Tag Archives: Recipes

Creamy Chicken Tortilla Soup

This is a easy Crock Pot soup my high school girlfriend Nancy shared with me that is filling and will warm you up.

Ingredients:

1/2 Cup chunky salsa (mild, medium or hot)
1 lb. boneless skinless chicken breast cut into 1/2 inch pieces
2 Cups frozen corn
1 can (approx 15 oz.) black beans rinsed and drained
2 cans (10-3/4 oz. each) cream of chicken soup
1 can (approx 15 oz.) diced tomatoes with jalapenos or green chilies ( choose according to the spice level/heat  you prefer)
1/2 cup water
1 tsp. ground cumin
1 or 2 6inch corn tortillas cut into strips
1 Cup shredded cheddar cheese
1/3 Cup chopped fresh cilantro

1. Stir the salsa, chicken, corn and beans in a 4 quart slow cooker/crock pot.

2. Stir the soup, tomatoes, water, cumin together in a separate bowl. Pour over the crock mixture.

3. Cover and cook on low for 5 hours or on high for 2 to 2-1/2 hours.

4. Stir in tortilla strips, cheese and cilantro. Cover and cook an additional 15 minutes.

Enjoy with warm tortillas or corn bread!

Thankful Thursday

I have two new recipes up on the Mennonite Girls Can Cook blog this week. The Rustic Potato Salad has been enjoyed already on three separate occasions at this old house and the Chicken Tetrazzini Soup is also a new favorite. It has just the right amount of creaminess and the lemon zest adds a wonderful finish.

Last night my son, daughter in love and I enjoyed a beautiful shirt sleeve night at Century Link field in Seattle at the Seattle Sounders Soccer game. It was especially fun for us since our Sounders finally won a game with a 3-0 shutout. We’ve been on a tying streak and then we lost our last game in Salt Lake City. Winning is a treat and spending time with these two brings joy to me.

In 2007 and 2008 I participated in a weekly meme called Thankful Thursday. Here’s one of my posts from October 17, 2007.

I Will Always Love Your Name

Here I am and I have come

To thank You, Lord, for all You’ve done

Thank You, Lord

You paid the price at Calvary

You shed Your blood, You set me free

Thank You, Lord

No greater love was ever shown

No better life ever was laid down

And I will always love Your name

And I will always sing Your praise

You took my sin, You took my shame

You drank my cup, You bore my pain

Thank You, Lord

You broke the curse, You broke the chains

In victory from death You rose again

Thank You Lord

and not by works, but by Your grace

You clothe me now in Your righteousness

You bid me come, You make me whole

You give me peace, You restore my soul

Thank you, Lord

You’re making me to be like You

To do the works of the Father, too.

written by Paul Oakley (copyright 1997 Kingsway Thankyou Music/PRs/EMI Christian Music Publishing

I’m still thankful and always will be thankful for Jesus and what he’s done for me.

I’m thankful for Dear and the family God has given us to love and enjoy and grow alongside.

I’m thankful for good food and the Mennonite Girls Can Cook who have become some of my nearest and dearest friends.

I’m thankful for good bloggy friends. Some of you I have met and some I haven’t met in person but I cherish you nonetheless. You have encouraged me, prayed for me and my family, entertained me, taught me, inspired me and made me laugh out loud. I’ve traveled to places I’ll never be able to go through your posts and I’ve enjoyed your adventures. I’ve grieved with some of you as you’ve said goodbye to your spouses ad other loved ones. I’ve also grieved the loss and miss posts from bloggers who have died. Blogging has been a good thing in my life, thank you Lord!

And on the lighter side of thankfulness. Thank you Lord for my enjoyment of soccer! 🙂

Linking up with Michelle at It’s a Small Town Life for Thankful Thursday and tomorrow I’ll link up with Susanne at Living to Tell the Story for Friday’s Fave Five.

Some Sizzling News…

meatball kitchen 002

Click over to Mennonite Girls Can Cook to see my recipe for these delicious meatballs to make an Italian meatball sandwich with!

Opening Soon!

And check out some exciting news on a one act play, Mennonite Girls Can Cook, inspired by our blog and cookbooks premiering in September in Shipshewana, Indiana and Sugarcreek, Ohio.

True Confessions…

…this will be my last confession of 2014…

 

I have not had much experience in working with yeast doughs or doughs of any kind. I’m going to work on this in 2015. Today on Mennonite Girls Can Cook I posted my first attempts on recreating one of my mom’s wonderful Pirog пирог recipes.

The standard shape for my mom’s pirog is rectangular. They can be closed or open-faced with no crust on top.

Sometime in 2015 I will share a savory pirog that my mom used to make with a closed presentation.

Click here to get to Mennonite Girls Can Cook and my Sweet Apple Pirog пиро́г.

 

The Soup Course…

You’ll find the recipe for this soup at Mennonite Girls Can Cook today! Enjoy…

I wanted to warn some of you out there that the Farro grain is not a good choice for everyone, especially not me. Remember that lovely dish of Farro and beets I enjoyed at the restaurant on Sunday night? It totally did me in for 3 days. So beware… just because something is called healthy doesn’t mean it’s good for everyone. I’m a little weird that way. Another thing that does not agree with my system is green tea. So now you know way more than you need to know about me.

Now for the good news. My back is all better. I mailed off my Christmas cards and letter yesterday. Today I get to go visit my hairdresser and tonight we are having our first Christmas event at our house with our small group. We are going to share finger food together and exchange some from my house to your house gifts. Enjoy your Thursday!

There’s a Chill in the Air…

…so turn the heat up with Rosemary’s Soup.

 

We’ve been enjoying this soup since Sunday with some Parmesan shavings on top and good crusty bread. Dear has added a few drops of Tabasco in his and it really warms him up!

Photobucket replaced all my photos with ugly black and grey boxes and they are holding my photos hostage until I pay them lots of money. I’m slowly going through all my posts and trying to clean them up and replacing some photos. Such a bother.

Friday’s Fave Five ~ Pacific Northwest…

Time to look back over the last week and remember things we are thankful for. Please visit Susanne at Living to Tell the Story to join in with this great exercise.

Wow it’s hard to believe I’ve been in the Seattle area for almost a week already. So many favorites to share from this past week.

1. Spending time with 3 out of 4 of our children. Our daughter Katie picked me up from the airport and we stopped for lunch at the Corner Cafe in Bothell where my sister Lana G! met us for lunch. Then on Sunday I met up with our son Josh and our DIL Laura at church. What an amazing service…I needed my hankie the whole time. Later in the day Josh and Laura came by for a couple hours. I got to speak on the phone with our son Dan and hear he’s doing well at Academy. He graduates on November 30th. Good times…

 

2. Getting some things done around the house that really needed to be done. Katie and I got the lawn mower started and I was able to mow most of the lawn before the big storm rolled in. Got soaked the last 15 minutes of mowing :0). I’m tackling one room a day inside to get a much needed deep clean done around here before Thanksgiving company arrive. I’m pleased that the guest room is ready and on Thursday I got the living room done which included dusting all these books and bookshelves!!

and the Guest Room. The couch has a very comfortable full size pull out mattress.

 

3. Walking in the sunshine along the Sammamish River trail with my friend Beth. Beth and Dave became our good friends through the friendship of our son Dan and their son Jamie that started in 2nd grade. That was over 20 years ago!!

 

4. Finding the recipe for this soup on a bloggy friend’s site and making it for dinner on Thursday night. This is a tasty soup and so easy to make!! Just scroll on down to the post after this one for the recipe and instructions.

 

5. Looking forward to seeing more of my Northwest friends. Hopefully walking with my buddies Jody and Jan on Saturday. Then looking forward to Dear joining me here on Tuesday along with our Thanksgiving company my brother Tim and his wife Letty. The room is ready Tim and Letty!!

And a bonus looking forward to…

My son Josh invited me to tag along with him to the MLS Championship Cup Game at Qwest Field on Sunday night! L.A. Galaxy is playing Real Salt Lake for the title. We’ll be sporting our Seattle Sounder Colors and making these teams feel welcomed in the Great Northwest! Since my other home is in Southern California and I was born in East Los Angeles I’ll be cheering L.A. Galaxy on to the victory!!

Photobucket is holding all my photos that I stored on their site from 2007-2015 hostage replacing them with ugly grey and black boxes and asking for a large ransom to retrieve them. It is a slow process to go through all my posts deleting the ugly boxes.

BooMama’s DipTacular!

Just in time for Football and Soccer BooMama is having a Blog Carnival for us to share dip recipes. Just click on the button to see more dips or to join in the fun. This carnival starts tomorrow, Friday. I’m going to repost this recipe that is yummilicious for y’all to try!

I was standing in the bank waiting my turn and on the television they had Giada from the Food Network making some great looking bruschetta. I got the ingredients I needed and decided to try it. Hopefully I get it right because I didn’t write anything down.

 

The ingredients she used were whole milk ricotta cheese, tomatoes seeded and chopped, fresh mint chopped, salt and pepper. I don’t remember if she used garlic so I went ahead and used a clove of garlic, also. She mixed these ingredients all together and put it into a nice serving bowl. She used Ciabatta bread that she drizzled with olive oil and grilled. After it was grilled she squeezed some fresh lemon on the slices. Your company can spread as much of the topping that they want on the slices of bread and enjoy…

If you need more specific amounts here’s what I used. About 8oz. of ricotta, 1 beefsteak tomato chopped, 10 mint leaves chopped, 1 clove garlic, minced, salt and pepper to taste. I bought a small loaf of Artisan Sea Salt Filone bread from Von’s/Safeway. This bread worked out good because it filled in the extra salt the dip needed. I will be making this again because it was duhlicious! Michelle found the link for the original recipe  and you can find it here.

Photobucket is holding all my photos that I stored on their site from 2007-2015 hostage replacing them with ugly grey and black boxes and asking for a large ransom to retrieve them. It is a slow process to go through all my posts deleting the ugly boxes.

2008 Christmas Tour of Homes

It’s time for Boo Mama’s 2008 Tour of Homes. You can travel all over the world and see homes all decked out for the most wonderful time of the year.

A very warm welcome to you from ellen b.  in Washington State and Southern California.

The tree above is our first annual Mystery Tree. I started a new tradition last year. I walk into Home Depot look at all the tied and wrapped trees, pick one without unwrappping it, bring it home all wrapped up, and surprise our Mystery tree is unveiled and we can laugh or cry at what we ended up with. Actually it’s quite fun to pick a tree this way. Good way to lighten up during the season…

 

Like many of your homes Jesus is at the center of our Christmas celebrations and Joy! This is what you’ll see at our entry in Washington.

 

And this is from our condo  in Southern California.

 

Let me serve you a festive drink and some chocolates and let’s start our tour before I serve dinner. These chocolates are the easiest things in the world to make. Just melt 1 bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips and 1 bag of butterscotch chips then throw in some pecans or walnuts or whatever nut you like, spoon them onto a parchment lined cookie sheet and let them cool and voila you have candy. I’m so darn sorry I forgot whose blog I saw these on. If you happen to visit here let me know if it was you and I’ll give you credit!!

 

Another collage of my little fake Christmas tree with lights that I bought for the condo from a local thrift store here in Camarillo, California. I’m usually in the State of Washington the whole month of December and only put up a tree there but this year is different and we’re not flying to Washington till Christmas day so we need something at the condo so people won’t think we are part of the Grinch family!

Now if you visit us in Washington I could serve you at this table.

 

Or from this Christmas table in Southern California.

 

Here is what I will be serving and what is part of our traditional Christmas Eve meal.

 

We’ll have a Rib Roast, Creamed Corn, something green, and Yorkshire Pudding. (Ok, it used to confuse me that they called Yorkshire Pudding pudding when it’s not pudding but a popover type bread that you bake using the hot drippings from the roast, I’m way over it now. You can make it in any pan but I bought this great popover pan that works great for them.)  After dinner we can sit by the fireplace and enjoy the tree with a cup of cocoa or coffee. If you stay for Christmas morning we’ll have those yummy Swedish Pancakes above that Dear makes for us every Christmas morning after we open our stocking gifts…

 

Now for some of the people God has put in our lives to share all the wonder of Christmas with…

 

I’d like to introduce you to our family. Our daughter Katie and DIL Laura. Our oldest son Josh with Dear. Our son Dan. Josh and his wife, our DIL, Laura. Another shot of our son Dan. Dan and Katie live in our home in Washington and take care of it while Dear and I are living in California. Josh and Laura live in Washington, too.

 

More shots of the family and extended family. The top left photo is of my sister Lana G! and I. She has a tour happening at her blog too, Above the Clouds . We have a great time blogging and tablescaping together. Dear, our daughter Katie, and me at Molbaks in front of the Poinsettia Christmas tree, Our girls…Katie and Laura, ellen b. and Dear at our 34th wedding anniversary celebration.

Thank you for taking my tour and meeting some of my family…

To see more tours click over to Boo Mama’s.

Photobucket is holding all my photos from 2007 to 2015 hostage and has replaced them all with ugly black and grey boxes asking for a ransom to have them re-published. Such a frustrating bother as I go through each post to delete the ugly boxes.