Three Bean Minestrone Soup

Well, I forgot to take a picture of this, but it turned out really good! Plus, aren't soups in the fall/winter the BEST?! As I was cooking this, I came up with a tip. Homemade soups are really awesome, but can be a pain to put together. SO, here's my tip: when you are feeling ambitious, make a few "soup kits". In your soup kit, cut up one onion, 2 carrots and 2 celery stalks. Go ahead and freeze in your freezer. So many soups start with these three ingredients. This way when you want to make a soup, all you have to do is add chicken or beans or ham or beef and broth of your liking!

Earlier this week, I put 3/4 cup of black beans, red beans, and white beans into my crockpot and cooked them overnight. My plan was to mash them up in my food grinder and turn them into baby food for Katelyn (which I did.) But before I did that, I decided to use some of them in a soup. I was inspired to make this recipe by Robin Miller (a show I often watch), but I changed quite a bit. Here's what I did:

Ingredients:
1 medium to large onion diced
2 large carrots diced
2 celery stalks diced (don't be afriad to use the leaves of the stalk too-they are good!)
1 28 ounce can of diced tomatoes (and juice)
1 medium zucchini (diced)
1/2 package of frozen spinach
Beans (see above for amount) but you could use just one kind of bean too and you could use them from a can instead of dry and cooking them ahead of time.
1 cup of noodles of your choice (I used egg noodles)
2 bay leaves
2 teas thyme
1 teas rosemary
1 teas celery salt
1 teas onion powder
black pepper to taste


Put onions, carrots and celery into your crockpot. Add tomatoes (with juice!) and 1 cup water. Add spices (feel free to add more of any of the above spices to taste :)) Let simmer on low for 6-8 hours or high for 3-4 hours. Approximately 1/2 hour before you are ready to serve, add zucchini, spinich and noodles (cooked.) Enjoy!

Apple Crisp

Yum, yum, yum. Who doesn't love fall? It's the time of soups, stews, crock pot recipes galore, and of course, APPLES! This Friday Dr. and Mrs. Hock (my in-laws) came over for dinner. For dessert I decided to make apple crisp... delicious! The recipe is Mrs. Hock's to begin with, but I modified it (just slightly) to make it even healthier!!!! Enjoy :)

Ingredients:
1 cup white flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
2 cups rolled oats
1 teas ground cinnamon
1/2 ground nutmeg (if you like nutmeg flavor, you can add almost a full teas)
2 teas wheat germ (optional...it's just a really healthy ingredient, but it isn't needed)
1 1/2 cups packed brown sugar
1 1/2 cups butter
4-5 large apples (peeled, cored and sliced)
2 teas lemon or lime juice

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix flour, oatmeal, cinnamon, nutmeg, wheat germ and brown sugar. Cut butter into mixture until crumbly. (Important: make sure the butter is room temperature and very soft. Do not have it melted though. Also, make sure you use "cutting" motion to incorporate. Cutting is using a fork and knife and pulling it apart through the mixture. This keeps it crumbly rather than mixing which will form a big lump.)

Put half of mixture in bottom of 8x8 or 9x9 greased pan. Cut apples in thin slices and place in separate bowl. Add lime or lemon juice and toss. Then layer apples on top of the oatmeal mixture. Finish by adding the remaining oatmeal mixture on top of apples. Cook for 45-50 min until top is just turing brown and apples are tender. Serve with ice cream or whipped cream.

Hawaiian Pizza!

Well this past week, we tried something I've never done before. I made my own pizza. Crust and all. And you know what? it was GOOD! Now I will admit I think I can make it even better but for a first try, not bad :) One of the best things about this crust is that it doesn't contain yeast or kneading (which is nice!) I also got the concept of Hawaiian pizza from a cooking show I watch, "Quick Fix Meals with Robin Miller", but I added more to mine than hers.



Crust:

(First of all, let me credit my mother in law here. This is her recipe. She is a SUPER healthy cook and you'll probably see alot of my recipe inspirations come from recipes that are hers.)

2 1/4 cups white flour

1 cup whole wheat flour

2 teas baking powder

1 teas salt and sugar

1 1/4 cup milk (her recipe calls for buttermilk, but I used skim milk)

1/4 cup safflower oil (I used canola.)

Mix above ingredients and put in deep dish pizza pan. (Or you can put on a baking sheet which is what I did because I didn't have a deep dish pizza pan.)

Cook for 5 min. at 425.



Sauce:

1 can tomato sauce

2 teas soy sauce

2 teas honey

Mix and spread on pizza crust.

Add 1/4 cup mozzeralla cheese and 1/4 cup monetary jack cheese.

Add toppings.

(For toppings I used canned pinneapple, chicken and ham.)

Add additional 1/4 cup mozzeralla cheese and 1/4 cup monetary jack cheese.



Cook in oven at 425 for additional 15-20 min.

Pardon the picture... we were so excited to dig in that I forgot to take a picture until we were eating!!!