Best Tortilla Soup Ever!

I’ve been making this soup for years and it is one of my go-to simple recipes that I absolutely love! I originally got it out of a Food Network cook book and I still use it as a guide but I have made some changes to it. I’m bad about not following a recipe exactly lol. I love that book, though, I’ve gotten several great recipes out of it!
I posted a picture of the soup on Facebook for a friend who also loves it and I got lots of people asking for the recipe, so here it is:

2 Tblsp Vegetable Oil

1/2 a medium onion, minced

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 chipotle chile en adobo sauce, minced

1 Tblsp chili powder

2 tsp salt

6 cups chicken broth

1 cup frozen corn kernels

1 can diced tomatoes

1 whole rotisserie chicken, deboned

cilantro, shredded cheddar cheese, avocado, tortillas, tortilla chips for garnish

 

Stir-fry together the oil, onion, garlic, chile pepper, chili powder, and salt until onions are soft.

Add the chicken broth, corn and chicken.

let it come to a boil and it is ready to serve!

I think my favorite thing about this recipe is how quick it is and how versatile it is. I LOVE cilantro and cant have too much (as you can see in my picture, I load my bowl up with it).

Tip: the chipotle pepper is where the heat comes from and is the key ingredient to this recipe! I like spicy food so I like to add a little extra splash of the sauce with the pepper. if you are sensitive to heat, just add a little sauce or only do half a pepper. This is the kind I like to buy:

I hope you enjoy this soup as much as we do!

Wilton Bake Even Strips

I don't remember where I heard about these first, but I ordered these about 6 months ago and I am in love!! The do exactly what the name states, they help the cake bake evenly and most of all it keeps the cake from getting that "dome" shape on top. This is immensely helpful when you want to stack layers and ice them; there is no need to slice the dome off, loosing yummy cake, and then creating a ton of crumbs that get all in your icing!
All you have to do is soak them in cold water and wrap them around the cake pan, pin them with the pin it comes with, bake the cake and Voila! a perfectly flat cake that is ready and easy to ice. I have no idea how it works, but it does!
There are several sizes for different cake pan sizes but I just have the small set; perfect for 9" cake pans which is what I normally use.
I am currently making my Banana Chocolate cake for a friend so I snapped a few photos of the cakes when I pulled them out of the oven. Proof that it works!

Buy them Here

Grilled Sea Bass

I am so thankful for a husband that can grill!!! That means I dont have to cook dinner every night! lol When I say he can grill, I don’t just mean burgers and chicken. Over the past several years he has really gotten good at grilling and smoking, and one of our favorite meals that he makes is grilled Sea Bass. We like to splurge and get this for dinner every once in a while and tonight he got scallops to go with it. YUM!! Asparagus is our favorite veggie so we make that every time and I normally make some rice too but I skipped it this time.
All he puts on it is salt and pepper and tarragon with olive oil, and it only takes a total of about 6-8 minutes to cook and it gets a nice crispy layer on the outside, which is the best part! The scallops got oil, salt and pepper. That’s it! So easy, yet so good!
For such a healthy meal, it sure tastes like it is bad :)!

Holiday Baking

Now I know why people say they gain weight during the holidays. I’ve done more baking just for the fun of it with Avery this year than I ever do! I love to bake but I hardly do just because we have horrible self control and will eat a whole batch of cookies in about 24 hours! It’s a lot of fun with a child, though! Snickerdoodles were on the menu today. yum!

Red Beans and Rice

Living in Louisiana for several years had some serious advantages. The food is one of the main ones; besides some wonderful friends, of course!

The other day I called my Cajun friend, Tisha, and got her recipe for Red Beans and Rice. True to a good cook, she didn’t have any measurements for the spices, but that’s ok since I rarely follow a recipe word-for-word anyways. These beans turned out so good I told her they were “blog worthy” and I had to share. Here’s the list of ingredients and some steps to follow. (my additions and tips are in red)
Red Beans and Rice
1 small bag of red beans
onion (I used 1/2 of a large one)
Minced garlic (about 2)
Smoked Sausage or Ham (I used 2 links of Andouille sausage and some cubed ham)
salt and pepper
1 cap liquid crab boil (I only had powdered crab boil so I used about 1 tsp)
green onion (I didn’t have any green onions so I used 1/2 of a green bell pepper)
garlic powder
Tony Chachere’s
Worcestershire sauce
Soak the beans overnight with lots of water for at least 12 hours. Dump all of the ingredients in the crock pot seasoning to taste. For everything without a measurement, add a little in the beginning and you can add as it cooks through the day. I sprinkled enough of everything to lightly cover the top of the beans. Half way through cooking, I added some more salt and pepper but everything else seemed to be good. Fill the crock pot with water just enough to barely get to the top of the beans. Set the crock pot on low for 6-8 hours. If you feel like it needs thickening, you can either add some spicy Blue Runner beans, mash some of the beans up, or add flour slowly to create a paste then adding directly into the crock pot. Make some Rice, and enjoy!
I hope you try these because they are amazing and feeds us for a long time!!
Thanks Tisha!!

Banana Chocolate Cake

If I have not mentioned this cookbook before, I really need to. It is our absolute favorite dessert book!

This banana chocolate cake came from this book  and it is AMAZING! If you like banana bread and chocolate, this is the cake for you. The only thing I would change is to add some pecans to the batter and maybe a few on top in a pretty design. We brought it to a friends house for dinner last night and they love it too. Pretty sure the whole thing is GONE in less than 24 hours! lol

Asian Lettuce Wraps

These are one of our favorite meals during the week!! It is super simple and very yummy. The recipe can be found here at Eating Well.com

Home made Pizza

YUMMMM!! I LOVE LOVE LOVE pizza! Why I have not made my own pizza dough before today, I do not know, but it is so stinking easy and so good! I got the recipe from Food Network’s Making it Easy cook book. I simply added some Italian seasoning to the dough just for a little something extra.
Normally, I am a cheese and pepperoni only kinda gal but I decided to venture out and get fancy tonight. I put just a little sauce, chopped tomato, fresh mozzarella cheese crumbles, prosciutto, and then sprinkled some basil on once it was done cooking. Wow! was it good. I am not sure if I will be able to wait for dinner tomorrow to eat my left overs

The best part of carving a pumpkin...

...Roasting the seeds after its all done!

Homemade Cheese

Since Jeff decided he was going to get into making beer, we saw that the website that he orders his ingredients from also sells cool things like kits for homemade cheese. So, of course, how could we pass up trying something like that out?! We chose the Mozzarella kit since it seemed the easiest.

Reading the instructions, it sounded pretty complicated, but after doing it, it was so easy. (I have to say that I pretty much just watched my dad and Jeff do all of the work. I was the photographer ;]. )

Here are a few pictures:

Preparing the ingredients

Heating 1 Gallon of Whole Milk

Watching the Curds and Whey separate

Pressing the Whey

Straining the Curds out of the pot

This is what Whey looks like... weird!

Pressing as much Whey out of the Curds as possible

Kneading the curds into a "dough" like consistancy. Alternating Kneading and heating to get it to the texture of Mozzarella Cheese.

Giving the Cheese an ice bath

Time to eat! It's already about 1/4 gone by the time I got a picture. This made a block of cheese about 4" x 4"... Can you believe that this is all you get from a whole gallon of milk?! I can now understand why good cheese is so expensive. It's really yummy on some salami and crackers. :)