Chicken Mushroom Orzo Soup

So let's say you are like me and you like roasting a chicken. And let's say you're also like me and your family eats 2 drumsticks, a breast, and maybe a wing or two, and leaves you with lots of thigh meat and a whole chicken breast and maybe a wing, too. And let's just say you're so much like me that when you finish dinner, you pick off all the remaining meat and make a broth out of the carcass.

Well, if you're usually like me, then you have a lot of broth the next day and you make chicken soup.

But today, see, today I decided that I didn't want plain old chicken soup, with veggies and chicken and maybe noodles or rice. In fact, I wanted to take my sister's yummy beef and mushroom and orzo recipe and turn it into a chicken soup.

So I did. Here it is:

Chicken Mushroom Orzo Soup

Dark Meat Leftovers from a roasted chicken, shredded

6 cups chicken broth

1 cup (dry) orzo

1 box mushrooms, sliced

1 small onion

2 cloves garlic

cooking spray

salt/pepper/sage/thyme

Saute onions and garlic in cooking spray until the onions soften. Add mushrooms and cook until they start to give off some liquid. Season with salt, pepper, a little sage, and thyme (don't overdo the sage. a little goes a long way). Add chicken broth and chicken and bring to a boil. Add orzo and cook 9 minutes more. Serve with a nice hearty bread. Delicious.

Mushroom Soup

About a year ago, when I was pregnant with my baby girl, I was having a moment of feeling that meat was icky and soup was delicious. My friend Charlotte gave me this lovely recipe for a mushroom soup that feels creamy but has no cream in it. I changed it up a little bit, because I wanted to add onions and remove some of the fat. In all, it's delicious and about a point per serving (based on 6 servings)

cooking spray
1 medium onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 boxes of mushrooms, chopped really well
salt, pepper, sage, thyme, parsley (or, as Charlotte says, "season with stuff you like")
1 box (4 cups) chicken or vegetable broth

Saute onions and garlic in cooking spray. When onions become soft, add mushrooms. Season with stuff you like (my seasonings above). Add one box of fat free chicken or vegetable broth. Bring to a boil and reduce to a simmer, and allow to simmer at least 1/2 hour. Blend with an immersion blender until mostly smooth.

I had some fresh parsley, so I served this garnished with a little chopped parsley. Delicious!

Whitney's Beef Mushroom Orzo Soup

Today, a guest blogger of sorts. Or rather, my sister sent this to me, and I made it today, and it was fabulous:

"I've been making this soup so long I can't remember the actual recipe. So bear with me.

Fry a small chopped onion in a soup pot in little bit of oil until translucent. Add about a pound of very lean ground beef and break up while cooking. Then add some mushrooms--white, baby bella, whatever cheap mushrooms you have. I usually buy a package of already-cut-up mushrooms and use most of it, but it's really to taste. When the mushrooms get small, add about a tsp of sage and a tsp of thyme. Cook until fragrant, a few minutes.

This is where we break off OAMC from dinner tonight. If this is dinner tonight, add about 6 cups of beef broth, bring to a boil, and then add a cup of orzo or other soup pasta. (I used wild rice last time.) Cook until done.

If this is for freezing, cool the mixture and put it into a freezer bag. Add enough beef bullion cubes for 6 cups of broth. (My cubes each do 2 cups, but others do 1 cup each.) Freeze. On the day you want the soup, defrost the bag slightly under warm water, then put the frozen mixture into a pot and add 6 cups of water. When boiling, add the orzo."

I also added some salt and pepper, and I used a whole box of baby bellas for the mushrooms. They were not sliced and I was lazy so I used my Pampered Chef chopper and just chopped the heck out of them. I used Laura's Organic ground beef, which is 93% fat free. At 8 servings, weight watchers calls it 4 points per serving. We had a quart left after making it (we made it for immediate use and not for a freezer meal) so I froze the remainder so that the orzo would stop expanding. This was a quick meal and would be great for a "home late from work" quickie dinner. From the time I walked into the house to the time we were eating, less than 1/2 hour went by.

Ham, Green Bean, and Potato Soup

It's COLD in Northern Virginia, especially for people who are not used to this kind of cold! My husband asked for SOUP, and how could I deny him? Since we had no soup fixin's in the house, I asked what kind of soup he wanted, and he said, "How about Ham, Green Bean, and Potato?"

An EXCELLENT idea. I went shopping. No good green beans, but frozen ones were on sale. I decided that if I was going to make Ham, Green Bean, and Potato Soup, I was going to make a LOT of it. We had an excellent lunch, and still have a quart of soup in the fridge and 2 quarts in the freezer. Here's your recipe:

Ham, Green Bean, and Potato Soup

About 3 cups of ham--if you have leftovers then that's great, otherwise go buy one of those very small cooked hams and cut it up into about 1/2 inch cubes

3 large potatoes, also diced into 1/2 inch cubes

1 large onion, sliced

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 large bag (32 oz) of frozen green beans

2 boxes of chicken broth (32 oz) (I used low sodium because we have the ham; see note on salt in directions)

pepper

salt

1T thyme

garlic powder

1 bay leaf

cooking spray

Saute onion and garlic in cooking spray on medium. When the onion is soft, add ham and green beans and stir until green beans defrost (you can skip that part if you are using fresh) Add potatoes and chicken broth, bay leaf, thyme, pepper to your taste (I like it peppery) and a little garlic powder (think a sprinkle). Wait on the salt! I repeat! Do NOT ADD SALT yet! Your salt addition will depend on how salty your ham was to start, and you can seriously oversalt it if you add too much.

Bring it all to a boil, cover, and reduce to medium. Take a taste of the broth and add some salt if you think it needs it. Continue cooking until potatoes are soft, or longer. Remove bay leaf if you can find it, or warn everyone that there's a bay leaf to not eat :)

Makes a hearty lunch for 2 people, plus 3 additional quarts for later. Serve it with a hearty artisan bread. Fall over yourself over how good it is!

I put this into WW's recipe builder and based on 8 servings (which are NICE sized servings) it is 5 points per serving. If you use lean ham, it is 4 points.

Butternut squash and potato soup

I was going to make my other version of Butternut Squash soup, and then it morphed into something else entirely! Last week I bought this fabulous chutney-like tomatoey Indian spice mix from the Crackpot Gourmet, and to me it was screaming to be tossed in to something with butternut squash. I was intending to blend the final product but when I tasted it I really loved the texture and flavor as it was so I didn't.

1 roasted butternut squash, cut into small pieces

3 red potatoes, medium sized, diced

1 onion, diced

3 carrots, sliced

2-3 stalks celery, sliced

3 packs of Trader Joe's Condensed chicken broth packets

6 cups of water

1/3 of a container of the Crackpot Gourmet's tomatoey Indian spice mix

sprinkle of salt and pepper

A little bit of butter

Saute the onion, carrot, and celery with salt and pepper in butter until onion is soft. Add the rest of the ingredients, bring to a boil, and then simmer for about an hour. Eat.

I had intended to bring some to Smita at the farmer's market on Saturday but it was raining cats and dogs and I just couldn't bring the kids out to the market in that mess. I even packed it up and was going to have Adam bring it, and then Micah wanted to go with him and then M. fell asleep in the car and they didn't go and well you get the picture. Meanwhile, it was awesome. It fed my family plus a friend very well for dinner as a side dish to a pork roast from Dinner Zen, and I still have a quart of the stuff in the freezer. Fantastic.

Fresh Corn & Tomato Soup, Now With a Kick!

I have been making Fresh Corn and Tomato Soup for YEARS. I mean, so many years that the recipe is actually on my old web site here. But I rarely look at the recipe anymore, and I've found that it has evolved significantly and can use a revisiting.

Yesterday morning I was at the Reston Farmer's Market and talking to The Jam Lady from Crackpot Gourmet. She has recently added a bunch of spice mixes to her inventory, so she is now the Jam and Spice Lady. Anyway, we were talking about cooking and what's in season, and I lamented that there is NO cilantro anywhere this year, because the weather is so hot and muggy that it's all wilting. I was specifically sad because this is one of the few weeks when there are tomatoes and corn and cilantro (usually) and they are all peaking at the same time and therefore make the BEST fresh corn and tomato soup EVER! 

Anyway, she agreed. And then she pointed out that she had a spice mix that used a lot of cilantro--her cilantro jalapeno salsa verde. We gave it a taste and decided that it would be the perfect replacement, to both give the soup a cilantro glow but also to give it a bit of a kick!

So here it is. The revised revised and revised again version of Fresh Corn & Tomato Soup, originally from Laurel's Kitchen but now a new and kicky thing! Of course, if you want to make this, try making your own spice mix with cilantro, jalapenos, lime juice, some garlic, salt, sugar, and oil to hold it all together. Or just do the original version, and chop cilantro to mix in at the very end!

Fresh Corn & Tomato Soup, Now with a Kick!

1 onion, chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
3 cloves garlic, pressed
2 T Smart Balance
5 ears of corn
5-7 mixed heirloom tomatoes (think 6 medium and go from there)
1 box of vegetable broth
1/2 - 1 t salt

Cilantro-Jalapeno Salsa Verde (for mixing in at the end)

Saute onion, celery, and garlic in Smart Balance until tender. Strip the corn from the cobs, and chop tomatoes coarsely. Add corn, tomatoes, broth, and salt to the sauteed vegetables, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to a simmer and cook covered for 1/2 hour. 

Ladle into bowls and top with a dollop of the salsa to be stirred in. Or, stir in cilantro leaves, and it's ready to serve.

Time for: Cold Cucumber Soup!

This is definitively a Farmer's Market recipe!! Just about everything in the recipe was gotten from our CSA share or our local farmer's market! When Dill arrived in our share this week, this is what I thought of.

I have made this recipe before, but I changed it around this time, both to use more local ingredients and because my knowledge has changed somewhat since I first made the recipe. The original is here on my old web site. It is good but came out thin. Since then I have learned about greek style yogurt. The new version is below.

Note that I use Persian Cucumbers. This is because I can get them. If you can't find any, use kirby or any small cucumber with small seeds. I also used garlic curls (also known as scapes), because they are milder than garlic. But if you can't find any, 2 garlic cloves will work just as well)

Cold Cucumber Soup
3 cups Greek Style Yogurt (I get mine at Trader Joe's)
2 cups milk (I use 2%)
4 Persian Cucumbers
2 garlic curls, chopped very finely
2 T finely chopped fresh dill
1T finely chopped fresh mint
2T fresh lemon juice
1/2t salt
fresh ground pepper to taste

Leave the skins on the cucumbers. Finely grate two of the cucumbers, and finely slice the other two (cut the ones you are slicing lengthwise first and then finely slice them. If you are using Persian or kirby cucumbers there is no need to remove the seeds. If you are using a larger cucumber, peel and seed them first)

Whisk the milk into the yogurt until well blended. Add in the cucumbers, garlic curls, dill, mint, lemon, salt, and pepper. Stir well. Cover and refrigerate for at least 2 hours and serve ice cold.