Cold Weather Favorite

[digitS']

Well, I'm encouraged . . . and even picked up a couple of cookbooks the last visit to the library, just for soup ideas . Both have Molly Katzen's recipes and there's that one with lentils that was in her Moosewood cookbook that I am fairly sure that I first tried like a million years ago!

BJ, I have made clam chowder forever! When I lived on the California coast there was a little creek that ran down near my home, Jacoby Creek. I could catch golden trout during the summer and go out to the mouth of it and dig clams, in months with the "r's." Then, I had to do something with those Little Neck Clams. Chowder!

With a few leftover fish fillets I can make it Fish Chowder. Start with chopping some potatoes and boiling until cooked. Then drain off the water. Recently, I've learned to stir a couple tablespoons of flour into the onions & garlic as they finish sauteing in some diced bacon. Then, those can be added to the potatoes with some broth. If I didn't add the broken-up fish fillets, that could just go on to being potato soup. I like using Maggi sauce for the salt but my new "shakable" hot pepper/garlic salt can contribute some NaCl, too. Black pepper, freshly ground. The half & half goes in at the last.

Steve

 

[ninnymary]

I'm like Nyboy, I love soups in the fall and winter. Unfortunately, the only ones I know how to make is butternut soup (thanks to Journeys blog and tomatoe soup. Soup and crusty bread with butter is enough for me for dinner. But my husband and son don't think it's enough. I made butternut soup a couple nights ago and my husband asked it that was the appetizer.

Mary

 

[ducks4you]

My DD had to take the train home for a few days, so she I spent yesterday together and I took the last two sweet green peppers from my 2013 harvest and made stuffed peppers with MY peppers, MY onions and MY tomatoes (already canned.) TOTALLY yum!!
I'm not a soup maker, BUT I saw a program recently where a chef made her mother's Chicken and Rice, and those were the two ingredients. I have 6 chickens in "freezer camp", so I'm game to try it sometime this winter. Has anybody else made this?

 

[NwMtGardener]

I'm like Nyboy, I love soups in the fall and winter. Unfortunately, the only ones I know how to make is butternut soup (thanks to Journeys blog and tomatoe soup. Soup and crusty bread with butter is enough for me for dinner. But my husband and son don't think it's enough. I made butternut soup a couple nights ago and my husband asked it that was the appetizer.

Mary

Mary - i have an idea - do you think hubs would think it was more of a meal if you were serving a potato with a soup to spoon over top? I have done this a couple times recently, its a quick easy dinner if you already have the soup, just bake potatoes.

Some ideas are regular potatoes with a creamy, cheesy broccoli soup and homemade bacon chunks to put on the very top, or regular potatoes with chili over it. This one might be a little exotic for your family, but both my husband and i loooooved it! Baked sweet potatoes with a chickpea and spinach soup made with coconut milk. It was divine! Of course i added bacon

http://www.thekitchn.com/recipe-braised-coconut-spinach-chickpeas-with-lemon-164551

Ducks - i've made chicken and rice soup, but with veggies as well. Been a long time though!

 

[ninnymary]

NwMtGardener, no my husband wouldn't fall for the potatoe idea. He would love it but still thinks dinner is something like enchiladas, rice and beans. Or chicken mole, rice and beans. I can get away with just hamburger though!

Mary

 

[TheSeedObsesser]

My favorite soup would probably be butternut, not from a can - but a carton. I forget the brand, we buy it from a local market. Other than soup I would have to say my cold weather favorite would be ma's blueberry or pumpkin muffins. Or maybe pumpkin pancakes? Buckwheat pancakes? This is hard!! If you would have told me ahead of time I would have figured it out already!

Because of my Louisiana heritage on my mother's side, I love gumbo. I cook a mean pot of gumbo and can make any kind of gumbo. The worst gumbo I ever made was with rattlesnake. I have to say I prefer my rattlesnake fried. Back to gumbo.......shrimp, chicken, crawfish, sausage, crab, in any combination. Spoon some rice in the bowl and cover with gumbo.

Baymule, do you have a good recipe for gumbo that you'd be willing to share? Maybe one with ingredients that are easy to find (no rattlesnakes up here!), I could always do some substitution. I grow a lot of Okra and I'm the only one in the family that likes it, which also means that I have to cook it. I've tried okra pickled and battered and loved it!

 

[baymule]

Tonight we had soup!! I opened 2 pints, added some leftover butterbeans and broke up 4 Jimmy Dean sausage patties leftover from breakfast for supper last night. Buttered, garlic French bread and salad.

 

[baymule]

TheSeedObsesser and BJ, I will be glad to share my gumbo making with you. I don't follow a recipe, I just start throwing stuff together and somehow it comes out good. But here goes.....

In a heavy iron skillet, fry up about a pound of bacon if using those pathetic paper packages from the store. You know, the bacon sliced so thin that you could read the newspaper through it. If using a thick sliced bacon, then fry 10-12 pieces. Set the bacon aside.

Stir in flour. The idea is to stir in enough to make it thick, but not so thick that it is a paste. It has to be a consistence somewhere between liquid and paste so you can stir it. Medium heat, big spoon and a tall stool to sit on. Stir. Stir, don't stop or the roux (roo) will burn. Yeah, turn on the thingy over the stove to suck out all the smoke. You want the roux to be a dark chocolate brown. Stir constantly and don't let it burn. Burn is black-not good. Roux is dark brown=good.

This is why you want a heavy iron skillet. Now pour in about a quart of water. It will sizzle, bubble and make noise. Like when you make gravy. Now you have the base for your gumbo. No roux, no gumbo. If the bacon grease bothers you, you can put it in the refrigerator overnight and skim off the fat the next day.

Add chicken. You can use cooked, picked off the bone meat or drop in pieces of raw bone in chicken and simmer until done. Either way, it's good. Add water to cover chicken. Add seasonings, salt, pepper, garlic-fresh or powder, celery, onion, okra. You can use bell pepper, crushed red pepper, whatever you like. If you want sausage, add it just before serving. If you simmer sausage all afternoon, it cooks the seasoned taste out of it. I like to slice the link sausage and brown it in a skillet.

Cook a pot of rice.

Put a heaping spoon or two of rice in a bowl and ladle in the gumbo. Add a dash or half a bottle of Tabasco to taste. Mmmmmmm

Shrimp gumbo, get everything else simmered and done before adding shrimp. If you simmer shrimp all afternoon, it will turn to mush and then cook to little pieces. Ask me how I know.

Oh, the bacon you cooked so you could have the grease-if you haven't eaten it all by now, crumble it up and throw it in the pot.

Now go make a pot of gumbo and post pictures of it!!

 

[TheSeedObsesser]

Thanks so much baymule! I have this thread under my favorites and a sticky note on my PC monitor. I can try looking at my local Meijer's for okra (they sometimes have some of the more "unusual" produce) but all of mine have been used up on pickles and I just can't figure out how to make it last any other way! It goes bad about as fast as the plants produce! (Can you freeze it?) Even if I could, "Ole Reliable" (my nickname for my computer) won't let me upload pictures for any of the forums I'm on. It will let me use one of my photos for my avatar, though. Ole Reliable is probably about eight years old and still has windows vista! I don't want to sound like I'm making excuses, that just happens to be the case. I'm a little bit limited here. :/

 

[baymule]

That's ok, just a good description of how good it is will do.

Yes, you can freeze okra. it's easy. Do you have a foodsaver? If so, chop okra like you are going to fry it and seal it in a foodsaver bag. Toss in freezer. If you don't have a foodsaver, then chop okra or leave whole, whatever way you want to keep it. Spread on a cookie sheet and put in an oven at 300 degrees for a few minutes until it is steamy. Let it cool and bag in Ziploc bags and freeze. The blanching ( heating) stops the enzyme action that all raw vegetables have. If you don't stop the enzymes, then when you that it out it has an off taste. Why the foodsaver works with no blanching is because it is airtight and sealed.