Further adventures from my kitchen - Italian Wedding Soup

My son plays baseball and for games during the week he has to be at the diamond for 5:30 (or as close as we can possibly make it).  This is not an easy feat with not getting home from work until 4:30, having to eat and pick up a teammate and get to the diamond in Calgary rush hour traffic.  Needless to say this necessitates *gasp* pre-made food on game days.  Last week I wanted something a little different from the things that I would normally pick up so I picked up a can (I know, horrible for me to make canned soup, but what are you gonna do) of Italian Wedding Soup.  I have never had it before and someone I work with has talked about and seems to really like it so I thought I would give it a shot.  It was ok, I was really not that impressed with it but it would do.  My hubby seemed to like it and figured I would be able to make it way better.

On Saturday I grabbed my cookbooks (I have them, I just never use them) to see if I had an actual recipe for this soup.  Not one of my books had it (surprising seeing as one of them is a soup cookbook).  I really wasn't planning on making it that day but when my hunny asked what I was doing he thought it sounded like a wonderful idea for supper.  I went online and did some research as to what went into this soup so that I could make it.  Like all recipes there are 1,000 variations of it but all of them had common ingredients so I went with the simple common ingredients and then twisted it my way.  Didn't even come close to the canned version.  It was AMAZING!!!  Probably the most amazing soup that I have ever made, which is really saying something because my chicken vegetable soup is awfully good.

Here is the recipe:

Italian Wedding Soup (Miranda’s version)

1 cup orzo

1 Tbsp olive oil

1 lb fresh chicken sausage (I used Spolumbo's Spicy Chicken Sausage)

1 large garlic clove, finely chopped

2 boxes low sodium chicken stock

Sea salt, to taste

Fresh ground black pepper, to taste

1 5-oz bag baby spinach, chopped

2 small zucchini, cut bite size pieces

1 large shallot, chopped fine

1)     In a large pot cook orzo in water until al dente, drain and rinse in cold water.  Set aside

2)    Cut the casing off of the sausage and form into small bite-sized meatballs.

3)    In soup pot heat oil until shimmering, add the meatballs and cook over med-high until lightly browned (about 4 mins).  Transfer meatballs to a plate.  Add more oil if necessary.  Add garlic, shallot and zucchini to the pot and sauté for a couple of minutes.  Add chicken stock and bring to a simmer.  Season with salt and pepper.  Add meatballs and simmer until cooked through – about 5 minutes.

4)    Add chopped spinach and cooked orzo and cook stirring until spinach is wilted and soup is hot.

Old Friends

An old friend sent me an email through Facebook a couple of weeks ago that said simply "Ever notice how sometimes you think of the past and, BANG, you're right back there?"  I thought it was very profound and so true.  I have been journeying back through memories (fond ones) of Jr. High ever since. 

It has been 30 years since I have seen or heard from this person (and another that contacted me through this one). When I sat down to think about it - that is 2/3 of my lifetime.  Woah!  How did so much time get away from me.  These two individuals were such good friends in Jr. High but they went to different high schools than I did and we lost touch so quickly (as happens so often when one goes to a different school, different job, different church). Why do we not maintain relationships with people unless they are right in our faces?  Why is it so difficult to reach out and communicate with people that we actually like to be around?  I just don't understand that.

We are designed to need people and we all have people we love, people we like and love to be around and people who we maybe don't want to spend too much time with.  And yet when people are in our lives we don't maybe appreciate them as much as we should.  And when a circumstance makes it so that you no longer get to see them day to day they just slip quietly away and your relationship becomes a distant memory.  I have seen this time and again with the people I was soooo close to in school, people that I worked with when I left the job, the people who left the church that I was attending and then the people left behind when I left.  So many close, close friendships disolved into the mist of fond memories.  Where did they all go? What happened?  Why did they stop phoning me and spending time with me?

I will never have those answers. I don't call as often as I should either. I am sure that there are people that think the same of me - why did she stop calling me? Truth is I have never been a good caller - most of the time I am a callee and love it when people contact me.  I need to change that about myself.  I can't sit at home and wonder where all my friends are when I don't contact them either. 

I have been having a lot of fun getting caught up with these 2 individuals through Facebook.  I'm surprised that they haven't become famous rock stars or something but have just quietly been walking the journey that has been set before them, much like I have (although their journeys are very different from mine).  I love reconnecting with people that I haven't talked to for a long time.

Time Passes Far too Quickly

I've just been thinking - last year at this time we were back home from our first ever big family vacation to San Antonio, Texas on Thanksgiving weekend. It was my husband's dream for most of his life to go there and see the Alamo - in fact the first night when we drove by it on the bus and it was all lit up, a tear or two made their appearance in his eyes.

In the 22 years that we have been together we had never been on a big trip. Even our honeymoon was a weekend away in Banff. I am so glad he got to realize his dream and we so want to be able to go back as soon as we are able. It was a short year ago, and yet it seems so, so long ago. There has been a lot happen in the past year. Some really high highs and some really low lows and it is almost a wonder that I have even survived some of it.

Just shortly after our return from the big trip a huge tragedy struck our family and we lost such a dear, precious and generous lady. My mother-in-law was amazing to me and she left us on November 2, 2009. How we have gotten through this last year without her I don't know, but time seems to march on. I miss her so much.

I have gotten through the funeral, helping my husband navigate being the executor of the will and the scattering of the ashes being strong and steady. When I was canning tomatoes this summer though, I lost it. I turned into a complete blubbering mess while I was standing over a sink of ice water stripping 25 pounds of tomatoes of their skins. She loved my canned tomatoes, actually she loved everything I made for her. I would never be able to make them for her again. The wave of emotion that took me over was incredible and overwhelming and I grieved for her probably more deeply than I had all year.

This beautfiul lady taught me so much and I have so many wonderful memories of her . She has taught me so much about affection and caring and generosity. She loved her boys so much and as her first daughter-in-law, she welcomed me with such open arms and was so willing to accept me as her son's choice for a bride.  She was there for me - no matter what!

My life is different than it would have been because she was a part of it and I am so grateful for the years that I had with her. She was so beautiful inside and out. 

Beautiful Freedom

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Make me a deliverer of your love in this broken land. Make me a vessel of praise and a conduit of your prophesy. Heal my woundedness so that I can bring your healing to the hurting. Remove the scar tissue and calouses from my heart so that it can pump with new life for you, because of you.

You have bought me for the highest imaginable price. You have valued me so much that you gladly paid the price for me and yet it is because you paid the price that I have value. I have no value on my own to anyone. I am significant because you died for me. Because you bought me I am free.

How's that for a mind twister, when you really think about it. Historically, when a person is purchased, they are owned by the purchaser. If they are owned, they are slaves required to do the master's bidding. How incredible that we were bought lock, stock and barrel and yet it is through the purchase that we are made free.  How like God to do the complete reverse of how the world does things. How tremendous to have such a redeemer that purchases his own to set them free. We have been bought to be His lover and friend and beautiful bride, not to be enslaved. 

God you are so good!

Further Adventures from my Kitchen - Krautrunzels

My wonderful mother-in-law made this dish where she stuffed buns with hamburger and cabbage. She always called them Groutrunzels but they being a German dish involving cabbage, I’m thinking the correct term is actually Krautrunzels because Kraut is cabbage in German and when you say it they actually sound very similar and if the person who gave her the recipe spoke with an accent, even more. My husband loves them.

This past week I had planned to make these treats for my hunny as a surprise. I had asked him if he wanted me to make something else on the weekend and gave him 2 choices. While he was outside tending the Bar B Q I pulled out my mother-in-law’s recipe box to try to find the recipe. My husband came back in the house and said “you know if you want to make me something you could make me Groutrunzels”. Way to spoil the surprise my love! ;) I guess that meant it was time for me to do this for him because it was on his mind too.

I couldn’t find a recipe for them though in her treasured recipe box so I phoned her best friend who used to make them with her all the time. She didn’t have a recipe but she knew which bun recipe in the box to use and told me how to make the filling. The phone call sent her on a lovely trip down memory lane. She misses her dearest friend as much as I miss my beautiful, wonderful, loving, generous mother-in-love. Tomorrow marks the first anniversary of her passing to a better place. The void that she left is incredible.

Back to my adventure… I have helped my mother make buns numerous times, but always with the punching down of the dough and the shaping of the buns, never with the actual making with proofing the yeast and kneading the dough. It was with much trepidation that I tackled this project. The recipe that she used is called Air Buns. I did a little dance when after 10 minutes of soaking in the warm sugar water my yeast was the way it should be. I kneaded the dough like a pro warmed up my oven and let it sit for 2 hours and clapped joyfully when I opened the oven to see that it had risen just the way it was supposed to. I let my son tackle the punching down of the dough. Let it rise for another hour. In the meantime I made the filling, which is so simple. Hamburger chopped cabbage and diced onion with salt & pepper and I added some steak spice (because I add steak spice to almost everything). I stuck it in the freezer for a couple of minutes to cool it a bit and you want to drain the fat/liquid so that the inside of the bun doesn’t get greasy.

Finally, hours after beginning, the process comes together. You grab a handful of the risen dough and pinch it off. You roll it flat and then spoon in some of the hamburger mixture. Then you pull in the edges and pinch them together and put the newly formed bun, pinched end down on the cookie sheet.

Set the cookie sheet aside covered with a tea towel for another hour or three. Then bake according to the bun recipe.

My husband’s family dips them in ketchup when they eat them.

It was a lot of work and so time consuming, but it was worth every minute to see how happy it made my wonderful husband. We figured it has been at least 5 years since the last time he had one. It won’t be 5 years before he has them again.

Adventures in my kitchen

My culinary skills have been a real adventure in developing. I have always known the basics that I learned in my mother's kitchen and home ec classes and often tend to stick to the same tried and true recipes that I always make. Go-tos that I don't have to think about and don't have to get creative for. When we were first married, I didn't cook much. We were usually busy doing things and working and we ate out far too much. When I did cook it was at a very basic level.

When my son was born and I was home on maternity leave that had to change. I would spend hours combing through all of my recipe books and trying various things. I would have supper on the table when my husband came home from work and he never knew what he was getting (poor guy). Unfortunately for him, not everything worked out well. I have learned many lessons in how NOT to cook. But my husband has valiantly eaten nearly everything that I have prepared and has always been encouraging.

Most of the incidents and offensive things that I tried to feed to my poor hubby have long been forgotten as my skills have improved but there is one incident that still gets brought up from time to time, and just yesterday again. My son was maybe 2 at the time.

I decided that I was going to try to make Chicken Noodle Soup - from scratch!

I bought a nice little chicken and had it simmering with onion and celery and carrots and spices ALL DAY LONG. Oh boy it smelled so so good. The tastes I took told me I had a wonderful soup on my hands and I couldn't wait to impress my husband with this wonderful creation that I made. When it came time to take the chicken and vegetables out of the stock I was puzzled by how best to do that without burning the skin off my hands. I had an "aha" moment and thought I will pour it through my strainer which will catch all of the solids, then I can cut up the chicken when it cools a bit.

As the very last little bit of stock poured down my drain, I very sadly realized that I did not think far enough ahead to put a bowl under the strainer. I cried. All that I had left of my whole day of cooking was a pile of boiled chicken meat. I got my husband to pick up some chicken pieces with bones on his way home and tried so very hard to salvage something - but alas it was a watery broth and tough chewy flavourless chicken. Probably the worst culinary disaster that I personally have ever made. I am so glad that now I can cook (and I am positive my husband is too). I don't even try to cook chicken stock anymore due to time restraints really and it is so easy to buy it at the grocery store and add it to the soups that I make now to save time.

I have really grown in my adventure level in this past year. I have lived my life really not caring for spicy hot foods but my husband is slowly converting me. I made salsa one year because I had picked up 25 pounds of tomatoes but didn't know what to do with them. I tweaked it the next year and this year I have perfected it and made 3 batches for home and helped someone else make a batch. While making the third batch my husband asked for me to try to make hot sauce (What, you can make hot sauce at home??? was the first thing that came to mind). While making hot sauce he suggested that he might really like bar-b-que sauce to come out of the mad science of my kitchen as well.

I made the sauce as well as a dry rib rub the other night and my hunny massaged the rub into a rack of ribs and let it marinate over night and slow baked them in the oven yesterday and then put them on the BBQ low and slow and slathered them over and over again with the sauce. I don't care for ribs so he made me a pork chop. I tasted the ribs though and even I thought they were impressively good. I didn't actually cook the meal, but I brought a whole ton of flavour to the party, so I think it counts.

Hot Sauce

While making my third batch of salsa at home, my darling husband came to me and asked the age old question "Do you know what I would really like you to try to make?" The answer was hot sauce. I have actually never heard of anyone making such a thing at home. Gasp. My hunny is the creative genius behind the mad science that happens in my kitchen. We make such a good team. I don't know how many times he suggests that I make something that I would never think of and when I make it whatever it is turns out so good.



Off to my favorite internet recipe sites to research just how does one go about making hot sauce. What goes into them besides peppers? How do you cook it and how do you blend it? Do you remove the seeds? What about balances of flavours? There are so many commercial varieties of hot sauce just where does one begin to try to create one at home?



His favorite hot sauce in our fridge is mail ordered from Texas and the ingredient list just shows habanero peppers so I found a recipe for habanero hot sauce. On my way to the farmer's market to get the 12 habanero peppers necessary for the sauce it occurred to me that I should also make one that has the same blend of peppers that my salsa does, because he loves it so much.


I modified the recipe for the habanero hot sauce slightly to have regular vinegar and lime juice as those were also listed on the ingredient bottle of the sauce in my fridge and made the blend of salsa peppers with the apple cider vinegar that the original recipe for the habenero sauce called for. The habanero sauce came out pure heat. My hunny loves the hot but for him it is more about the flavour that the peppers bring. I went to the grocery store and added a whole lot of pineapple juice to mellow it a bit (I don't think it worked but we will see as the flavours tend to develop over time with such things).

The salsa blend on the other hand worked beautifully and my hunny loves the depth and balance of flavours. It will long be in our fridge and will accent many dishes in my future cooking adventures.