Soup-A-Palooza Dos

I promised yesterday to blog about Soup-a-Palooza, so here I am :-) I had held one a month or so ago with my friends--basically, I made a bunch of soups (Oven Baked Beef Stew, Spicy Thai Soup, Mexican Chicken Tortilla and French Onion) and invited over my friends, telling them to bring something to go with soup. The party was a hit--lots of different types of soups to fit each person's tastes (a beef, a chicken, an Asian and a vegetarian style), and it was fun to have something so earthy for a party.

My daughter, whose friends I normally invite to my theme nights (and had forgotten to invite to this one) asked if I'd do the same thing for her friends. Dubbed Soup-a-Palooza Dos, I let my daughter dictate the menu, and let her create the guest list. Lots of teenage girls made for lots of laughter and chatter, so it was a blast. One of them brought rolls, another made this yummy dessert Christmas bread that we baked while we were eating. I made the soups and the Macadamia Nut Yummies.

I served three soups: Chicken and Dumpling, which I've put on the blog before, Tomato Tortellini, also a previous blog appearer, and a new one--Lemon Chicken Rice (a Greek soup, aka Avgolemono). My dear friend Tori Carrington (a husband-wife writing duo) makes this all the time and said that I had to make a long kissing sound while adding the egg mixture to the soup or it would be ruined (I love those kinds of quirky customs). Since the soup was a hit (two of the girls took home leftovers), I think the kissing noise paid off ;-)

Before I made the two chicken based soups, I made a Simple Chicken Stock:

1 whole chicken
1 onion, peeled and halved
1 full head of garlic, halved
4-6 sprigs of thyme
2 bay leaves
1 teaspoon kosher salt
4-6 black peppercorns

Put chicken in a stockpot or dutch oven. Add other ingredients. Add enough water to cover the chicken. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer and simmer for one hour. Remove the chicken and shred the meat. Strain the stock and use in soups or freeze to use later.

Trust me, it makes a HUGE difference to use homemade stock. And it seasoned the chicken nicely, so it tasted perfect in the chicken and dumpling soup and the Lemon Chicken Rice Soup. It only takes a minute to put a stock together, and just a little over an hour to cook. Do it a couple days before if you want. I've even made it in the Crock-Pot (turning the CP to High).


Easy Avgolemono Soup (Greek Lemon Chicken Rice Soup)

6 cups chicken broth (reserve extra for later; the rice expands and I added a cup of stock at the end)
1 cup long grain rice
2 eggs
Juice of 1/2 of a lemon (reserve other half to add more lemon juice if you need it)
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons freshly chopped parsley

Bring stock to a boil, add rice, then reduce to a simmer and cook about 20 minutes, until rice is tender. Add the chicken, then make the egg mixture (it will thicken the soup and give it a nice, creamy texture).

Separate the eggs. Whisk the whites until they're frothy, then add in the yolks and the lemon juice. Add one cup of hot cooking liquid, whisk, then add another cup. Pour egg mixture into the soup (making that kissing sound if you want). Season with salt and pepper, add parsley. Serve.

Shirley

Lime-Coconut Granita

This one was SUPER easy, SUPER fast and very low in calories (1/2 cup is only 85 calories). That's my kind of dessert :-)

I've never made granita before but now that I know how easy it is, I'll try other combinations. IMO, this also has a great presentation and is the perfect follow-up to a heavy dinner, so I'm putting it on my party menu list.

Lime-Coconut Granita

2 1/2 cups water

3/4 cup sugar

1 tablespoon grated lime rind (I use a microplane)

1/2 cup fresh lime juice (2-3 large limes or 4 small)

1/2 cup lite coconut milk

Put all ingredients in a saucepan over medium heat. Simmer 3 minutes or until sugar dissolves, stirring often. Remove from heat and cool completely. When cool, pour into a 9 X 13" pan. Cover and freeze for 8-10 hours, or until firm. Remove from freezer, let sit on the counter for 10 minutes, then scrape mixture with a fork until fluffy (it looks like sno-cone filler).

I had this as a snack...perfect light treat for those hot days that are still lingering! :-)

Shirley

Hosting a Crowd

This weekend, I had a bunch of friends over, from Thursday till mid-Sunday (with people arriving at varying times), which meant lots of cooking for me (I TRULY enjoyed it). I wanted a menu that would appeal to lots of people, work for large crowds (at the height of everything, we had 20 people here total between adults and kids), and not be too much work. I think it all worked out (even my friend who eats gluten-free was able to enjoy a few things, though I wished I had more on the menu for her).

I planned my menu about a week ahead of time, choosing things I have cooked more than once (several of which are on this blog) and made a pretty extensive grocery list (though I still ended up running out for a few forgotten things). I also tried to create menus that were flexible--meaning if I didn't feel like making one dish one day, I could substitute it with another from the next day.

I also gratefully accepted all offered help. My friends were FABULOUS and cut vegetables, boiled water, shredded cheese...all kinds of helpful jobs (including helping me keep up with the mountain of dishes!!). It became a truly fun event to cook, with everyone standing around in the kitchen enjoying munchies like mango salsa and homemade hummus in between preparing a meal.

Here are some of the recipes I made:

For snacks, we had Hummus (I only used 1/2 cup of the Tahini, more of a to-taste thing) and Samantha Hunter's Mango Salsa. This is SOOO yummy and easy. Use the fresh ingredients for sure.

Samantha Hunter's Mango Salsa

2-3 mangoes, peeled and diced

2-3 cups chopped and seeded tomatoes

2 shallots, minced

1/2 big bunch cilantro, chopped

1 jalapeno, seeded and minced

1 T. ginger, minced (I use a micrograter to get it tiny)

2-3 T lime juice (about 2 limes)

salt and pepper to taste

Mix all ingredients and let sit for a couple hours before serving

Here are some of the other recipes I had:

Giada's Lasagna (pictured here). With this one, I substituted cooked Italian sausage and mushrooms for the ground beef. This was an AMAZING lasagna, if I say so myself. Simply delicious.

Served with: Roasted Pears with Blue Cheese (yummy and pretty easy). For dessert, we had Fruit Pavlova (pictured above).

For breakfast the next day, I did baked apple pancakes (basically, you layer apples on the bottom of a pie plate, sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar, then top with pancake batter. Bake at 350 until done; about 10-15 minutes).

We went out for lunch, then for dinner, prepared Giada's Baked Fettuccini, Insalata Rustica (read my notes here for the changes I've made to the recipe), Pan Roasted Chicken Breasts with Chausser Sauce, and for dessert, DH's favorite dessert, Ina Garten's Peanut Butter and Jelly Bars.

On the last day, I made an egg bake for breakfast, then had burgers and homemade potato salad. I tried to make the last day's dishes far lighter in prep work because we'd all been staying up WAY too late talking and laughing :-)

All in all, I think everyone had a great time, and I know they left with full bellies! One of my friends brought along these AMAZING peanut butter truffles. Loved them. I think spending time in the kitchen with good friends is one of the best things in life :-)

Shirley

Halloween Recipes

Last year, we had a Halloween party at my house. This year, we aren't having one, but I thought it might be nice to run last year's blog in case any of you might be having one. The food was a big hit with the kids, and if you're anything like me, you're always looking for something easy to make for the kids.

So here's last year's blog:

>> As promised, here are some pics from my daughter's Halloween Party. We had a great time -- and the food was a hit. I got the recipes from FamilyFun.com (you don't honestly think I'm this creative on my own, do you?) but the decorations were all me and the kids :-)

This first picture is from the front of my house, from our "graveyard" that we set up. We add to it, it seems, a little every day. That one has been a lot of fun. There's now also an "ENTER IF YOU DARE" sign up. By the time my youngest gets done, the trick-or-treaters will be terrified ;-)
Okay, on to the party and the really gross (but yummy!) food.

First off, the Monster Toes. They looked SO GROSS, which was, of course, the point. :-) Just like little toes. I used Lil Weiners (Ekrich brand here) and taco size tortillas (one package of ten was enough to cover these). Slice those ends really thin, so you get it to look like a toenail. The recipe said to cook them at 350 for 8 minutes, but I had prepared these ahead of time and covered them with a damp paper towel in the fridge (so the tortillas wouldn't dry out) so they took a few minutes longer than that. Way, way, way gross looking.

Next, the Mummy Pizzas. We used mozarella cheese sticks to make the "bandages," which was really easy, and I didn't bother with the green peppers for eyeballs. I knew the kids wouldn't eat them anyway, LOL. The olives were enough and after a while, we started finding some misshapen olives in the can, so that made for some funny mummies, too.

I also bought some blue cupcakes (no way, with all the party prep was I going to actually BAKE cupcakes and frost them!) and then put eyeball candies in them. I saw that Semi-Homemade lady do that, but she baked hers and did white frosting, then added red frosting for bloodshot eyes. More work than I had time for ;-).
I made the Putrid Punch with the floating gummy worms (I added gummy worms to the cupcakes, too). I had bought the lemon-lime Kool-Aid, then lost the package, so we used Lemonade flavor instead and it tasted fine, so you can substitute that just fine. The gummy worms were pretty impossible to see, FYI, and they sink to the bottom, unless you make the ice cubes pretty big.

We bought a cheap fog machine and I put my youngest in charge of that. I also decorated the house with the wallpaper you can get at Halloween stores and all kinds of leftover Halloween costumes (we put a reaper mask on my heron, for instance). It was pretty cool. We played scary music on the computer, and kept the party to two rooms. The kids played "mafia," which is a card game kind of like "Clue" that goes really fast. They also did a mummy wrap race, with cheap toilet paper. THAT was hilarious. Then they all went to the haunted house and got out of my hair for a while, LOL.

All in all, a great time.

Hope you have a great Halloween tomorrow -- and even if you don't have a party, you at least have a kid who brings you home some good candy! ;-)

Shirley

Holidays are over...back to life

Well, I had THOUGHT I would keep up with everything during the holidays, but then we went out of town to see my family and I ended up spending...oh, zero time online, so that meant no blogging, and no e-mailing.

Then I came home with the cold from Night of the Living Dead and spent two and a half days in bed.

Now I'm on deadline, a book and a novella due this month, and whoa, that's a lot of words to write really fast :-). At the same time, I'm teaching an online class that's pretty intensive, so there's a lot of material to prepare. Every time I had tried to prep ahead of time...well, had another book to write, LOL.

But that's okay. I'm always happier busier than not. And we had a fabulous holiday. I LOVED the holiday with my family. It was so...Christmas-y. Singalongs, church, a trip to Edaville Railroad, and then when we came home, a New Year's Eve party with friends (and candy cane martinis).

I bet you want that recipe, huh? Those Candy Cane Martinis ROCKED but they will knock you on your butt, I'm warning you, so it's like a one-per person thing :-)

Candy Cane Martinis

1 1/2 ounces vodka
1/2 ounce peppermint schnapps
1/2 ounce white creme de cacoa
1 candy cane

Mix alcohol in a shaker with lots of ice and shake 15 to 20 times, until it's really cold, then drain into a martini glass. Garnish with a candy cane, letting the long part lay inside the glass (so the candy cane melts into the drink as it warms up).

I do love martinis and cosmos, but can't have a lot of them because they are pretty powerful things. And you know writing with a hangover is no fun ;-).

Tomorrow, I'll try to get a chance to do the thing Patrysha posted.

And Terra -- thank you for reading! Glad you enjoyed the book! Carolyn, thanks for the sweet words!

Brandy, I have to find the bread recipe, and when I do, I'll post it. I went looking for it the other day and couldn't find it. One of these days I'll actually have some kind of SENSIBLE system for my recipes, LOL.

Shirley
reading: One Door Away from Heaven by Dean Koontz
Just finished and LOVED: Gone Baby Gone by Dennis Lehane and Gone for Good by Harlan Coben (also very good).