Chicken Tortellini Soup

Some days just call for soup. And soup has been calling my name during this unnaturally chilly beginning of June. I like this one because it's pretty quick. You use leftover rotisserie chicken (or a chicken breast that you've cooked in the crock pot) sauté some veggies, add broth and pasta and you're done twenty minutes later. Stews need lots of time and their hearty nature is generally more appropriate in winter. But this soup takes thirty to forty minutes, start to finish, and its light and clean broth makes a delicious supper for spring as well as winter. 

Meat Pie

It's hard to know what to do with leftover roast. You can eat it in sandwiches or make a stew, but sometimes you need something different. My grandma's method was to make Meat Pie. 

Meat Pie isn't strictly a pie. I'm not sure it's even loosely a pie, but it's a great way to use up leftover roast ingredients. It's essentially a soup on the bottom with biscuits or dumplings floating on the top. My grandma used to just make Bisquick biscuits, but my mom found a homemade dumpling that we use now. It's a simple, hearty dish stemming from the necessity of making a bit of leftover meat stretch into an entire meal. As a pastor's wife, my grandma's grocery budget was not large. 

It's a great recipe because it's flexible, depending on what you have leftover from your pot roast. Bare bones, you only really need leftover meat and gravy to make this, but you can also add in leftover onions, carrots and potatoes. 

The rich broth gets its flavor not only from gravy, but also smashed roasted onions and carrots that were from your pot roast. If you have them, they deeply enhance the flavor profile of the broth. Added to this is leftover roast chunks and bites of carrot and potato. The dumpling batter is dropped onto the top, where it cooks in the steam generated by your simmering "soup." A delicious way to turn boring leftovers into a satisfying meal.

Beef Stew

The holidays are over. The magical moments spent together with family and friends are memories now and we've turned the page to a new year. But while Christmas and New Years may be a thing of the past, the cold weather is not. There are at least a few more months of long, hard cold left before spring begins to turn her thoughts toward us. And after all the pies, puddings and cookies of the holiday season, I am ready for something hearty and warming to the bone. 

This stew is just that. A whole mess of onions is slow cooked with chunks of beef until the onions break down and melt into the velvety sauce, making it rich with color and flavor. Thick slices of carrots and hunks of red potato are thrown in at the end, cooked until just tender. Serve with a warm dinner roll slathered with butter, and you'll sit down to dinner and say, "Take that, Old Man Winter!"

Chicken Noodle Soup

There's something about chicken noodle soup that speaks of home. Maybe it's the warm broth, soothing many a sore throat or steaming red faces fresh out of the snow banks. Or maybe it's the tender chicken and perfectly cooked veggies, wholesome goodness that fills hungry stomachs. Or it could be the noodles, each one slightly different, homemade and hearty.

How-To: Homemade Noodles

Homemade noodles can take a soup from good to amazing. There's something about the texture of a homemade noodle that leaps past the cookie-cutter sameness of store-bought and gives a soup individuality. Store-bought noodles tend to be a little bland and they slip right off your spoon before you are able to get them to your mouth. Homemade noodles are different. Toothsome. Hearty. They put the love in your soup.

Corn Chowder

Car rides to Maine to visit my grandparents always ended the same. We'd pull into the driveway, the tall red barn standing sentinel on one side of the driveway and the light beckoning welcome from the breezeway on the other. We'd pile out of the car and pass through the porch into the kitchen, usually eyeing a pie or two that sat on the washer to keep cool. Hugs would be given all around, car trip woes related and then we'd sit down for a bite, despite the late hour. 

Beef Chili

I really don't like beans. 

Not pinto. Or Kidney. Or Lima. Or any of them. 

Yuck. 

My aversion to these legumes has always been problematic when it comes to chili. Most people will tell you that chili just isn't the same without the beans. 

Garlic Potato Soup

 A few weeks ago, I made the eight-hour trek to my Alma Mater to spend a weekend with my college roommate, Amber. It's a weird thing, you know, stepping back in time. You think it's all going to be like it was before. Memories flood your mind as you walk the sidewalks that you walked thousands of times before, in another life. You see people and hear laughter that isn't there anymore. You attend a lecture, or see a professor and turn to the person next to you with an inside joke, but that person isn't there. You have this vague sense of being so familiar with a place, and yet no longer belonging. Attending a concert, walking through your department's building or making disparaging comments about the cafeteria are lonely affairs when the people that you shared those experiences with are no longer there.

Beef Orzo Stew

I really enjoyed college. I miss the classes, friendships, dorm life and hours of piano practice (yes, even that). One thing I do not miss is Chucks, the campus cafeteria. Those four years are probably the most mal-nourished of my life as I lived basically on cereal, pb&j and the occasional orange. As the countdown to the nearest break would slowly dwindle down, I would begin to dream of my favorite, mom-made meal. I would sigh as I stared down at yet another bagel and the carb-laden meal would magically begin to morph into delicious slices of beef, carmelized carrots, and roasted potatoes all slathered with an abundance of dark gravy and finished with a bowl of homemade applesauce on the side. The first meal my mom would always serve when I got home was roast beef. I lived for those meals.