Soup du Jour

I love soup, especially when the weather's cool and/or icky.  Unloading most of the meat in our diets has made me revisit some tried-and-true favorites.  I don't use meat very often, but I do still use stock and broth, especially organic chicken broth.  So here's the Twinkle Twinkle Soup recipe, as enjoyed by all this week!  It was great at dinner, but was much better for lunch the next day, after the flavors had had time to get happy together. We had it with cranberry bran muffins, but the recipe needs some tweaking, so stay tuned!

Twinkle Twinkle, Little Soup!
1 tbsp. olive oil
2 large carrots, sliced
2 ribs celery, sliced
1/2 onion, diced
1 Granny Smith Apple, peeled, cored, and diced
2 bay leaves
1 tsp. poultry seasoning
2 quarts chicken broth or stock
1/2 c. frozen peas
1/2 c. frozen corn
1 c. stars pasta
Heat olive oil over medium heat in large stock pot.  Add in carrots, onions, apple, and celery.  Cook for a few minutes, until the vegetables begin to soften and get fragrant.  Add bay leaves and poultry seasoning, then add chicken broth.  Bring to a boil, then lower heat to simmer 20 minutes or so, until veggies are just tender.  Return to boil, and add pasta.  Cook for 5-6 minutes (or whatever time pasta directions call for), then add frozen veggies.  Stir to combine, return to boil, then turn off heat.  After about 5 minutes, frozen veggies should have thawed and be heated through, and soup should be cool enough to serve.  Enjoy!

Dairy Discoveries

I remember the day I thought my Grandma (the cook) was losing her mind.  She bought a yogurt maker.  After her first batch, she put it on a shelf and never used it again.  Why?  Because "milk just isn't what it's supposed to be."  Boy, was I confused.  I remained confused about that day until recently, when a friend introduced me to the culinary wonder that is raw milk.  If you don't know, raw milk is milk that is "sraight from the cow" - unpasteurized, unhomogenized, totally un-messed-with.  Lovely stuff.  So I did what any self-respecting farm wife would have done a century ago:  I made butter.  I also made yogurt, and have used the milk in two of my favorite bread recipes with stellar results.  Son-of-a-gun, Grandma wasn't losing it after all.  Milk really wasn't what it had been when she was growing up on the farm...what it was "supposed to be."  What a great discovery!

I'm very fortunate to have some wonderful friends who generously share their knowledge of traditional kitchen practices.  We also have German Baptist and Amish communities nearby, and many of those families are also using the same techniques and recipes they have used for generations, and they are happy to share them to keep the traditions of "real" food alive and growing.

So, about that butter...

I siphoned the cream off the top of the milk with a turkey baster, put it in a jar, and let it sit out on the counter overnight (12 hours or so.)  The next day, I poured it into the bowl of the Kitchen Aid mixer, put on the whisk attachment, and let 'er rip.  I found out that milk flies.  So I made a makeshift tent out of aluminum foil and put it over the top of the mixer and the bowl.  Much better.  About half-an-hour later, I had whipped butter in my  bowl!  I strained the butter through a fine sieve to separate the buttermilk, then chilled it.  It made its debut on the dinner table with baked potatoes the next day to enthusiastic praise.  I think that counts as a success story!