Superhero Fruit

This morning, I awoke to bright sun, and it was glorious. Almost. My sinuses had decided to declare war - kamikaze style. Still, I persevered. The morning was productive, bouts of play interspersed with bouts of chipping away at a deskful of clutter.

Outside, it was 58 degrees. Kids trickled outside all afternoon, their numbers increasing with each bus drop-off and parents' commutes from driveways to backyards. I couldn't wait to get outside and spend the afternoon "finding spring" with Audrey. I had a plan. It was glorious. Almost.

First, Audrey ignored my warning about her decibel level while singing and woke her brother. In a rare display of fussiness, he could not be comforted until I resorted to cozing him into the infant carrier and walking around the house with him as my kangaroo pup. Out her usual one-on-one time, Audrey resorted to the any-attention (read: negative)-is-good-attention mindset. She brought her A game, as did I. She upped the ante. I bluffed with the best of them. We carried on this way until well after her father arrived home. I kept hoping for a mulligan. But they don't have mulligans in poker (or parenting). Finally, she called, and there I was forced to play my hand. I went all in. No walk to the playground. No finding spring.

An afternoon spent in a behavioral stalemate while the first warm day of spring slips you by is anything but glorious, no matter how necessary. The day may have gone down like a sinking ship, but thanks to a fun bath time and a favorite dish, the evening was rescued.

I informed Audrey that I had made a favorite dish of hers, a dish that my mother used to make for my sisters and me, one I have been referring to as Hot Fruit (I can't remember what we called it growing up). She smiled, excited. Then she said, "I wasn't very nice today," followed by an apology. I might just have to rename the dish - something more in keeping with its superhero powers. Hot Damn! Fruit, at the very least.


Hot (Damn! Wonder Woman Wishes She Had Some of This Hiding Under Her Cape - Toddler Apology-Inducing) Fruit:

1 large can sliced pears
1 large can sliced peaches
1 large can cherry pie filling
2 Tbsp. brown sugar
1 tsp. cinnamon

Drain the pears and peaches. Combine all items in an oven-safe dish. Bake on 350 degrees for 40-60 minutes. Stir occasionally (although, given the days events, stirring took a backseat tonight and it turned out just fine). Glorious.


(The picture above doesn't do the dish justice, but that's what happens when the day and good natural lighting pass you by).

Preparation: Food

Sorry if my absence yesterday had some of you wondering if we had made an early trip to the hospital to welcome a new little guy. Nope. Not yet. This mama just took a little break, well, from blogging, at least. Jason spent the day home from work, under the weather and slightly concerned about the onset of some major backaches I've been having this week. I busied myself with a run to the pharmacy, which inspired some grocery shopping (the grocery store being connected to the pharmacy), which inspired a day of future food preparation.

Last month, I picked up The Best Make-Ahead Recipe cookbook by the editors of Cook's Illustrated. I had read about it online, and ran into the bookstore one day in a rush to nab the book to devour its pages later, with intentions of making the included recipes to devour later as well. I took advantage of Jason's time off for Thanksgiving to start preparing and creating a little freezer meal stash. Yesterday, with Jason home on the couch and Audrey wanting to snuggle against his legs and watch a movie, I decided to add to the stash.

Winds gusting at 30-50 miles per hour outside, and my All-American boy huddled on the couch inside, the All-American Beef Chili seemed in order. I halved the recipe and we still had enough for dinner and a quart-sized ziplock to throw in the freezer for later. I have never seen chili quite so thick, so I whipped up some rice, put it in our bowls first and served the chili on top. A side of our favorite corn muffins (recipe here) and I was on to another make-ahead recipe.

More muffins. The cookbook has a recipe for Anytime Muffins, including Apricot-Almond, Cranberry-Orange, Lemon-Poppy Seed, Banana-Pecan, and Blueberry variations. We had everything on-hand for the blueberry ones. You whip up the batter, pour it into muffin tins (or they suggest paper-lined muffin tins for easy freezing), wrap in vegetable-oiled plastic wrap and pop the tin in the freezer for 6 hours. After frozen, the muffins can be popped out of the tin and stored in plastic freezer bags. To bake, just pop them back in the tin and put them frozen into the oven. Easy peezy. Who knew? Want to try them? Jean at The Artful Parent has an abbreviated recipe here.

The muffins and chili got added to our freezer stash of other make-ahead recipes from the book: Creamy Chicken and Rice Casserole with Peas, Carrots, and Cheddar and Chicken Enchiladas, along with some of my lasagna and a couple quarts of our favorite vegetable soup (recipe here - we love it with the corn muffins mentioned above). I was hoping to build more of a stash, but we'll have to see what time allows (my daydreams are always more ambitious that reality seems to allow).

A couple notes on the cookbook, for those of you thinking of running out to get a copy. Once home studying the recipes, I noticed that this project was going to be a bit of a time absorber (the kind of project you wish you had a six-burner stove for - we have a two-burner stove). Many of the recipes call for long cook times (the chili was an hour and 45 minutes, which is enough to give my former commitment-phobe self a bit of pause). But most of the recipes serve 6-8 people. When I made the casseroles, I was able to make one for dinner that night and one to freeze. So it may not save you as much time on the front-end of the food prep as it will on the back-end. Also, several of the casserole recipes call for heavy cream. We tend to cook a little on the lighter side here. In the future I may play around with some of the heavier ingredients and see how the recipes turn out, but for now, I just stuck to the cookbook. So our meals post-baby, while a little less stress-filled, might be a bit more fat-filled. We might put on twenty pounds.

Today, Jason is back at work, and while we tried to clean up from my cooking excursion, a sink load of dishes awaits. I would love to say that everything is going to be spic-and-span in a matter of minutes, but I have 4 dozen cookies and some banana bread to bake for tomorrow (luckily the cookie dough is already frozen in the fridge). And as much as my instinct tells me to order pizza tonight, the fresh layer of snow on the ground, sinus-pressure-filled husband, and little aches that send me searching for comfort nag at me that this is a chicken noodle soup sort of day. Hopefully, my little helper feels like donning an apron today. But right now all she wants is to have me read a book about giving a cat a cupcake. Duty calls.

Handy Hand-Me-Downs

Several months ago a friend gave me a hand-me-down food dehydrator. Finding a cranberry sale, I decided it was time to take it out for a spin. We go through dried cranberries in bulk at our house. Jason and Audrey pop them individually as snacks, while I eat them everyday on my oatmeal with a shake of cinnamon and brown sugar.

With Audrey's help, I rinsed the cranberries and prepared them for dehydration. Audrey enjoyed taking them out of the colander and laying them out on the cutting board for me, sometimes counting them and other times arranging them in patterns. I liked the festive crimson outer flesh (so Christmas) and the shocking white contrast of their firm insides.



Using the dehydrator was simple enough: we rinsed the berries, sliced them, and let them boil in water for 2 minutes before laying them out flat in the dehydrator trays, setting the temperature and leaving the dehydrator to do its work. But the berries, well, they look just about right. I just had one slight oversight. Why I didn't think to include sugar (the only other ingredient listed on our dried cranberry packages in CAPITOL letters) in the berry preparation somehow, I don't know. I suppose I have too many other sweet little things on my mind these days. Hmm...this could take some fine-tuning.

My Sneaky Chef

What you get when your sous chef likes to sneak bites of the bread before it hits the French toast batter.

Hello September

The sun is still shining, but a chill lingers in the breeze. Each time we head out to the garden to collect that afternoon's bounty, I am reminded to hold on to the here and now. These just might be the last vibrant colors of summer (and oh, how I love the purple). As much as I'm looking forward to the fall, I'm letting myself linger on the colors and tastes of summer for as long as they last.

We grabbed the above vegetables from our garden, and after admiring them on the counter for a little while, it was into the saucepan for a Ratatouille of Sorts Meets Jambalaya - Kristin-Style.



Ratatouille Meets Jambalaya:

Olive Oil
1/3 Tbsp. butter
Half red onion, diced
One medium zucchini, diced
One red pepper, diced
One green pepper, diced
Two large tomatoes
One clove garlic
One smoked sausage, halved and sliced (we used turkey sausage)
1 c. arborio rice
3 c. chicken stock
Dried thyme
Salt and pepper

Heat a glub of oil olive (probably a Tbsp.) and a sliver of butter in the saucepan while chopping the veggies (except tomatoes, further instruction below).

Brown the onion. Add the garlic followed by the green pepper and red pepper. After those softened a bit, add zucchini. Blanch the tomatoes in some boiling water for just a minute until the sides start to split. Dunk tomatoes it into a bowl of ice water. After that, the skins should easily peel away. Dice and add to the saucepan.

Add the sausage, arborio rice, and one cup of chicken stock. When the chicken stock is absorbed, add another cup. When this cup of chicken stock is absorbed, add the third cup and season with a few shakes of dried thyme, salt, and pepper. After the third cup of chicken stock is absorbed, dish into bowls and head off to the table to enjoy a little summer. (Serves 4).

We hope you're enjoying the tastes and colors of your season's table, whatever they may be.

Out of the Garden and into the Sauce Pan

We came home to eight large ripe tomatoes and a basket of cherry tomatoes. I am particularly fond of these homely heirloom ones. The wisps of green streaks seeping from the stem base seem to give these guys some character: tomatoes that have been around the block - weathered. With more almost-ripe on the vine, I decided to try my hand at fresh-from-the-garden spaghetti sauce. Of course, most of the sauce recipes I could find use canned tomatoes. So I had to improvise.

First, I found this website, which shows the process, in detail, of freezing tomatoes for future use in sauces, etc. I followed the instructions to prepare my tomatoes: giving them the hot tub treatment by boiling them in a large pan of water for just a minute before shocking them in an ice bath. Poor guys. This made the skins really easy to peel off before I quartered, squeezed, seeded, and drained them. Then it was time sauce it up: tomato-style.

I found this recipe for Giada De Laurentiis' Simple Tomato Sauce. Of course, it calls for canned crushed tomatoes. I threw caution to the wind and ignored this. I halved the recipe and when it was time to dump in the crushed canned tomatoes, I threw in my fresh tomato quarters. Then I waited. For an hour.



Luckily, I have just the thing to distract one from worrying too much about the state of spaghetti sauce in the form of a two-and-a-half-year-old blond. After a stint of trying to convince her that she had successfully "washed the dishes" (which entailed her climbing upon a stool, scaling the counter, and hanging herself over the sink so she could run water and soap into the pile of dishes I had amassed - with some cherry tomatoes and the wooden tomato basket thrown in for good measure) the sauce was almost done. The tomatoes had cooked down a bit with tomato chunks throughout. This went into the food processor where, after a quick pulse, it thickened into a traditional-looking tomato sauce. Except, it's orange. So it looks a bit more like creamy tomato soup. But, it still tastes yummy. Roma tomatoes are the ones typically used for sauces like this. We didn't grow those in our garden. Maybe they make red sauce. For now, we've got orange. Good thing it's one of Audrey's favorite colors.

Catching Up

Lately, my blog has been a little deceptive. I have not been reading The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini for months and months. In fact, I think it took me all of two weeks to devour it page-by-page. There are some horrific events portrayed in this novel, but one message that struck me is that no matter what the circumstances of our home country (hometown, etc), a national past time (or regional/family one) has a way of uniting us and bringing us back home again when nothing else can.

Of course, reading about the kite tournaments made me want to make a kite with Audrey. I assumed I would write one post about the book and the kite we made. But, we never got around to making a kite this spring. I'm hoping to move it to the list of projects for the fall.



In the meantime, I have still been reading, but have failed to update the "Now Reading" section of my blog. First, there was Julie & Julia by Julie Powell. I was in the cookbook section of the library looking for a cookbook, obviously, when I ran across this one. I had seen posters for the movie so I thought I'd give the book a quick read. And, quick it was. This was not quite what I was expecting. I think I envisioned a little more food/cooking talk and less of a memoir. But, memoir I got, which now seems to be exactly what I should have expected since the writer wasn't someone focusing on cooking before her Julie/Julia Project (for those of you who haven't seen the movie trailers, Julie Powell makes it her mission to make all 524 recipes in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking in one year). This is daunting task, enough. But what I found jaw-dropping was all the dirt Powell fits between the covers of the book - from affairs to office politics, etc. Of course, I couldn't put it down as I wondered if any of her friends and family were still on speaking terms with her. Those of you sensitive to cursing or Republican jokes - this is not your book. A professor of mine gave this advice on including cursing in your writing: use it sparingly so that it has an impact when you do use it, or, use it so frequently that after a while your reader no longer notices (the movie Good Will Hunting comes to mind). This book lends itself to the latter option. (My professor gave no advice on the appropriate frequency of Republican jokes in writing).

Of course, what I keep thinking about when I remember this book has nothing to do with the personal dramas depicted or the food, really. What sticks out is a little fact about Julia Child: She didn't go to cooking school and begin the career that we all associate with her until she was 37. I have to say, I love this. I'm all about slow starts and late-found passions. I hate the conception that 37 or 57 or 77 is too late to begin again, learn a new skill, find a new direction. I believe in the slow simmer. I would hate to find all my best flavor extracted by a quick boil. Oh no. I want the slow simmer - to get good and aged and seep in new flavors every once and a while.

So now, I've moved on to Julia Child's memoir with Alex Prud'homme, My Life in France. To be honest with you, it's not a memoir I would have imagined myself reading before. If I had to choose a European cuisine to master, French wouldn't be it. Unlike Julia, my favorite city is not Paris (although, I could eat the pain du chocolat I was introduced to there - essentially chocolate baked in a puff pastry - every day). But after reading that she began this whole process of mastering French cuisine at the age of 37, I'm interested in hearing just how this all came about.

So in honor of Julie Powell's brave experiment and Julia Child's inspiration (and the mountain of cucumbers in our refrigerator), I made Julia's Concombers au Buerre, or Baked Cucumbers last night. While these got rave reviews on the website where I found the recipe, and in Julie & Julia, they were a little too tangy for me (I might have used too much vinegar). Maybe I need to try a different variation.

(Oh, I also read The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold while in Dallas. It had been on my list for a while, ever since I learned that the narrator is a deceased character, which seemed an interesting perspective for a writer to tackle. Sebold does this creatively and seamlessly, and I flew threw this book in a week.)

And now we're up to date with my reading - and I still have a mound of cucumbers in my fridge.

First Harvests and Kitchen Acquisitions

I have some quirky vices. Maybe I'm not the only one. Chances are, I am. I could peruse kitchen stores for hours daydreaming about the dishes I want to buy - dishes that would stay in my china cabinet untouched most of the year, because, let's face it: you can only use so many dishes at a time. Of course, it doesn't just stop at the dishes. Utensils, appliances, cutting boards: if it pertains to getting food on the table, I'm intrigued. It's through this fascination that the Wilton Popover Pan (pictured above) came to live in our kitchen. I have to admit, I'd never thought much about Popovers and had no real desire to make them. Then, a couple months ago while ambling through the aisles at Target, I saw this pan on clearance for $5 and change. Suddenly, I couldn't live without it. A popover pan was exactly what my kitchen had been missing. So the pan came home with us, and found a place on our cabinet shelves, and sat there. For months. It's not that I didn't think about making popovers. I just never got around to it - until Tuesday night. Tuesday, I made Parmesan Garlic Rosemary Popovers. The recipe was conveniently located on the back of the pan's label. (Unfortunately, Wilton's website, www.wilton.com, doesn't list it, but it does list several other yummy-sounding dessert recipes.) The popovers were a success, and a successful batch of popovers made that pan purchase seem like a smart idea, indeed.



So what to eat with Parmesan Garlic Rosemary Popovers? We came home to find zucchini ready-to-be-picked in the garden, so we settled on Jamie Oliver's Beautiful Zucchini Carbonara printed in Jamie at Home.

Here is our adaptation:


Salt some pasta water and bring to a boil. Prepare a box (about 14 oz) of penne pasta according to box instructions.


Quarter 2 large zucchini and discard seeds. Thinly slice quartered pieces.


In a small bowl, mix 4 egg yolks, 1/2 c. heavy cream, and 1 c. freshly grated Parmesan cheese. Season with salt and pepper and set aside.


Heat a large saucepan over medium heat. Add a Tbsp. of olive oil and 8 oz. of prosciutto, chopped into pieces. When the prosciutto has browned a bit, add the zucchini. Season with a few good cranks of freshly ground black pepper. Add in a Tbsp. of chopped thyme leaves. Stir to combine and coat zucchini in oil. Cook until zucchini has softened.


Drain pasta, reserving 1/2 c. of the pasta water. Add penne to the saucepan with zucchini. Remove pan from heat. Stir in 1/4 c. pasta water and the cream sauce. Add in another cup of freshly grated Parmesan and the rest of the pasta water if needed to make a smooth sauce.

I got a little kick out of seeing the zucchini and thyme come straight from our garden to my cutting board. After a long drive the day before to get home, lists of errands to run and chores to do, it was nice to have something be no farther than the backyard.

Let's Dish

Many of our meals are one-dish wonders: soups, chicken pot pies, pasta dishes, Mexican concoctions built in one big casserole dish, salads topped with grilled chicken - meals that we might serve with a loaf of bread if we're feeling energetic. When we venture away from our one-dish happy place, we tend to get a little side-dish redundant: mashed potatoes, baked potatoes, red potatoes baked in herbs and olive oil (yes, we'd get along quite nicely in Ireland or Idaho), corn on the cob.


I try to keep my eyes open for new side dishes that are simple and can appease a picky-eater "waiter, I'll take the potatoes" appetite. This week I ran across this Simple Cauliflower Recipe. So easy, with five variations, it was definitely worth a shot (we even had over half a head of cauliflower in the crisper leftover from a veggie tray). You prepare a skillet by heating a couple glubs of olive oil over medium heat. The cauliflower gets chopped into tiny bite-size "trees" that brown up beautifully in the olive oil. Once browned on both sides (a feat that takes a whole of six minutes) throw in the extras from the variation of your choice. We tried the garlic, lemon zest, sea salt, Parmesan cheese version (it also called for chives, but we didn't have those on hand). With a home-cooked smell that wafted into the backyard and brought Jason in for dinner without prompting, and done before I could set the table and say, "honey, can you check the chicken on the grill," this seemed like a winner out of the gate. And it was. Warm and nutty with a bit of a crunch, it won everyone over, except the two-year-old who has better things to do than eat, like play. I vaguely remember that feeling. It passed.

Out of the Kitchen and On With the Day

Bike wheels have been spinning down the street all afternoon. The breeze carries the reminder that the swing chains at the neighborhood playground need oiled, and the older children have rushed through their homework to swap pencils with well-worn baseball mitts. This is the kind of day that makes grown men tap their feet under their desks, antsy for five o' clock to show its face. It's a day for doing just about anything, but spending a lot of time in the kitchen.

So at five o' clock, as my guy put his antsy foot to the pedal and steered the car this way, I pulled out just six ingredients (including the olive oil for the pan) and grabbed Robin Miller's recipe for Chicken and Pepper Jack Taquitos. This recipe is quick, taking just minutes to saute the ingredients and wrap them in tidy corn tortilla packages before popping them in the oven where they come out a little golden, a little crispy, and doused in melted cheese.



I love the bright red of the roasted red peppers and how spiking the skillet with one measly teaspoon of liquid smoke makes the entire kitchen smell woodsy, as if I took the time to fire up the grill and wait for the coals to gray. Most of all, I love that this recipe frees up our evening for all those other things May days were meant for, but still lets me get a little something home-cooked on the table.

Guess I Should Have Used the Blue Bowls

This week, I feel as though we're doing a little bit of old-wedding-adage cooking, if you will. As the sun plays peek-a-boo and the rain takes over tree-watering duty, we're getting in one last round of our favorite wool-weather soups before we grow so tired of them, we consider throwing the soup bowls out. Last night, I opted for Jason's favorite, South Union Spring Garlic and Potato Soup using a "borrowed" recipe by George Formaro. As I chopped the ingredients, I couldn't help but think of this as a perfect transition-of-seasons soup. Some potatoes from the pantry - a hearty "something old" that has been a winter staple; and the "something new," fresh-from-the-store green onions that have me daydreaming of the farmers markets and strawberry picking soon to come. The soup is easy to throw together, but takes time to simmer, which seems right on a day like yesterday, where fleece jackets and slow snuggling are in order, but lots of work is not.




Of course, we didn't follow the recipe to the letter, opting to substitute the spring garlic for green onions and reducing the cornstarch to 1.5 Tbsp. and the cold water to 2 Tbsp. It just seems to work better for us. A warm meal that tastes like something your mama might have made, well, that always works for us.

This Week's Meals Brought to You by the Herb Basil

I had plans to make pizza (sauce included) last week. So while at the store on Wednesday, I stopped by the produce aisle for some basil. Of course, being April Fool's Day, the joke was on me. My only basil choices were a teeny tiny .6 ounce container for $1.99 or the rather large 4 ounce container pictured above for $3.99. Coming from a family who makes shopping in bulk for the sake of a bargain look like a sport, and finding it hard to resist all those fresh green leaves, I opted for - well, you know.

So just how did we use up 4 ounces of basil before it turned into a rotting mess in the fridge? Here's a recap:

First, we used "The Quickest Tomato Sauce" recipe from Jamie Oliver's Jamie at Home for pizza sauce. I keep checking this book out from the library. With little antidotes, such as how he sneaks onions into his wife's food who is convinced she is allergic, and descriptions like "when your onions and leeks are lovely" (don't ask me what this means, but it sounds, well, lovely), this is a book with which I can curl up on the couch. [The pictures and notes on how he grows the vegetables used in the cookbook give me the slightest bit of garden envy.] The pizza sauce was great, an excellent way to kick off our basil extravaganza. Unfortunately, I am not a sauce quick draw, and regardless of what the title of this recipe indicates, I've yet to make this sauce quickly.

On Friday, I made a dish based on this recipe for Basil Grilled Chicken by Paula Deen. We used all the same ingredients, but I didn't measure anything out, instead using the toss-a-bit-of-this-and-a-pinch-of-that method. Per normal, I made too much pasta, or too little sauce. But we were still fans and ate the leftovers the next day. Something tells me my husband and Paula Deen would get along just fine.

Yesterday, I used up a heap of the basil making pesto following the How to Make Pesto Like an Italian Grandmother recipe from the blog www.101cookbooks.com. This recipe involved me brandishing a large knife for about fifteen minutes, which gives me about the same satisfaction as wielding power tools. That, coupled with the daydream of cooking like an Italian grandmother and I was a happy girl. I had heard about Heidi Swanson's blog before (which focuses on vegetarian and natural foods recipes), but this was my first visit. It won't be my last.

As soon as the pesto was finished, I opened the April 2009 edition of Cooking Light and got to work using 2 tablespoons to make an Italian Tomato Tart. I used real eggs instead of an egg substitute and Canadian bacon we had on hand rather than the prosciutto. In a happy coincidence, my friend Jill who had just returned from her honeymoon in Spain and Italy, called as I was making this. So while I had my own Italian adventure, I got to hear about her escapades touring the Cinque Terre. As for the Italian Tomato Tart, we found the flavor to be good, but after two pieces each, we were still hungry. Jason thought it needed side of something, like hash browns. I opted for a side of hot chocolate.


So there you have it, how to use 4 ounces of basil in six days. Of course, we still have some leftover pesto in the freezer. I guess another basil recipe is in our future. But tonight, I might let someone else do the cooking.

Anyone Can Make Chicken Noodle Soup

Yesterday, I woke up with a sore throat. Audrey has a cough and the sniffles. At lunchtime, I grabbed my stockpot and got to work on our first line of defense - chicken noodle soup. This is what I make when we are sick, or when I have that one random gigantic chicken breast left in the pack that seems like a ridiculously large serving. This recipe is not glamorous or complicated (and you could dress it up a hundred different ways), but it gets the job done. While it may sound crazy to start whipping out the cutting boards while you're sick to make your own soup, when I smell this brew coming together, I start to feel better right away. (And, I figure if I can stand up long enough to make my own soup, how sick can I be, right)? So here it is, the quick and dirty:

Anyone Can Make Chicken Noodle Soup:

One enormous skinless, boneless chicken breast/or 2 normal size
2 quarts chicken stock
2 large carrots
3 stalks celery*
1/2 large onion
1 c. egg noodles**
salt and pepper, to taste

Put the chicken and stock into a large stockpot and bring to a boil. Partially cover with a lid and let simmer for 20 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through. While the chicken cooks, chop the carrots, celery, and onion into pieces. When the chicken is cooked through, use tongs to remove it from the stockpot. Let it cool a on a cutting board while using a strainer to skim any fat from the top of the chicken broth. Add the vegetables to the pot and return to a boil. Let simmer uncovered for 8 minutes, or until vegetables are soft. Meanwhile, trim the chicken breasts of fat and chop into bite-sized pieces. Return the chicken to the pot add noodles. Return to boil. Simmer for 5 minutes, or until pasta is done. Season with salt and pepper.


* Most "mirepoix" - fancy French word for the combination of carrots, celery, and onion used in nearly every French recipe for stew or soup - use an equal number of carrots and celery, but my family really likes celery, so there you go, adjust accordingly.

** I prefer egg noodles, but didn't have any yesterday, so I used rotini, instead. We also go a little heavy on the noodles right now adding 2 cups rather than one, because Audrey eats just the noodles and leaves the rest of the soup.