At Home My Way

 RECIPES AT THE TOP .  CHIT-CHAT AT THE BOTTOM! Schoolhouse Vegetable Soup 1 pound lean ground beef 1 teaspoon onion powder 1 teaspoon garlic powder Salt & Pepper as desired 28 oz diced tomatoes (not drained) 1 3/4 cups frozen mixed vegetables (frozen - no need to thaw) (I use a 12 Oz bag of frozen mixed vegetables) 1 cup frozen corn 5 cups water 3 beef bouillon cubes 1 cup uncooked elbow macaroni Instructions: Brown ground beef in a soup pot.  Add salt, pepper, onion powder, and garlic powder while cooking the meat.  Drain if needed. Add diced tomatoes including the juice in the can, frozen corn, and frozen mixed vegetables.  Add the water and beef bouillon cubes.  Stir. Simmer about 15-20 minutes.  I used a lid to cover while cooking. Next, add 1 cup uncooked macaroni.  Stir a bit.  (It tries to stick to the bottom of the pot until it starts to simmer so may need to stir a few times.) Simmer approximately 15-20 minutes or until macaroni...

This week I had a powerful craving for tomato soup!  Mmmm... I love the stuff. Being the eccentric little cooker that I am, I - OF COURSE -wanted to try my hand at homemade!  Surely my ingredients would be simpler and better for me than these (which are found on canned tomato soup)! INGREDIENTS TOMATO PUREE (WATER, TOMATO PASTE), HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP, WHEAT FLOUR, WATER, SALT, POTASSIUM CHLORIDE, FLAVORING, CITRIC ACID, LOWER SODIUM NATURAL SEA SALT, ASCORBIC ACID (VITAMIN C), MONOPOTASSIUM PHOSPHATE. I searched around and found several variations of "copycat" tomato soup recipes.  Most called for canned tomatoes, some called for tomato paste, some even called for chicken broth.  My favorite canned soup had no chicken broth in it!  So, I kept looking. I ran across a recipe found on a blog that is new to me but which I LOVE called "Produce on Parade".  Lots of good recipes!  And vegan recipes at that!  I'm always on the lookout f...

I have been having some yucky lunches lately.  I'm so lazy before work sometimes that just throwing stuff in my bag to make when I get there even seems like work.  The tightwad in me won't usually let me eat out and I end up eating something incredibly unsatisfying like graham crackers and peanut butter, or cottage cheese.  Ugh. I am signed up for some wonderful thrifty-living, work-at home mom blogs and those ladies know how to put it on the table!  They know how to use what they have to make great, frugal, and nutritious meals  One of my favorites is the Prudent Homemaker .  She and her husband stock up and fill their pantry when they have money and then eat from it for long periods of time when they don't.  She bakes her own bread, makes her own soups, and pretty much makes everything from scratch that is possible.   She cooks, sews, gardens, cans, and bakes. She has beautiful pictures on her blog a...

I think I posted this recipe one cool rainy day this past summer, but since I promised to post this recipe which I used in Last Night's Leftovers to create Super Soup & Noodles, I figured it couldn't hurt to post this again.  HANDS DOWN, this is our favorite vegetable soup recipe.  Over the weekend I made it without the macaroni.  I just used more potatoes.  If you do serve with pasta, keep the pasta separate as the pasta breaks down and becomes mushy when you eat this leftover.  This recipe is very garlic-y.  This was the first vegetable soup my kids would eat since it was similar to spaghetti and they could eat the broth/meat & pasta, until they got used to the vegetables.  Sometimes I either buy or make bread bowls to ladle this soup into.  Its really, really good! Don't forget that this soup is great for leftovers - ladled over wide egg noodles or rice! This is how I make Hamburger Soup AT HOME MY WAY: (NOTE: remove the ...

Missouri is notorious for extreme weather.  We can have REALLY, REALLY cold weather which included a history-making blizzard this past winter, to super, duper HOT weather (once I worked at school and in one of the classrooms it was 107 at 10AM).  But, with those extremes comes some nice breaks in the weather and we had a few cool days around the 4th of July.  On Thursday, my younger daughter used her personalized recipe book (which I made for her using Shutterfly) to make supper.  She made one of her (and her sister's) favorites, Hamburger Soup.  It has hamburger, garlic, oregano, bay leaves, tomato sauce (of course), pasta, and veges.  Its kind of like spaghetti meets vegetable soup!  Its their favorite and we snarfed it down last night!  I modified this recipe just a tad from a delicious soup recipe that my former boss makes.  He is an attorney and also is a FABULOUS cook. I had never had vegetable soup with ga...