Monday, September 29, 2008

Alive and Well...

I can't believe how quickly September is flying by. Anyhoo, enough with my life on fast forward. I do plan on being more diligent in my postings in the future. I had thought about again participating in NaBloPoMo, but I was really keen on the theme for October. Although I really do like October in general. The trees get all gussied up in their fall colours, there is Thanksgiving for us Canadians, and of course, there is Hallowe'en my favourite of holidays. I will admit though, it doesn't seem to be quite as much fun now that the kidlets are getting older.

On to what is new and exciting. I have joined an online Supper Club, and if all of the recipes turn out as fab as the first, this is a club that is going to a joy to participate in. The particular Supper Club is the brain child of Molly over at Batter Splattered. How it works, someone chooses a recipe and we all, within the same week, make up the recipe. Adaptations are allowed and then by Monday(at least I think that's it) we post with our results, thoughts and hopefully yummy looking pics to drool over. Considering that I am still pretty new to the whole food photography thing, my may not always be drool-worthy, but practice and all that.

This week's recipe was Cheese and Potato Soup, from Epicurious. I made mine up Thursday, but am just posting now as I spent most of the weekend helping a friend prepare to move. Back to the soup. It was delicious with a capital 'D'. Everyone absolutely loved it.

As usual, I did make a couple several of changes. I nixed the celery, as I am not a fan of celery strings, and instead added about a half a teaspoon of celery seed with the other seasonings. I used a bouillon cube, I know, I know, but I didn't have any chicken broth kicking around. I bumped up the cheese factor by using a combination old cheddar, mozzarella and smoked cheddar. I also added more ham, about a half a cup of niblet corn, a few dashes of Cayenne instead of the Tabasco and a sprig of fresh Rosemary for luck. The corn was a last minute thing that I decided on to replace the celery. Oh, I almost forgot, I sautèd the ham with the onions, carrots, garlic(2 cloves, diced,which I apparently also forgot to mention) and seasonings. I wanted to give the ham a little additional flavour.




Overall thoughts, the soup was amazing, and I would even like to try it with more broth and no dairy. For those wondering why, here's a shot of the soup pre-dairy. It even tasted great at this stage.



If you're interested in a few more takes on the soup, have a peek at the other Supper Club member's blogs. Siri, Ingrid, Kirstin, Nicole, Amanda and of course, Molly.

Sunday, September 7, 2008

Trapped in Allergy Hell

First off, where the heck have the last two weeks gone? One minute the kids are gearing up for back to school, then all of a sudden POOF! We're heading into the second week of school. It's crazy I tell ya, crazy.

I had plans for today, there was to be the baking of bread of some sort, knitting and maybe some movie watching. Instead there is tissue, sneezing and snuffles. Apparently my seasonal allergies have arrived. Yay! So there will most likely be no bread baking, probably no knitting and maybe even no movie watching. The whole snuffle-nosed-head-in -a-fish-bowl thing is not exactly conducive to the enjoyment of anything.