcoast; check it out. The tags I just created using a little stash of old Stampin' Up! paper and some Making Memories paper I picked up last week. The notebook is covered with a little Kraft cardstock and embellished like the tags. The tags are so much cuter in real life.... the lighting was really bad tonight. I made two sets of these for little gifts I plan to hand out at Thanksgiving, but I did make myself some extra tags while I was at it.

I will be posting again next week, if not sooner. I can just feel it....we are on the mend around here and I'm getting in the crafty spirit!