You know, cause we have a theme here every week.
It's chilly and rainy out - and it is my understanding that much of the country is under a deep-freeze at the moment, but get this, there's a chance it might snow here later. Really. Like one flake. I'll try and take a picture of it when (if) it happens.
To be honest, I can't even imagine what would happen here if it snows. I'm guessing all traffic would come to an immediate halt and a state of emergency would be called for. I sound like I'm making fun, but I'm not. Well, maybe a little.
All I know is that when it rains here, traffic gets so backed up, it's almost not worth leaving the house. I think snow would just make people cry and the only happy tears would be from the kids.
Ooh, I wonder if we'll have a snow day tomorrow.
Anywho, back to the soups. There are two of them, a potato soup and a chicken-vegetable soup.
I made the chicken and vegetable one last night for dinner; I wasn't at all sure if anyone would eat so I made some emergency-backup-hamburgers (doesn't everyone?) but I was super happily surprised - everyone ate the soup. We never all eat anything, except maybe chocolate chips cookies and you know what, even Josh would prefer oatmeal cookies, so never mind.
And there was only minimal complaining during dinner, which is huge.
I have no picture of this soup, it was that good. I can show you a picture of the empty pot if you like - it's still sitting in the sink, but no soup to show. It's gone - which makes me smile because it got eaten, but also a little sad because I could totally go for some soup right now.
This is how I made it - it's a combination of a plain whatever-you-have-in-the-house vegetable soup and a chicken meatball recipe from Goldie. You remember Goldie, right? She's currently freezing her leggings off in NJ. Maybe she should make some soup. Goldie, make soup, k?
I started by sauteing two large and diced onions in some olive oil. Don't be scared when you see that this whole recipe is a little loosey-goosey. Use what you have and it'll be yummy.
Anyway, saute those onions and throw in some garlic powder. I used a few big shakes but if you like, you can pull on your fancy-pants and mince up several cloves of garlic. Same with the carrots. Over-achievers can feel free to peel and dice up a few carrots. I threw in three handfuls of baby carrots. I also added in some salt, maybe a teaspoon.
Slice up ten or so white mushrooms and a couple of diced zucchini and throw those into pot too and let them cook until they are soft.
Add water to cover the vegetables and then some.
Bring the soup to a boil.
While the soup is coming to a boil, mix 1lb of ground chicken, 1 egg and a little garlic powder, cumin and paprika. Why those spices? Because those are the spices that I use to make schwarma and also, those are the only spices I have. Before we discovered schwarma, the only spices we had were salt and garlic powder. We've really expanded our horizons these past few months.
Form the chicken mixture into little meatballs and carefully place them into the boiling soup. Lower the flame to a low simmer and let the soup cook - mostly covered by a lid or else all the soup will evaporate - for about 40 minutes or until the largest baby carrot is soft.
It's yum.
But, wait, I feel bad because it's very hard to follow a recipe like this, so here is the ingredient list. Amounts are totally at your discretion.
Chicken-Meatball-Vegetable Soup
olive oil
diced onions
sliced mushrooms
baby carrots
diced zucchini
garlic powder
salt
cumin
paprika
egg
ground chicken
water
The final verdict here:
The kids ate the liquid from the soup and the chicken meatballs very happily. A couple of kids had a few carrots and once I handed out some leftover challah, three out of four ate the vegetables and didn't even realize it. Josh ate everything but the mushrooms.
Stay tuned for tomorrow's edition of Soup Week: Potato Soup.
:)
Jen