Chicken and Farro Soup

Well Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and whatever other holiday I may have missed!  I've been very busy behind the camera the last few months which caused me to put the blog aside.  Hopefully I'll be able to start posting more regularly now that the holidays are over.  Here is a sneak peek of the fruits of my labor!  You can check out my photography website at www.mlfotography.com.

 

 

 

Aside from photography, I was busy preparing for the Holiday Extravaganza and Christmas itself!  I shared a little bit about the HE in my post about Christmas Stove-top Scents.  In addition to making scents and printables, I made several gifts that can be made on a budget.  These can be used at any time of the year for birthday gifts, teacher or employee appreciation or just an old fashioned thank you gift!

If you know me, you know that gift wrap is a big deal to me.  Whether it's Christmas, birthday or a get well gift, I love spending time making sure each detail of the wrapping is perfect.  I think it makes the gift even more special.  For this year's gift wrap I just used Google Images to find my favorite Christmas chalkboard printable and hand copied the print onto a gift that was wrapped with butcher paper using a chalkboard marker.  Pretty cute huh?  I'm in love with it, so if you receive a gift from me in the near future you can guarantee it'll look similar!

Now for the good stuff.

I've made lots of yummy things recently but I blame poor lighting for not being able to take pictures to post them.  Oh and also time.  And sick babies.  But yesterday I made a batch of homemade chicken stock that had so much flavor I had to make a soup right away and share it with you.  For the stock I put celery (with the leafy greens), carrots, garlic, onion, parsley, bay leaves and thyme in a pot, placed 3 bone-in, skin-on chicken breasts on top and covered with water and simmered for about an hour and a half.  I do have to tell you that they weren't whole breasts.  We had bought bone-in breasts a while back and cut the breasts off and I froze the remainder for the purpose of making broth.  There wasn't a ton of chicken left on there, but just enough for a small batch of soup.  If you use whole bone-in breasts, it may take longer.  Because I didn't have very much chicken for my soup, I used farro to create a more hearty and satisfying soup.

You're probably thinking far-what?  Farro.  It's becoming more and more popular and is starting to appear on restaurant menus and on recipes around Pinterest. When I first read it on a menu I have to admit I thought it was a cheese.  Haha!  I quickly learned otherwise.  It looks really similar to barley when cooked and is nutty in flavor.  All you need to know is that, yes, it is delicious!

So from a random thought to make stock, this recipe was born.  And it's delicious.

Ingredients:

3 small carrots, diced
1/4 onion, diced
1 T olive oil
1/2 cup white wine
6 cups of homemade chicken stock
1 cup of shredded chicken
1 bay leaf
1/2 cup uncooked farro
2 stocks of kale, chopped

1.  In a dutch oven, saute onion and carrots in olive oil for 2-3 minutes.
2.  Add 1/2 cup of white cooking wine and simmer for 1 minute.
3.  Add stock, chicken, farro and bay leaf.
4.  Simmer for 10-15 minutes or until farro is finished
5.  Cut the kale leaves away from the rib and chop.  Add to soup and turn off heat and recover for 5-10 minutes or until kale is wilted.

This soup was delicious when I served it but had even more flavor the next day.  The stock was incredible rich in flavor and adding the white wine only added to the incredible amounts of flavor that was happening.  I didn't need to use many aromatics in the soup because I had already done so when making the stock.  If you are using a box or canned stock or broth, you may want to add celery, garlic and thyme to your base before adding the broth.    

Be happy.  Be healthy.  Enjoy!

Happy 60th Birthday!

My FIL turned 60!  My MIL wanted to throw him a surprise party but the frequently asked question arose, where?  Oh yes, that would be me with my hand in the air.  Thankfully my husband quickly agreed that the party should be at our house.  We had such a great night celebrating my FIL with family and friends.  This party was the motivation behind our Living Room Project and inspired several little projects along the way, which you will see below!

We ordered food from Oregano's, one of our favorite restaurants!

Dessert was an array of my FIL (and MIL's, because, who are we kidding?) favorite desserts.  Chocolate Peanut Butter Parfait and a Lemon Berry Cheesecake Parfait along with my coconut cupcakes.

We wanted the desserts displayed at different levels  so we put chargers on top of cake plates.  You can see in the pictures that we put chargers on top of an upside down charger to help with the effect we were aiming for.

The chocolate peanut butter parfaits were the hit of the party!  SO SO SO good!

Since my FIL was born in 1954, my MIL found all sorts of events associated with that year and I designed a chalkboard poster to display.  This is a 16x20 that we had printed at Wal-Mart and she mounted onto canvas.  Wal-Mart does an awesome job at mounting photos, which we learned later when I made my Christmas Subway and Chalkboard Art.  But for these, my MIL did them herself the same way I did them in my son's Vintage Farm Nursery.  They looked great!

Have you heard of Wordle? It's a fun website that lets you create word collages.  We attempted to use the website but we couldn't download it and save it to print in this large of a format so we made it ourselves.  Wal-Mart photo lab to the rescue. 

I used the same fonts from the 1954 print to make drink and food labels.  It's all in the details!

On the tree in our living room, we hung black and white photos of him as a child.  I made these adorable Light Bulb Vases to hang on the tree too.   I love the pops of yellow against the gray wall.  It turned out so cute, don't you think?

What a great reason to express our creative side!  Happy Birthday Papa!  We are so blessed by you!

Sweet Potato and Black Bean Chili

I love chili!  It's delicious and inexpensive, which is a popular combination in my house!  It's easy to create a healthy version without feeling like you're robbing yourself of flavor.  I typically use lean ground turkey for my chili.  There's just something about ground beef that sends a chill up my spine.  Don't ask me how I can eat ground turkey and not ground beef.  I'm sure it stems from childhood trauma in which my mother put a healthy meal in front of me that I refused to eat.  The nerve.

I've talked about my mom's chili before when I posted this recipe for Chicken and Quinoa Chili (which actually tastes better than it looks in the picture). My sister and I would only it eat my mom's chili on top of saltines.  We would layer chili, sour cream and cheese of top of little crunchy, salty squares and eat until our bellies were bursting.  Mmm...remember that Sis?

Last month we had a Pumpkin Patch Birthday Party for my toddler.  We painted pumpkins, served up chili and ate pumpkin cupcakes.  The kids had almost as good of a time as the adults did ;)  When I planned the food for the party, I had our a few of our guests in mind.  One family has severe food allergies and intolerances so I wanted to serve something that would be easy to fix and would be safe for them to eat.  Chili to the rescue!  I made two different kinds, turkey chili and sweet potato with black beans.  The sweet potato and black bean chili was a hit!  It was loved by everyone!

Ingredients:

2 small sweet potatoes, diced
1 small onion, diced
1 8 ounce can of tomato sauce
1 14.5 ounce can of chili tomatoes
3 14.5 cans of water
2 cans of black beans  (drained and rinsed)
1/2 cup of uncooked quinoa
1 box of Carol Shelby's Chili Mix

Clean eating variation: eliminate cheese and sour cream

Directions:

1.  In a dutch oven, saute onions until translucent.  Add sweet potatoes and cook on low for 1-2 minutes.
2.  Add tomatoes, water and seasonings, reserve the masa for later.  Stir and bring to a simmer.
3.  Stir in quinoa, cover and cook for 12-15 minutes.
4.  About 5 minutes before serving, add black beans.
5.  (optional) Mix the masa with 1/3 cup of water and add to the chili to thicken.  (Add a little at a time until you reach desired thickness)

Note: I cooked this chili the night before the party and reheated it just before the guests arrived.  I've also made this in a slow cooker.

What's chili without the toppings?  I love them all!  There's nothing like a spicy chili with the coolness of the sour cream and the sweetness of the cornbread!  Mmm...cornbread!  For our guests at the party, I made gluten free corn bread and made sure I had toppings I knew they could enjoy.

Now that's a bowl of chili! 

Next time you find yourself wondering what to do for dinner, give this a try!