Beans and Greens with Bacon

Brr! The winter weather is pretty bad lately. Not as bad as last year, when we all got stuck in our cars for hours and ate frozen pizza for dinner. (I spent five hours in mine, but made it home safely.) But still it's been bad enough to have a few school closures or late starts. I'm taking advantage of today's day off to do the things that make me happy, like baking and sleeping in.

The other thing making me happy right now is soup. Gallons upon gallons of delicious, warming healthy (and sometimes not...) soup. I've got a regular rotation right now between loaded baked potato, vegan minestrone, chili and this wonderful bean soup I've been dying for a chance to post about.

There's two ways to make this one. One is the lazy shortcut way, which still produces a delicious soup. The other is slightly harder and still produces a delicious soup. Hear that? No matter what, you will be eating delicious soup. The lazy way is to use canned beans. The harder way is to use dried and soak them before using. Which one you do is up to you. It's not difficult for me to leave a bowl of beans soaking on my counter before I leave for work, but other people may not have that luxury. I just like working with dried beans and they are cheaper to play with.

This soup uses some of my favorite ingredients, bacon and kale. It also benefits from my current obsession with chipotle peppers in adobo sauce. I've taken to keeping these on hand to slide into soups, chilis and casseroles for extra flavor and warmth. They come in a can, but I only use one or two peppers at a time. The extras keep very well in a container in the fridge and make a very convent flavoring for whatever you are having. This soup is easy to make, if not very quick and makes delicious leftovers. I looked at several other recipes for pinto bean soups, but couldn't find one that incorporated much in the way of vegetables, so I had to make my own. They were mostly just slow cooked beans decorated with bacon or ham. I wanted more than that. This is especially delicious with a square of your favorite cornbread recipe.


2 cups dried pinto beans, soaked for eight hours OR two cans pinto beans, drained and rinsed
2 slices bacon
2 cups carrots, sliced
1 medium onion, diced
2 stalks celery, diced
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 chipotle pepper in adobo sauce
About 3 cups of curly leafed kale, sliced thin
Vegetable broth (I make mine using Better than Bullion)
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
salt to taste

If you are using dried beans, you want them to soak for at least six hours before using. I measure mine into a mixing bowl, then cover with cold water and leave them be while I am at work. If you decide to use canned beans, just rinse and drain them before using.

Cook the bacon until brown and crisp. Remove from pot and set aside. Add carrots, onion, celery and garlic to the pot. Cook over medium heat in the bacon grease until softened. Add beans and chipotle pepper. Cover with water or broth and salt heavily if using dried beans. Bring it up to a boil, then drop it back down to a simmer. Times get tetchy here, because it can take up to an hour for dried beans to cook. If using canned, expect about twenty minutes. When the beans are soft, add the sliced kale, reserved bacon and black pepper. Salt it again.  Seriously. It needs salt. When the greens are tender, your soup is done!

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Really Good Gumbo

I've been promising/threatening for years to post my gumbo recipe. By my standards, it's a long, complicated recipe. This is not a quick meal. But if you've got a Saturday to spend stirring roux, there's worse things you do with your time.

I usually make gumbo in the summer, when I'm off from school and the okra is fresh at the markets. But if you are craving a memory of summer, this is the soup to get you through the winter months. My version is heavy on veggies and lighter than most recipes. It's not quite broth based, because there is a roux, but just enough to give body and flavor. Because we need to watch carbs at our house, we skip the traditional rice that usually accompanies it. But if you don't have that problem, it goes great poured over white or brown rice.

The part that will tax your patience is the roux. Roux is a paste of cooked flour and fat. Cooked lightly, it's great for sauces. Cooked until brown, it's a base for gravy. Cooked until dark, it's base for gumbo. I'm a bit timid with my roux, since the dividing line between "perfect" and "horribly, horribly burned" is a thin one that jumps quickly. So I cook mine to a nice golden brown.


1 pound spicy sausage links (my preference is hot Italian turkey from Publix, but you can use whatever you prefer)
1/4 cup cooking oil
1/4 flour
1 cup onion, diced small
1 cup bell pepper, seeded and diced small
1 cup celery, diced small
1 pound okra, cleaned and sliced
1 14 ounce can of dice tomatoes
7 cups chicken broth
1 pound shrimp, peeled and deveined
1-2 teaspoons file powder
1 teaspoon smoked paprika

Lightly coat the bottom of your pot with oil. Fry the sausages until brown, then remove. With a rubber scrapper, dig up all those little brown bits. Leave them in the pot, because they will make everything tasty. Over medium heat, add 1/4 cup of oil and 1/4 cup of flour. Stir together to remove lumps and continue stirring. Keep stirring. And stirring. How long you stir depends on your patience and willingness to take things to the edge. I keep mine going until it's a rich caramel color. When you've had enough, add the onion, peppers and celery and keep stirring. When those veggies are soft, add the okra, tomatoes and chicken broth. Simmer until the veggies are cooked through. Make sure to add salt.

While your soup is simmering, take a skillet. In about a a tablespoon of oil, sauté your shrimp. Give them a good shake of salt and the smoked paprika. I like to cook the shrimp separately so it doesn't overcook.

After the okra s cooked through, add the file powder and sliced sausage. Simmer another minute or two. Check for salt.

Serve gumbo poured over rice, or not and topped with the shrimp.

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Chicken and Biscuits for a Wintery Day

Not my car, thankfully.

Tuesday afternoon, when Snowpocalypse 2014 struck Atlanta, I spent five hours on Roswell road between Sandy Springs and Roswell. And I was one of the lucky ones. I drive a Prius, which was designed for stop and go traffic and has a computerized system that prevents your tires from spinning out. I slid a few times on Glenridge and Riverside, but never for more than a few seconds and I never lost control of my vehicle. And I still had a full tank of gas when I was finally safe in my driveway. I feel incredibly lucky.

Five hours in the car gives you lots of time to think. When I wasn't contemplating which gas stations would be a good zombie apocalypse shelter, I made a recipe in my head, because that's what I do. I wasn't able to make it that night, because my nerves were shot after that long behind the wheel. (I am a nervous driver and prone to panic attacks. I am a super exciting person to be in a car with.) But I did make this the next day. Cold weather makes me crave soups, stews and hot breads pulled freshly from the oven. In my head, as I navigated the icy conditions, I planned out a meal that included the best of all these things: Chicken and biscuits.

As with many of my recipes, I try to lighten things up a bit. So instead of a heavy cream sauce, or cream of condensed soup, this uses a light chicken broth thicken with corn starch. I loaded it up on veggies, including the super trendy kale that I always seem to have around these days. Skinless chicken thighs provide the protein.

Why chicken thighs? First, they hold up to stewing better than breast meat. I've never made a chicken stew with breast meat that wasn't tough and stringy. But thighs? They become melt in your mouth delicious when braised slowly at low temperatures. Thighs get a bad rap for being fatty, but pull the skin off and ounce for ounce, they are nearly indistinguishable from breasts. Plus, they just taste more…chickeny than breast meat. Trust me on this one. Do this with thighs.

The biscuits are where I don't try to be healthy. I use Michael Ruhlman's Chicago biscuit recipe to top this stew. Someone less lazy would roll these biscuits out and cut them properly before laying them down, but I think drop biscuits taste just as good and don't make such a mess of my countertops. The combination of tender, puffy biscuits and savory chicken and vegetables is really quite magical. Take the extra time to make your own biscuits.

Chicken and Biscuits

For the stew…

1 pack skinless, bone in chicken thighs
3 ribs celery, rinsed and chopped
1 small onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 1/2 cups carrots, chopped roughly
2-3 small, waxy potatoes, chopped
1/2 cup mushrooms, chopped
2 cups leafy kale
6 cups chicken stock (I use Better than Bullion)
2 tablespoons cornstarch

For the biscuits…

2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
3 ounces butter, chilled
6 ounces milk


In dutch oven, brown chicken thighs. Remove and set aside. Add chopped carrots, celery, onion and garlic. Once those are soft, add potatoes, mushrooms and kale. Add chicken back to the pot and cover with chicken broth. Place in a low oven (mine goes down to 270 degrees) and cover with heavy lid. Cook for two hours, or until chicken shreds easily with a fork and vegetables are tender. Mix cornstarch with enough water to make a slurry and add it to the pot. This will thicken your sauce.

For the biscuits, sift together flour, salt and baking powder. Cut in chilled butter until mixture resembles coarse meal. Slowly beat in milk until mixture is pliable. I do all this in a food processor, so it's really fast. If you are rolling and cutting, let your biscuit dough chill for at least twenty minutes before rolling out. I'll do another post just on biscuits some day, but the secret here is keeping everything cold.

Top with generous spoonfuls of biscuit dough and and bake at 350 until brown. Serve immediately.

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Four Easy Soup Recipes

Soup is one of my favorite winter time meals. It can be light and healthy, but still fill you up and feel indulgent on a cold day. I usually make a big pot of a vegetable heavy soup at the beginning of the week and take the leftovers to work for lunch along with a piece of fruit or a small salad. I have something like several dozen soup recipes in my rotation. The favorites have been blogged here, but going through my archives I can't believe I've never posted the chicken and rice soup I make when one of us is sick, or the black bean and vegetable soup that uses up all the summer time veggies. Clearly, I need to blog more.

In the meantime, here are four easy soup recipes to tide you over.

You can be super healthy with this vegetarian Tofu and Bok Choy Soup. Not only does it use up the ridiculous amount of bok choy we get in our CSA this time of year, but it's a filling soup with lots of nutrition and very few calories. Perfect for balancing out the holiday excess.

Kale and Sausage Soup is another tasty way to use up winter greens. This soup is really fast and easy to prepare and one of my favorites for leftovers.

Curry Butternut Squash Soup is a delicious and healthier alternative to the traditional cream based version. It's easy to make this one vegetarian by simply swapping the chicken broth for vegetable.

We love a good beef stew here and this one is our favorite version. Beef and Cremini Mushroom stew works equally well in your dutch oven or slow cooker. Its a great cold weather meal alongside a batch of No-Knead Dinner Rolls.

Vegetarian Tofu and Bok Choi Soup

If you are like me, after the excesses of the holidays, you need a nice, light soup to balance all those cookies, pies and turkeys you devoured. While I'm not a vegetarian, I do enjoy having many vegetarian recipes in my repertoire. Not only is it healthy, but it means I never have to worry about what I'm going to feed the many vegetarians and vegans in my life.

This soup is very simple and fast to assemble, but it does require a little pre-planning to drain the tofu properly. See, tofu is basically a big sponge. It'll absorb whatever flavors you want. And like any sponge, it needs to be wringed before it can absorb anything. The easiest way I've learned to do this is to cut my block of tofu into thick slabs, layer them between cleans towels and press between two cutting boards. To really squeeze out the packing water, I pile some heavy cans or pots on top. 30 minutes is enough to get most of the liquid out, but longer is fine.


Tofu and Bok Choi Soup

6 cups vegetable broth (chicken is fine if that's what you have and don't care if you're eating vegetarian)
2 slices raw ginger
1 clove garlic
2 dried chili peppers
1 medium sized onion, chopped
1 head bok choi, chopped
1 carrot, shredded or julienned
1 red bell pepper, shredded or julienned
1 block tofu, rinsed and drained, then cut into 1/2 inch pieces

Heat six cups of broth until simmering. Add ginger, garlic, chili peppers and onion.  Let those steep in the broth for about fifteen minutes. Add bok choi, carrots, peppers and tofu and stir until tofu is heated through and vegetables are bright colored. Serve immediately.

Healthy Kale and Sausage Soup (Caldo Verde revised)

A friend asked me a few days ago for one of my soup recipes that I knew I had blogged. But when I looked it over before sending her the link, I realized that how I cook this soup has changed a bit in the last few years. So since I had to rewrite the recipe for her, I decided now is a good time to repost it here.

This recipe is inspired by Caldo Verde, a traditional Portuguese soup made with very thinly shredded kale and european style smoked chorizo. My version is heavily Americanized  to the point that I'm sure someone's little old Portuguese grandma is going to slap me some day. No matter. My version uses easy to find ingredients, such as the mountains of kale we get in our CSA box this time of year, and spicy italian sausage. Unlike some other americanized versions, my soup doesn't add heavy cream or butter. 

It's a nice, light vegetable soup, perfect for cold weather.  You don't even have to use the super trendy kale. The version in the picture actually used collard greens and turnip greens. Feel free to use whatever combo of greens you have on hand. We lighten it up even more by using turkey sausage instead of pork, but that's not necessary. It's great for dinner, but is even better for leftovers at lunch the next day. 

Kale and Sausage Soup

1 bunch kale (or collard greens), chopped 
1 medium onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 pound spicy italian link sausage (we like turkey, but whatever you like)
2 cups sliced potatoes
6 cups chicken or vegetable broth

Brown sausage in soup pot. Remove. Add a tablespoon of oil, if necessary. Brown potatoes, onions and garlic. Add chopped kale, cover with broth and simmer until vegetables are tender. Chop reserved sausage into bite sized pieces and add back to pot. Serve with crusty bread. 

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Best Thanksgiving Recipes

I don't have many Thanksgiving recipes. I usually spend this holiday in east Texas with my in laws and they do all the cooking. That suits me just fine. Thanksgiving cooking is less about meal prep and more performance art, so it's nice to not have the pressure. But here are some recipes you might consider adding to your own table this year.  Several of them were already featured in my Fall Recipe feature last month, so feel free to peruse that for even more seasonal inspiration.

Pie is usually how most of us enjoy our pumpkin during the fall. But for those who can't get enough pumpkin flavored baked goods, here's a recipe for pumpkin muffins featuring rye flour.  Pumpkin Curry Soup would make a delicious, yet slightly untraditional starter course for the big meal.
Sweet potatoes are an important part of Thanksgiving. Here's a casserole combining sweet potatoes and orange juice for a treat that's delicious, but not as a heavy and gooey as the traditional one with the marshmallows.

Apple crisp is an easy, but still seasonal alternative to pumpkin pie for dessert. And it tastes good with ice cream.
That doesn't seem like very many recipes, does it? Looks like I have some work to do this month.

UPDATE: True to my word, I've written up more of my Thanksgiving appropriate recipes for your eating enjoyment.  It's still not a huge amount, but I'm feeling more respectable now.

If you are looking for a non-traditional take on sweet potatoes, try these Chili Lime Roasted Sweet Potatoes. I guarantee you won't miss the butter and marshmallows.  For a bread course, check out these No Knead Dinner rolls. They are so easy, I make them for weeknight dinners. And if you need an easy to prepare, but super fancy looking appetizer, you definitely want to use my Holiday Baked Brie. It uses spicy pepper jelly for a surprising twist on a traditional appetizer.

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Beef and Crimini Mushroom Stew

Well, it looks like fall is well and truly here. I'm still wearing sandals outside, but they are with jeans instead of capris. In fact, I'm starting to wonder where I put all my work pants. It's going to be a little chilly standing on the playground tomorrow...

Yesterday was one of those wonderfully drizzly, gray days. It wasn't a bad enough storm that I worried about a dead branch busting up my fence again, but it was enough to make me want to burrow under a blanket on the couch and drink something warm. My husband calls it "Soup weather" and is demanding I make him some nearly every night this week. That might be excessive, considering all my recipes make roughly a gallon or so. There's only so many bowls of soup I can take for lunch every week. 

Last night's soup was Beef with Crimini Mushroom Stew, a really nice riff on the classic beef stew recipe I grew on. It's extra seasonal since this is Atlanta Beer Week, and this stew features some German beer whose name has fifteen syllables, bought at Ale Yeah! in Roswell. (I am not a beer person.)

I may not be a beer drinker, but I do love cooking with it. I think it's especially good for braising beef and I use it for stews and pot roasts all the time. 

Crimini mushrooms are probably my favorite mushroom and I look for excuses to add them to things. They sell at grocery stores as "Baby Bellas", because they are just a smaller version of the portabello mushroom. They are a nice, meaty mushroom that's easy to clean and always in stock at the grocery store. As you can imagine, they pair really well with beef. I add them to stews and frequently put them over steaks. 

This stew would work well in a crockpot. In fact, that's how I usually cook it. But I'm in love with my big, porcelain glazed, cast iron, dutch oven right now.  I made this stew in that and let it cook in my oven at a low temperature for several hours. Either method works just as well. One just looks prettier on the table. 

Beef and Cremini Mushroom Stew

1 pound beef stew meat, trimmed and cut into bite sized pieces

1/2 cup chopped onion

1/2 cup chopped celery

2 cups chopped and peeled carrots

2 cups chopped potatoes (I like a waxy red potato)

1 cup cremini mushrooms, stemmed and sliced

2 cloves of garlic, smashed

1 small can tomato sauce

2 cups (16 ounces) of a medium body beer you like

1 table spoon "Better than Bullion" OR 1 and 1/2 cubes of bullion, beef flavor

1 table spoon cornstarch

In bottom of dutch oven, heat up a couple table spoons of canola oil. In batches, brown stew meat.  Salt it really well. Reserve. Add chopped veggies, add meat back. Salt everything. Add tomato sauce, beer and one cup of water. Cover and place in pre-heated 250 degree oven. Braise for at least three hours, checking periodically to see if more water is needed. When ready to serve, remove from oven and add bullion. Make a slurry of the cornstarch and add to stew. Stir until dissolved. Check for salt and serve. 

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Fall Recipes Round Up

I noticed my old recipes featuring fall ingredients have been getting lots of hits off Google recently. It's that time of year, I suppose. So to make it easier for you to find my best fall recipes, I've gone ahead and rounded them up into one post for you.

Greens are definitely a fall/winter vegetable in my head. Here's my recipe for easy sautéed turnip greens  with poached eggs. This is a really easy week night dinner. Poached eggs would also go well with this recipe for perfect collard greens.

I haven't made this baked applesauce oatmeal in a long time. I should really dust this one off and make it again soon. But it's a great make ahead breakfast for any day of the week. I used to pack in small glass containers to eat at my desk at work. I've also got a great recipe for gluten free applesauce oatmeal muffins that's worth trying even if you don't an issue with gluten.

If your tomato plants are still producing, you can try your hand at a traditional southern favorite: fried green tomatoes.

We're going apple picking in north Georgia tomorrow, so I'll definitely be using this recipe for apple crisp soon. Fruit crisps are always an easy dessert.

It's pumpkin season! You should totally make this delicious pumpkin curry soup. It also goes well with butternut squash... If you're really adventurous, you can make your own pumpkin puree! Or you can buy a can and just make the pumpkin bread recipe in that link. I won't mind.

I hope these fall recipes inspire you to cook more with fresh, seasonal produce right now. Fall is probably my favorite time of year and the delicious fall treats certainly help with the love. Enjoy!

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Easy Leek Potato Soup with Yogurt

The last few months have seen me ridiculously busy. I've been working two part time jobs, going to grad school and chairing a fantasy literature convention. But as of yesterday, I've finished all my school work for this term (I'm on a self paced program via Western Governors University. I finished approximately two months ahead of schedule according to my pacing guide. I'll just add more classes later this week so I can get my Masters in Special Education just that much faster.), my convention was two weeks ago and for the first time in a long time, I find myself with nothing more pressing this afternoon than reading and updating my sorely out of date blog. It's kinda nice.

After some fitful half starts, spring is truly underway here in Roswell and it is glorious. The awful storms from last week have given way to warm afternoons, low humidity and light breezes. Even the pollen isn't so bad today. I'm typing this on my netbook from the back porch. With spring has also come fresh produce from farm stands and the Alpharetta Farmer's Market. My husband and I have been a little giddy at the prospect of fresh fruit and vegetables, straight from the ground, instead of the limp, pale imitations we've endured all winter.

The primary source of our spring time bounty has been a farm stand run by Floyd Kessler of Moss Hill Farm, in Milton. Every week, Floyd sends out a cheerful email update with pictures of the produce having equal weight with those of his grandchildren. We've been buying from Floyd for several years now, usually through the Roswell Farmers Market. This year, we're ordering from Floyd directly and picking up our vegetables at his charming farm every Saturday.

This week's haul includes two pounds of joi choi, an Asian greens stir fry mix, green onions so large and heavy you could club a man to death with them, and a leek. I could not recall if I'd ever eaten a leek before, so I only ordered one for this week. Today it became a delicious potato leek soup. I liked it. Leeks now have a place at my table.

1 leek, cleaned and chopped, about a cup
1/4 cup spring onion, cleaned and chopped
2 cups potatoes, diced
3 tablespoons butter
1 cup milk
1/4 yogurt
Salt and pepper to taste

Melt butter in pan. Add leeks, onions, cook until soft and translucent. Add potatoes and enough water to cover. Simmer until potatoes are soft. Add milk and yogurt, use immersion blender to combine and puree ingredients. Add generous pinches of salt and pepper. (I actually salt at every step of this recipe, and still needed to add a big pinch here.) Simmer gently for five minutes to combine flavors, and serve.

This soup is tangy and delicious, and is slightly lighter than the one I converted using whipping cream and buttermilk. The leeks and onions give it a nice flavor, and the potatoes add body. Over all, it's a good soup and one I'd make again. I highly suggest getting on Floyd's mailing list so you can try it yourself.

Curry Butternut Squash Soup Recipe

When ever fall happens, it's like a magic switch in my brain flips. Instead of salads and grilled meats, I start craving soup and things that have been braised. Which is really too bad, because the best lettuces are now in season and i just don't want anything to do with them. Oh well.


As I have mentioned before on this blog, I hate squash.  It is a vile, tasteless vegetable with a nasty, slimy texture. And then I realized that I'd only had yellow crooknecked squash, usually steamed. Of course I hated it. So I've made it my mission to discover squashes that I like, or at least recipes I can tolerate them in. It seems like butternut squash soup does the trick.

Astute readers will recognize this soup as a riff on the Pumpkin Curry Soup I posted a couple years ago. There's been a dearth of pumpkins at the markets this year, so rather than use canned pumpkin or spend eight bucks for one at Trader Joe's (for reals? Eight bucks for PUMPKIN?), I decided to mess around with butternut squash and see if it did the trick. And you know what? It does.

The trick is to roast everything. And I do mean, EVERYTHING. The squash gets roasted, of course, before being added to the soup. But I found that kind of bland, and so I decided to roast the onions, potatoes and garlic before adding them as well. It makes a huge difference. The onions caramelize and gain a heavy sweetness which is really notable. The potatoes and garlic are also improved. It's really just a better soup altogether.

1/4 cup onion
4 cloves of garlic
1 1/2 cups potatoes, diced
1 butternut squash, cooked. (I do this by wrapping it in foil, then throwing it in the oven at 350 for about an hour. It peels right off the skin.)
2 tablespoons of butter
4 cups chicken broth
Curry powder to taste (a couple tablespoons is what I use)

Toss the diced potatoes, onions and garlic with a couple tablespoons of canola oil and spread on a cookie sheet. Sprinkle with salt, then roast at 350 until brown and crispy. The onions will start to smell like oniuon rings. that's how you know you did it right.

In a pot, melt the butter with the curry powder. Add the cooked squash, the roasted potatoes, garlic and onions. Add the chicken broth and simmer for about ten minutes, then puree. I like to use my stick blender for this.

You end up with a savory soup that gets its power from the layers of flavor created by roasting everything. It's not as heavy as other butternut squash soups that get their omph from cream. And it would be pretty easy to convert to vegetarian by using veggie stock, or even vegan by swapping out the butter for olive oil. Give it a shot. It made a squash eater out of me.