Weekend Positives

HAPPY SUNDAY and Happy Valentines Day! How was everyone's weekend?! Mine has been pretty good, I can't complain. Saturday was errand day. My son and I had a few things to do, so off we went. My son (17) and I are close, as is my daughter (20) and I. Sometimes, when we are driving, he is in his own world. He has his headset on and is usually either lost in his own music or some kind of sports cast/radio, which is fine. I get it. We do have different music tastes. However, yesterday, for whatever reason, even though he had his headset with him, he never put on his headset. We talked. It was so nice. So when I get those little moments, they are cherished beyond measure. I don't really know how I got here so fast with a 20 and a 17 year old. I can still see them as babies in my head. 

Anyway, as I wipe the tears away, we went to the bank, out for a little bite to eat, and I had to run an errand downtown. Well, I completely forgot that he wanted to go to Walmart so he could get a little something for his girlfriend for Valentines day. He mentioned it when we were about 15 minutes from home and without even a second thought, I turned around and headed back towards Walmart! I think I was enjoying our time together so much that I just didn't want our day to end. So while I was there, I was able to get my ingredients for my soup I made last night and of course, I am going to share it with all of you!

This recipe is for a comforting chicken, orzo and ginger soup. This soup is always requested by my daughter when she is especially feeling a little under the weather and sometimes, just because she's in the mood for it. Although for last night, it was because she was feeling some sinus issues coming on, so this soup was her request. 

This soup, very easy peasy and, if you're on a tight budget, this is very inexpensive to make as well. As I usually most always do, the recipe has been doubled. But here is the original:

Chicken Orzo and Ginger Soup
adapted from: La Fuji Mama

9 c. chicken stock
2 oz. (about 2 Tbsp.) grated ginger (or more if you’re like me!)
1 oz. (about 1 Tbsp.) minced garlic
8 oz. orzo pasta
2 c. shredded cooked chicken
7-8 sprigs of cilantro, chopped
4-6 green onions, thinly sliced

1. Place chicken stock, ginger, and garlic in a pot and bring to a boil.

2. Add orzo and cook as per package directions (10-12 minutes) or until al dente.

3. Add chicken and cook for an additional minute, or until the chicken is warmed through.

4. Take off heat and stir in cilantro and green onions.

Now of course, if you have been reading my recipes, you know I always have to play around to suit it to my tastes. So my suggestion to you is, if you love garlic and ginger, have at it and add as much as you like, or stick to the basic recipe to try it, and play around with the flavors later. Please keep in mind that these pictures depict the double amount for a doubled recipe.

Garlic! I LOVE IT!!! Can you tell?! The recipe calls for 1 Tbsp, and ummm, well this is a lot more than that. I used heaping tablespoons, and I want to say probably about 6 of them. I used the minced garlic in a jar because it's just easier. Plus, I don't know, I can never find really big cloves of garlic. I always get little puny ones, which are fine to add a little flavor to some chicken or what not, but for a soup like this that I like to use a lot of, I go for the jar!

This is ginger root. I am sure I can get this in a jar somewhere, but personally, I find great joy in peeling it and grating it. Ginger has such a fresh, almost citrus like aroma that I find very therapeutic. What could be better than natural aromatherapy?

This is the fresh ginger all grated and smelling simply fresh and fragrant. As you can see, it's definitely more than what is called for in the recipe. Not only did I grate what was in the picture above, but a little extra. You do need to be somewhat careful with the ginger as too much can make the soup a touch bitter if you don't have a good ginger to liquid ratio. That's from my personal experience.

Once the ginger and garlic have met in the pot, pour in your chicken broth. I should have used 18 cups, but I only had 16 cups because I bought 4-32oz boxes of chicken broth and didn't think about 5th box.* Once that chicken broth, garlic and ginger start to boil, the house will begin to smell amazing as the ginger releases is tempting aroma.

Once it's boiling, add in your orzo pasta and cook til just about al dente. **Keep in mind that the orzo will keep absorbing the liquid, so you might want to keep an extra can/box of chicken broth on hand for left overs,

This is a rotisserie chicken that I bought, just to keep things easy. There is no rule saying what kind of cooked chicken you have to use. So if you want to cook up some chicken thighs, or breasts (although I believe chicken thighs would be cheaper and give you some better flavor), feel free to do so. You can probably even just boil the chicken, and use that homemade broth for this soup and then just add in some regular chicken broth as well. It would all work well, I'm sure. 

While my orzo is cooking, I chop up my rotisserie chicken and get ready to add it in to the soup once the orzo is done. 

The recipe calls for some green onion, Again, I used what I wanted for my own personal taste. The same with the cilantro. I am a cilantro fiend!! LOVE IT!! So this is just some rinsed cilantro that I have here, but I didn't use all of that.

Sliced green onion and my chopped cilantro all ready to go here.

Once the orzo is al dente, add in your chopped or shredded chicken and heat it through for a minute or so. Remove from the heat and then stir in your green onion and chopped cilantro.

This soup smells as amazing as it looks, I feel that with the garlic and the ginger, it also has some medicinal qualities about it, so when you're sick with a full blown cold, it just tastes so soothing, especially if you have a sore throat. But even if you're not sick, it's still a really delicious soup for a cold night and last night, we were in single digits. As I said though, my daughter felt like she was coming down with a cold/sinus issue and just wanted some of this comforting soup, so this was last nights dinner, served with a nice loaf of sesame french bread and butter.

As for the rest of the weekend, so far my Sunday has been very nice. It's cold, but we have a beautiful, gorgeous sunny day filled with clear skies. I took my daughter to work this morning at 6 am, it was -21 degrees according to my car thermometer. But the great laughs my daughter and I shared at such an early time in the morning warmed the car right up! 

As for Valentines day plans, I have none. My daughter and her boyfriend are going out to dinner. My son works and then his girlfriend is coming over later for the evening and that will be about it. It's going to be a very quiet evening of just keeping warm and cozy with the cats! LOL

Happy Valentines day everyone. I hope your weekend was a beautiful one, but if not, and you're going through some rough times, sit down and take a moment. Just breathe and think about all the good that's in your life. Find the positives, the good moments you've had over the weekend, I am sure you have had something good happen. Think back and find them, hold on to those and remember tomorrow is a new day. So cherish the good moments, and embrace the positivity. 

Source: http://www.lafujimama.com/2008/12/comfort-chicken-orzo-and-ginger-soup/

Valentines Day Images: http://www.thecourierdaily.com/happy-valentines-day-2016-quotes-wishes-images-pictures-latest-collection-gift-ideas-cards-love/10393/

All soup prep images were taken by me. 

Positivity in Cooking/Recipe Review

I find great comfort in my kitchen when I cook, even more so since we moved into our new home almost three years ago. My current kitchen isn't really what some would consider to be a "gourmet kitchen", but to me, it's my gourmet kitchen. I love it, and it makes me happy! 

In our other home, my kitchen was rather small with very little room to work. It was hard to move around because the kitchen table was right smack dab in the center of the kitchen. I didn't have very much counter top space, and that tended to make meal preparation a little daunting. 

What makes my new kitchen so nice is that my table now has its own corner, out of the way from everything else. So what you are seeing above here is my whole work space, and for me, it's just enough. In our new kitchen, I love to cook. I love to experiment with new recipe's as well as being creative when I can. That is one thing I wish I could do more of and have a little flare for is being more out of the box creative. For me, cooking has become a very positive and a mentally healing experience for me. But I also think it can be a totally magical experience when you're creating new dishes!

As I said though, I do enjoy finding new recipes to try, so per my daughter's request today, she wanted split pea soup. Off to pintrest I went to look for a delicious, but simple recipe for split pea soup. I don't like to make certain things that are overly complicated with a ton of ingredients, if I can help it. So I found this great recipe from Valerie's Kitchen. Sometimes when I make these recipes, I do them as written. The next time I make them, I often put my own spin on it, but I have to say, this recipe is amazing as is, if you LOVE a good, yet simple split pea soup recipe. So let's get started, shall we?! 

I always double all soup recipe's because I am usually feeding at least 3-4 people, as well as I love to have left over soup, and sometimes I send some home with mom too!! So here we started out with 2-16oz bags of dried split peas and 2 Tbsp of minced garlic. I just used the minced garlic in the jar. I love that stuff. It's easy peasy and always ready to use. 

My next layer here is 4 peeled and chopped carrots, 4 celery ribs and 2 medium white onions. The recipe instructions said to chop small, but to be completely honest, I chopped them, not small, but not really big chunks either because as it cooks, and you're stirring, they're going to get soft and break down anyway. So I wouldn't worry about chopping them too small. 

Here we have some fresh thyme. I needed 2 Tbsp for my double recipe. I have never worked with fresh thyme before and it said chopped thyme. I had no clue what I was doing with my thyme! So I found a really informative video on Youtube. So if you don't know what you're doing with your thyme either, you can watch what to do here. 

So here is the thyme all pulled off from the stems, and then I just gave it a quick run through with my knife per the video before I put it into my crock pot.

So far now in my pot, I have the dried split peas, garlic, onions, carrots, celery and fresh thyme. 

Now, the recipe called for a meaty ham bone to be shoved down into all those yummy vegetables and then pour your chicken broth over just to cover. One of the past recipes I have used before called for a pork hock. It's a part of the pigs leg that is just above the foot and below the knee. I couldn't find any at my local store this time, plus I thought I had a few left in my freezer, but when I got home, I found out I didn't. Now, I always buy a ham steak to chop up into my split pea soup anyway, so as you can see, I have two ham steaks, one already chopped. I feared if that would be enough for flavor, but I called Mom and she said it would be fine. Plus these ham steaks have a little fat in them and that's where you get most of the flavor from. As I was chopping up these ham steaks, I did do a little taste test. They had a very nice smoked flavor and that did end up coming through in my finished soup. 

I layered the ham on top, threw in a few bay leaves and then I poured in about 10 cups of my chicken broth. I had a total of 12 cups as again, I doubled this recipe. As you can see, with all that goodness in the crock pot, I poured in what I could fit and then set the other 2 cups aside. I did end up putting in the rest later on. 

I set the crock pot on high with a plan of letting it cook around 8 hours. This was after about an hour of cooking. I gave everything a stir before going out to run a few errands for my Saturday afternoon. So my hope was to come back to an amazing smelling home. There is nothing quite like coming home to a really good soup cooking in the crock pot and the aroma is just filling the house. It's awesome!!

Now this is my favorite part. This is where cooking feels almost magical to me. We came home from running a few errands and as I had hoped, the house smelled so good. I just let everything simmer, the crock pot still on high and this was where I was at about 6 hours later. The magic that split pea soup is to me had taken place. This might seem silly, but this is just one thing I love about split pea soup! It starts out as this chicken broth based soup and you wonder how is that (see pic above) going to get to this amazing, warmth of comforting, creamy deliciousness?! It just does. The peas soften, the vegetables cook and as you stir it up, that creamy goodness just starts to form and you have this beautiful, split pea soup.

We weren't planning on eating for a couple of hours yet, so once the magic happened, I turned the pot on low and just let it simmer, stirring it occasionally because it does tend to separate as it continues to cook. It was fine though after stirring it a couple of times. I always serve a soup like this with a crusty bread, again, it's a comfort thing. 

Mom was over for dinner last night and we all enjoyed this wonderful soup. The recipe I found is definitely not one that I would do much tweaking to. The only difference I did was I used the ham steaks instead of a meaty ham bone. The steaks worked great, and gave some amazing flavor, but that wouldn't stop me from using a nice meaty ham bone if I found one the next time I plan on making this soup. 

I think out of everything I do make, soups are one of my favorites, especially during the winter months. I love having my mom over to visit. I love cooking for her and the kids. There is nothing quite like gathering around the table over some hearty soup, fresh bread (even if I didn't make that myself) and having family togetherness with some good conversation. That to me is everything. My life has become all about those little moments that I cherish. Life is too short. So find the moments that make you happy, cherish them and embrace the positivity. 

**Note** The original recipe called for fresh Italian parsley, which I just found in my fridge with my soup leftovers in the fridge. I completely forgot that I bought it and it never made the soup. It wasn't missed. But I'll definitely have to make this soup again and include the parsley! Sorry about that. 

Source: Recipe can be found at http://www.fromvalerieskitchen.com/2015/04/slow-cooker-split-pea-soup/