October 12, 2012

Last week one of my sisters asked that I work on finding some new slow cooker keeper recipes.  Well, ask and ye shall receive (most of the time) - celery seed brisket turned out flavorful and moist!  Leaving the brisket whole while cooking definitely aided in keeping the meat from drying out.  I have gone through my basket and binders of recipes and have found other slow cooker recipes to experiment with in the upcoming weeks - hopefully a few others will be keepers as well.

Now that it is fall, we are back to our "soup once a week" routine.  We have been eating some of our favorites, but this week I tried a new one.  Ryan loves minestrone soup.  To be honest, I had never tried it before.  I decided to look up the recipe and found out that there isn't a standard recipe for this kind of soup.  In general, minestrone soup seems to be thick soup that contains primarily vegetables and beans and typically, though not always, has the addition of rice or pasta.  I found a couple that interested me and mixed and matched and came up with a soup that everyone loved and thought tasted terrific! Ryan, our household minestrone expert, didn't think it tasted like the minestrone he is used to, but he still really enjoyed it.  5 votes for keeper status on this one!  I didn't want the beans to overwhelm the soup; one recipe called for pureeing them.  Ryan and Owen love beans, so I pureed half and left the other half intact.  This allowed it to act as a slight thickener for the soup, and we got all the nutritional benefits of the beans!  Win-win in my book, and I will definitely make this soup again. 

My canning obsession continued this week - I made applesauce!  No real recipe for this one, but it was great!  Basically cook a mix of apples with just enough water so they don't stick together or to the pot - then puree.  Easy!!!  6 jars of applesauce made.  I would have made more, but I had to give back the pot I was borrowing! 

Friday night is pizza-movie night around here, and this week I tried a cauliflower rice crust pizza. Everyone else used our usual crust (so easy and fantastic), but I was branching out and looking for a pizza recipe that would fit the primal diet.  It was decent, but I think I need to make a few changes.  I will be trying it again, and hope to have it earn keeper status in the coming weeks! 

New Recipes
Minestrone Soup
Celery Seed Brisket