November Soup--Potato Leek Soup

First soup report!!  It was so easy and so good!!

Potato-Leek Soup

(Crock Pot)

4 cups diced potatoes

3 cups thinly sliced leeks

2 cans chicken broth

8-10 slices bacon cut in ½ inch pieces, cooked and drained

1 cup evaporated milk

salt & pepper to taste

shredded cheese (Optional)

Combine first 4 ingredients in Crock Pot and cook on low for 8- 10 hours. Add evaporated milk and adjust seasonings during last 30 minutes cooking. Puree about 2/3 and add back into the remaining soup stir. Top with cheese if desired.

This one is a definite keeper.

Junk food isn't cheap.

There was an excellent article in Sunday's NYT showing how fast/junk food isn't cheaper than nutritious food.  I've long suspected as much.  I know that I can make a huge pot of vegetable soup that is tasty, nutritious, and really inexpensive.  Tonight I am making roasted chicken and vegetables which is absolutely divine and will make about 6 servings for a total cost of about $10. Then I will use the bones to make chicken stock for chicken noodle soup.  That one chicken will make a total of about 12 delicious servings.

Then there is the non-monetary costs of junk/fast food.  Obesity and its attending health problems, high blood pressure and diabetes.  The trashing of the environment with all the bags and plastic.  The trashing of the art of family meals--the set table, the aromas from the kitchen, the anticipation, and finally congenial companionship while eating.  One last personal peeve: how will the children ever learn table manners when everyone is noshing their faces in a paper bag in front of the television??

Summer Fruit

We will digress from the usual abysmal political / economic news and wallow in the juicy, drippy deliciousness of summer fruit.  Oh my, the aroma of the peaches at the market just about sends me directly to heaven.  Juicy, drippy, sweet peaches.  We brought home peaches, grapes, and cantaloupe. The peaches didn't last until we got home.  I cut up the cantaloupe and put it in a bowl in the refrigerator. I found JMM had stuck a note to the bowl, "No good.  Leave this to me to take care of."  Which of course meant that it was so good, he wanted all of it.  And grapes, I've just left them on the counter so we can snack on them as we walk by.  Watermelons, I love the smaller, seedless varieties.  JMM loves plums of all kinds.  Yum, have to go wash the juice off my chin.  What's your favorite summer fruit?

Summer Fruit

Here in Texas the peach crop is coming in and just walking into the grocery and inhaling the scent of those peaches is enough to waft one into Heaven. Love peaches in pies, cobblers, or ice cream but love them even more just as God made them--juice dripping from mouth to chin to shirt.

Cantaloupes are beginning to come in also. I only eat cantaloupe in July and some in August when they are at their juicy, sensuous best.

Looking forward to luscious grapes in another month or so.

What's your favorite fresh summer food?

Meat, milk, and eggs

I'm not a vegetarian--I wish I were but I'm not. For many years, out of frugality I stretched meat by making it part of casseroles and stews and I still do this. But I have been limiting meat recently to meat that has been raised without antibiotics or hormones and as far as I know raised under humane conditions. Two years ago I switched to milk that comes from cows that are not injected with hormones or antibiotics. Just this year I changed to eggs that are from chickens that are not treated with hormones or antibiotics and are free range. These changes are more expensive but the taste is so much better and I hope my purchases reflect my desire that animals be treated in a humane manner.

Food, Inc.

We went to see Food Inc. this afternoon. It is about the industrialization of agriculture and the results of it. There were portions that I just could not watch—the parts about the treatment of the animals and the pollution of the earth were just too awful to watch. While I can't change everything, there are some things I can do:
1. I will never, ever buy another Tyson chicken product.
2. I can eat less meat and buy what I do eat from WF.
3. I can stop eating anything with high fructose corn syrup in it.
I really don't like the idea that large corporations are in such control of the food supply. So the obvious thing to do is to stop buying processed food. This will take some doing.

Thought for the Day:
Nothing is so strong as gentleness, nothing so gentle as real strength. St. Frances de Sales