Reproduced with permission and edited just a little, below you’ll find an email from my mom to my sister living overseas with some great tips for quick and healthy soups that are perfect for the final days of winter.

Mom's Easy Cabbage Soup

Hi Joanna,

It is with hope that you will find your own favourite way to produce the tastiest soups and minestrone type dishes that I write to you a little bit about the process.

My soup this evening was made at about 5 p.m. when I wanted to quickly produce a low calorie dish that would taste good. Sound impossible?  Well it is possible.

I chopped about a quarter of a head of green cabbage into a pot and covered it with boiling water.  I added a cup of leftover plain tomato sauce and added salt and pepper to taste.

The pot came to a full boil and I added a half cup of left over stir fry (onions, zucchini, peppers and carrots).  I chopped some parsley and added it to the pot.

This simmered for about an hour and was ready to serve.  I cooked some brown rice and served the soup in a bowl with some rice.  We topped it with grated Pecorino cheese.

A drizzle of olive oil could have been added but we got plenty of taste from the many ingredients.  Delicious!

You asked for the basic recipe for borlotti beans.  The dry beans can be soaked overnight and then cooked in a pot for about an hour. Rinse them and cover them with water and add a bay leaf and a clove of garlic in the pot.They should be cooked at a low boil and when the beans are tender and ready you add the salt to taste.  You can use the beans for many dishes.

Here is my basic minestra recipe. (More commonly known as Italian Wedding Soup.)

Ingredients:

Begin by putting the olive oil, onions, pancetta (if using), and sautee for a few minutes.  Add the celery, carrots, tomato and bring to a boil then simmer for about 5 minutes.

Add the potato and cover with boiling water (about a litre) or use broth.  This is the basic part of the soup that cooks for about 45 minutes and is ready for adding the beans.

Salt and pepper to taste and correct for liquid (add some water or broth if it is too dense). After a low boil for about 5 minutes the soup is ready.

You can serve this soup as it is or with rice, tubetti or any pasta.  It is a good idea to rest the soup before serving.  Cover it and wait 5 minutes if you can. Wink, Wink.

If you have any questions please let me know.

Love,
Mom

And the result, beans and minestra on the stove in a French kitchen.

“Always learning: Notes from a country schoolhouse” would be the name of my blog, if I had one.  I don’t think I have enough time, or thoughts, to be able to have a regular blog though, so I thought I would hijack Amanda’s.  Just for a trial run.

It is wintertime, and everyone seems to be drawn to “comfort foods.”  Different people and different regions will have a unique definition of what this means.  For me, things like meatloaf, mashed potatoes, chili and pastas.  Generally speaking, not soup.  I’m just not a soup person.

A couple of weeks ago, on my way home from work I decided to roast a chicken for dinner.  I grabbed a nice sized bird, some bacon and a couple of sausages from the meat counter. (I decided to stuff the chicken with a sausage based stuffing and blanket it in bacon)

Anyway, after I got the chicken in the oven, and had the rice cooker ready to rock, I started to think maybe I should make soup out of the chicken carcass.  Don’t ask me why.  I’d only ever made soup once before.  As I said, I’m just not a soup lover.  I’m guessing it was that draw to “comfort food” having its affect on me.

The following afternoon on my way home for work I realized I needed carrots, onion and celery to start my soup. (Why exactly we use those three to make a base – mirepoix - I have no idea.)  I knew I had onions at home, but likely not carrots and most definitely not celery.  Realizing that I would never use an entire bunch of celery, even if it would last for a year in my fridge, I came up with an alternative way of getting what I needed.  I went to the local Casey’s Grillhouse, had a beer and ordered a side of celery and carrots to go. Just 99 cents!  Brilliant!  I got just enough and wouldn’t have the leftovers rotting in the veggie drawer.

The making of mirepoix, onions, carrots and celery.

So as I was boiling down the carcass in one pot and starting my mirepoix in another, while also making dinner (I decided it was a two day event to make soup) my wife says “are you making dumplings too? I love dumplings”

My memories of dumplings as a kid would not fall into the “comfort food” category.  My mother is a fabulous lady.  Happy, generous and still pretty spry for close to 80, but she has never been a great cook.  Dumplings as a kid were these lumpy doughy things that were likely meant to fill a person up, but really had no flavour or appeal.

And she wanted me to make dumplings?

Okay, why not.  Most things I try come out better than they should, so it was worth a try.  I found a recipe online that sounded okay, and got mostly good ratings.

The making of dumplings.

This one single recipe has made me a fan of soups again and made dumplings one of my new favourite foods.  They are soft, smooth, melt-in-your-mouth yumminess.

I used this Bobby Flay recipe on foodnetwork.com with some small tweaks.

Ingredients:

1 cup milk
1/2 cup butter
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1 cup all-purpose flour
3 eggs

Directions:

Bring the milk and butter to a boil, add salt and nutmeg. Remove from heat and immediately add flour stirring until dough leaves the sides of the pan. Incorporate the eggs, 1 at a time, forming a sticky dough.

(I used large eggs and needed to add about 1/4 cup of extra flour, oh, and used garlic powder instead of nutmeg.)

Bring soup to a nice boil.  Add spoon-sized balls of dough and simmer until dumplings rise.

Chicken Soup with Dumplings

I roasted a chicken again this week (this time stuffed with a head of garlic) just so I could make soup with dumplings again.

Ah, comfort food!

Jack O'Lanterns made from food cans.

So this is going to be one of those tangents the blog title refers to. I’ve been in a crafty mood lately so I thought I’d share a fun idea for upcycling old cans to make Halloween lanterns. (They are food cans so I guess this is kind of food-related!)

Here’s what you’ll need:
-old cans (I used old bean, pineapple, tomato and dog food cans, but bigger coffee cans would be great too.)
-power drill or a hammer and a nail
-orange spray paint
-black acrylic paint
-small paint brush
-battery-powered tea lights

Wash out the cans and remove the labels, making sure there are no sharp edges.

Find some jack o’lantern patterns online or create your own and draw the design on the can with a marker.

Instead of carving, drill holes along the lines of the pattern or hammer the holes in with a nail. Wipe off any additional marker or it may streak when you apply the spray paint.

(If you’ve got little ones, you may want to file down the inside of the cans where the holes can be a little sharp.)

Spray paint the cans with orange spray paint. I didn’t use a primer, but I totally should have. After about half a dozen coats it still didn’t come out quite as orange as I would have liked.

Finally paint over the design with some black paint so the lantern looks great in the daytime too.

Pop in a battery-powered candle and voila! Eternal Jack O’Lanterns. I may add some green wire to hang them and look like stems too.

I got the original idea for these on Pinterest via Saved By Love Creations and I think I may try lanterns for other seasons one day. They are super cheap and cheerful!

Ginger Cookies

The start of fall for me brings thoughts of creamy soups and spicy dishes to help warm you up from the inside out.

It also brings my wedding anniversary, so I decided to take one of my husband’s favourite things, hot and spicy ginger, and amp it up a bit.

I found this great Ginger Snap Recipe and just upped the ginger quotient by doubling the amount of fresh ginger in the recipe.

The cookies came out delicious, chewy in the middle with just enough crispness on the outside for texture.

I think the key is not to overbake them. I trusted the recipe, even though they didn’t seem quite done and they were perfect.

Bring on the fall colours!

Honey Bake Shop's Peanut Butter and Chocolate Cupcake

Does a place ever look so yummy from the outside that you just know that what’s inside is going to be delicious?

I don’t know why I put off visiting Uptown Waterloo’s Honey Bake Shop all summer, but it took until the end of August before I made it through the doors.

It was late afternoon when I stopped in after lunch with a friend at work, so the selection was a little low, only more than half-a-dozen cupcake flavours to choose from. (Insert quirky smile here.)

I opted for a chocolate cupcake with peanut butter frosting. It was delicious, moist and flavourful with just the right amount of frosting.

My pet peeve is cupcakes with too much frosting, and this one was just right.

They had lots of interesting flavours to choose from, truthfully, and I think next time the maple and bacon will be calling my name!

Every summer I seem to get a hankering for s’mores, those gooey chocolate and marshmallow on graham crackers treats you usually enjoy around  a campfire.

So I figured there must be a way to enjoy them without the fire part. After a few searches I found an awesome-looking recipe on a blog after my own heart The Girl Who Ate Everything.

What could be better than combining s’mores with chocolate chip cookies?

S'more Cookies

Here’s my adapted version of the recipe.

Ingredients:
3/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 cup brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla
2 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 cup mini marshmallows
2 large Hershey bars, in squares
1 package graham crackers

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 375F.

Cream together butter with white and brown sugar until light and fluffy. Then add eggs and vanilla and mix until combined.

In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, salt and cinnamon

Add the flour mixture to the butter mixer and stir on low speed.

Fold in the chocolate chips and marshmallows by hand. Chill the dough in the refrigerator for about an hour.

Place graham crackers side by side on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.

Place a rounded tablespoons of dough on each graham crackers and press down slightly with fingertips.

Bake for 5 minutes then remove from oven to press a piece of the Hershey’s bar on to each cookie.

Bake for 5 – 7 more minutes or until dough is beginning to turn golden brown at the edges. Remove to a wire rack to cool.

Place graham crackers side by side on cookie sheet.

Enjoy!

It has allowed me to discover the joys of blue potatoes, golden beets and magic beans!

Well, maybe not magic, but definitely fun to cook. They were actually delicious green beans, but one of two batches that I bought were purple to begin with.

After a quick steam though, they were back to the traditional green, though definitely a darker shade than the regular green beans.

Green and Purple Beans: The Before and After

I hope you’ve been taking advantage of the fresh produce from growers in your area!

Ice Cream Cone Cupcakes

If you ever want to impress a roomful of kids, or in my case, your co-workers, make a tray of these adorable cupcakes.

They’re ridiculously easy to make, especially if you take a few shortcuts.

The question I got the most after sharing these was ‘So you just put the cones in the oven and they didn’t burn?’ The short answer is yes, but I have no idea why.

The next question was ‘How did you get them to stand up?’ The answer to that question is muffin tins. They are a wonderful thing, but I don’t recommend the silicone type for this project.

I followed this recipe, which is a basic vanilla cake and used store-bought cones, vanilla buttercream frosting and pretty sprinkles and candied cherries.

You could also follow this recipe, which basically means picking up cake mix, the flat-bottomed ice cream cones and the frosting of your choice.

The trick with these cupcakes is not to overfill the cones, it doesn’t take much batter for them to puff up and fill the cones, or spill over the edge.

Cones should be less than two-thirds full of batter so they don't overflow while baking.

After my first batch came out of the oven, I found myself spooning some of the batter out of the next batch of cones to help prevent more  overflowing.

Pre-frosting cupcakes.

After they cooled, I just piped the frosting on using a star tip and added sprinkles and candied cherries until I had a variety of ‘ice cream shop’ looks.

These were so impressive, I’m really starting to think about trying one of the other ‘cupcakes that look like something else altogether’ recipes.

Crudites

Usually I share recipes when I talk about delicious homemade meals, but after our Father’s Day brunch at my sister’s place, I couldn’t help sharing the beautiful food, even though I don’t have the recipes. Not yet, anyway.

The table was covered with hors d’oeuvres when we arrived; raw vegetables, chips, salsa, guacamole and a few other goodies.

First up, possibly my favourite thing. Pancetta baked into cups, filled with guacamole and topped with a little popper cracker.

Pancetta Cups with Guacamole

I don’t know if I can say enough good things about these, somehow the avocado was the perfect foil for the salty Italian-style bacon.

Next up, smoked salmon served with toast, capers, thinly sliced onion and a homemade herbed mayonnaise.

Smoked salmon with all the fixings.

So good. Enough said. Did I mention we’re still talking about the starters?

The main course was a lovely strata served with bacon, bacon and bacon.

The strata and bacon!

Yes, you read that right, three kinds of bacon. There was regular bacon, candied bacon and Canadian/peameal bacon, all delicious. Not to take away from the strata, which was wonderfully flavourful and fluffy.

A strata is kind of like a really big omelette that incorporates the toast right into it.

There are some good recipes here and a healthier one here if you’d like to try it out, and I certainly recommend you do.

Biggest kudos to the hosts of this delicious meal, go Nat and Jay!

Baked Salmon and a bottle of wine.

At first I thought it was a little too trendy, a little too chic (it is a ‘restobar’ after all), but it’s a good thing I try not to judge a book by its cover.

Dinner at Che Restobar was a lovely experience, great food, great wine, wonderful service and a lovely time was had by all.

I can’t take any credit for actually going to the restaurant, it was chosen for a family birthday, but I’m thankful to whoever chose it.

We had a great evening, and I discovered passionfruit cream sauce and yucca fries are delicious.

While it is a little pricey, I think as a special occasion spot, it’s worth a try. If you go, try the empanadas, I can’t remember what the spicy sauce served with them was called, but couldn’t get enough of it.