Cream of Broccoli Soup with Mushrooms

I don’t know about you, but sometimes one of my produce bins gets a bit more full than the other. So, when I came home from the store with a 16-ounce package of whole mushrooms, it was impossible (Curses, you kohlrabi and celeriac!) to put it in the vegetable bin where it belonged. So, just for the moment, I put it into the fruit bin that had dwindled down to virtually nothing other than a withered piece of citrus, so old and so shriveled, as to be unidentifiable. Fast forward two weeks later when it was time to wash out those bins and I found the mushrooms. Gasp! A pound of mushrooms, looking the worse for wear, and me with no clue as to why I’d bought them. Sure, I have a lot of recipes that call for mushrooms, but I know, at the time that I bought these, I was thinking of something in particular. Well, it’s too late now, I need to use these up and fast. So, this is going to be the Week of the Mushroom! Four different recipes will be coming to you, all using mushrooms. Get ready to be bowled over by fungus!

First up is Cream of Broccoli Soup with Mushrooms (yeah, yeah I had put the broccoli in the fruit bin as well), a surprisingly tasty, decidedly summer soup that pairs nicely with a tossed or fruit salad, crusty roll or slice of nut bread.

Cream of Broccoli Soup with Mushrooms

8 oz. fresh mushrooms, cleaned and sliced
2 Melissa’s shallots, finely diced
1 large onion, finely diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
3 tablespoons butter
1/4 cup dry white wine
1 1/2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
16 oz. chicken stock, preferably homemade
1 cup broccoli florets
1 cup whole milk
Pinch of nutmeg
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste

In a large saucepan, sauté mushrooms, shallots, onion, and garlic in butter over low heat until mushrooms and onions are soft and all of the liquid has evaporated. Add wine and cook until evaporated. Stir in flour, and cook and stir for one minute. Add broth and broccoli, and bring to a simmer and cook for two minutes. Add milk and simmer for an additional 10 minutes. Add seasonings to taste and serve. This tastes equally good cold as it does warm, so consider it a soup for all seasons.

 

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One of my favorite broccoli soups is this copycat of St. Louis Bread Company’s.

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Pick a Color...Any Color

I have a very large great room in the lower level of my house. For quite some time, I have wanted to paint that room, but it just seemed so daunting, particularly considering that I’m troubled with carpal tunnel. It took me a week to paint the master bathroom because I can only do a little at a time. So, when a man who has painted for my family for the last 30 years got in touch with me and asked if I had any work for him, I jumped at that opportunity. But, there is good and bad in everything; I was deliriously happy with the idea of having that room, at long last, painted (I am not a fan of "Contractor's White"), but plunged into the depths of despair at the thought of having to select the paint.

Source: Pinterest

If you read this blog with any regularity, you know that one of my mottoes is, “Go Big or Go Home.” The upstairs part of my house is done in neutrals and it’s serene, I like that, but the great room downstairs, designed to spark conversation, conviviality, and fun, needs to be dramatic. I found this picture on Pinterest, and considering I have a similar chair (as you can see below), and some of those exact same baskets, I knew I wanted to paint my wall a dark shade of gray.

But, and you can trust me on this one, there are way more than Fifty Shades of Gray! My painter left with me a couple of fan decks to aid in making my selection, and I was shocked at how many different shades there actually were. There is blue gray, and brown gray, and green gray, and gray gray, there are even purple-y grays. It was a nightmare! He told me to get a couple of paint samples, put them on the wall, and make my choice from there. I cannot tell you how stressful it was for me to select paint. I finally settled on three colors: Armory, Downpour, and Volcanic Ash. I thought to myself how the same guy who names lipstick and nail polish, must also name paint. The paint color that I really wanted was called Zombie. How exotic does that sound? Unfortunately, it was so dark as to look as though big, black hefty bags had been affixed to the wall. No, that would not do.

Why am I telling you all this, you ask yourself, yawning. I’ll tell you why, because I want you to help me select this paint. I put big patches of it in various parts of the room so that I could look at it at different times throughout the day. As I mentioned, I’m looking for bold, in a room that is roughly 20’ x 30’.

Source: Pinterest

I moved most of the furniture to the center of the room (and I needed a big nap after that), but moved one piece and the accessories (Very sentimental because the piece of furniture itself belonged to Jim, and the bust and brass lamp belonged to my mother) back into place so that I could see what they would look like up against the wall. Before you begin to wonder whether or not I have truly lost my mind, let me add that, in late fall, white crown molding is going to be installed all around the top of the room, as is a white fireplace flanked on either side by window seats. (See above inspiration photo.) I am also planning a gallery wall of white painted frames holding black-and-white photos from my travels.

So, here are two pictures of the paint, which color do you like? Color number one Downpour? Color number two Armory? Or color number three Volcanic Ash? I think I’ve made my selection, but I’d appreciate it if you would weigh in.

Funnily enough, son number two and I separately ranked the exact same colors, for the exact same reasons. That apple did not fall far from the tree.

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Billie’s Chocolate Ice Cream

Lately, I have become (and I hesitate to use this word, but it’s embarrassingly accurate) addicted to a pleasant little Australian drama/comedy now on Netflix called “Offspring.” A friend of mine from high school (male) got me started watching it. I hadn’t anticipated liking it, because I am a dyed-in-the-wool fan of British television, mysteries in particular, but he had willingly accepted so many viewing challenges that I had thrown his way, that I felt that I owed it to him to watch at least one episode. Six episodes later, and nearing 4 o’clock in the morning, I had to stop. I was hooked from the very beginning. If you haven’t seen it, it’s about the Proudman family of assorted misfits, and all of their misadventures. It is about life, and love, and loss, and misunderstanding, and is seriously hard to stop watching. The casting is excellent, and I doubt that you’ll find a quirkier bunch than in this series. It got to the point where I had to limit myself to one episode per night in order to keep from losing any more sleep.

Last night I was watching an episode where oldest daughter, Billie Proudman (played by Kat Stewart of “Mr. & Mrs. Murder”), received some bad news. She barricaded herself in a room, crawled beneath a pile of blankets, and wouldn’t speak to anyone unless they brought her chocolate ice cream. At that moment I was reminded that I didn’t have any chocolate ice cream on hand. What if I encountered some sort of emergency, late at night? What would I do? It was then that I decided to make some to keep in the freezer just in case.

Here is an easy, no-churn recipe that you can do without standing for lengthy periods of time in front of the stove stirring up a custard, adding eggs, and praying to God that they don’t curdle. It’s astoundingly good, and a must to keep on hand, you know, just in case of emergency. :-) 

Billie’s Chocolate Ice Cream

1 14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk
1/2 cup Hershey‘s special dark cocoa, sifted
1/4 teaspoon espresso powder
1 teaspoon vanilla flavoring
Pinch of sea salt
2 cups heavy cream, whipped to stiff peaks

Whisk together condensed milk, cocoa, espresso powder, vanilla, and salt. Fold into whipped cream, one half at a time, until combined. Pour into a 9” x 5” x 3” loaf pan and put into the freezer. It will be ready to scoop and serve after five hours. Conversely, if you have an ice cream maker, freeze according to manufacturer’s instructions. Eat while barricaded in your room, hiding under mounds of blankets.

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If sorbet is more your thing, this Concord Grape Sorbet is absolute HEAVEN!

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Slow Cooker Sausage Supper

I love a nice, grilled sausage supper, but in this heat I am not about to go outside and grill. So, I selected all of my favorite sausage supper ingredients, combined them with a spicy sauce, and let the slow cooker work its magic. This is quite tasty, considering how easy it is to put together. It’s a great weeknight supper, or weekend meal. It’s only in the slow cooker for a total of three hours, so if you don’t think about it until midday or early afternoon, it will still be ready in time for supper. Why heat up the kitchen on a hot day? Grab your slow cooker and have a wonderful summer sausage supper.

Slow Cooker Sausage Supper

1 small sweet onion, finely chopped

1 cup light brown sugar

3 Tablespoons yellow mustard

3 Tablespoons Dijon mustard

1 Tablespoon horseradish

2 pounds smoked kielbasa

2 ears corn, cut into rounds

1/2 pound Melissa’s Baby Ruby Gold Potatoes

Spray slow cooker with PAM.  Add onion, sugar, mustards, and horseradish, and stir to combine. Cut the kielbasa into one-inch-thick slices and add to the crockpot. Stir to coat. Cover and cook on high heat 2 hours, stirring occasionally. Add corn and potatoes and cook an hour longer.  Serves 4-6.

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Another simple summer meal is this Shrimp Boil Foil Pack.

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Full Plate Thursday

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Italian Salad in a Jar

Ah, summertime, that time of the year when it’s too hot to cook, and you just want to grab and go and be done with it. This delicious layered Italian Salad in a Jar is something that you are going to want to have on hand all summer. It is shown layered in a quart jar, and that yields a main dish salad. It is so wonderful to be able to grab a jar out of the fridge, empty it into a bowl (and you would be surprised how beautiful it looks), and serve it alongside a roll or slice of freshly baked bread.

A while ago I made an excruciatingly simple Onion and Chive Bread that I shared with you here. The recipe made three, so I put two into the freezer to bake up later. I wasn’t sure how well that would work, but let me tell you it worked out beautifully, so if you have hesitated to make that bread, do it now. As I mentioned, I had frozen two loaves, so pulled one out, didn’t bother to thaw it, and just put it into a preheated 375° oven (in my case I used my little convection toaster oven), and set the timer to 25 minutes. It came out tasting  as though it was freshly baked! So good, and the perfect accompaniment to the salad.

As with all layered salads, you really don’t need to follow a recipe, per se, you can add or subtract what you like, but after a bit of experimentation, I find this version is just perfect. You may question the presence of corn in an Italian salad. Well, question all you like; when Jim and I were in Italy, every salad we ate had mounds of corn on it, and I found I liked it that way. Having heard of this addition, my dad doesn’t eat a salad without mounding it with fresh corn.

This is a delicious salad, with loads of layers, a lot of textures, a variety of tastes, and color that’s going to make it look pretty, because as I’ve said before, we eat with our eyes first. The recipe for the salad is below, but you really don’t need one, it’s all a case of just layering as you see fit. As you layer, it’s important to press down as much as you can to get all of the air out. I think you’re going to love this one.

Italian Salad in a Jar
 
1 6.34 oz. pkg. Melissa's Steamed Artichoke Hearts
1 Melissa's Fire Roasted Sweet Red Bell Pepper, sliced

1 ear fresh corn, husked, niblets removed
Lettuce of your choice
Black olives
Salami (or your favorite deli meat)
Red onion, cut into thin strips
Shredded cheese (I used mozzarella)

Your favorite Italian dressing (I used this one)

Remove the artichokes from the package, rinse, drain, and rough chop, discarding any woody ends. Place the artichokes into the bottom of the jar, and cover with Italian dressing. From there, layer in the order the ingredients are listed, pressing down lightly on each layer. Seal (you can vacuum seal if you have a vacuum sealer and a mason jar adapter) and refrigerate for 1 to 2 days. When ready to serve simply remove the lid and empty into a bowl or onto a plate. So good!

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If Mexican is more your thing, try this zesty layered Taco Salad.

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Chocolate Deliciousness

The other night I took dinner to a friend who had recently suffered a loss. Comfort food was the order of the day, and, to me, nothing is more comforting than Roast Beef with Red Eye Gravy, mashed potatoes, Smothered Green Beans, and a decadent dessert. I looked at a number of recipes before I came up with this one. When my friend's eyes rolled back into her head upon tasting it, I knew I had a winner. You can skip the espresso powder if you don’t have any on hand and don’t want to buy some (although this is as much of a staple in my kitchen as is anything, because it enhances the flavor of so many dishes), but do use this combination of chocolate chips. Combining semi-sweet and bittersweet gives it a rich and decadent flavor. This one’s a winner! 

Chocolate Deliciousness

1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

1 cup bittersweet chocolate chips

1 3/4 cups heavy whipping cream, divided

1/4 cup sifted confectioners’ sugar

1/8 teaspoon espresso powder

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 (9 inch) prepared shortbread crust (see recipe below)

Stabilized Whipped Cream, to garnish

In microwave dish combine chocolate chips and 3/4 cup of the heavy cream.

Microwave on high for 1 to 2 minutes, stirring every 30 seconds until smooth. Cool to room temperature. Stir in sugar, espresso powder, and vanilla. Set aside.

In a stand mixer, beat the remaining cream until soft peaks form. Remove bowl from stand mixer and fold in chocolate mixture, a little at a time. Carefully spoon into crust.

Refrigerate at least 8 hours before serving.

Shortbread Crust

1 11.3-oz. pkg. pecan shortbread cookies

2 tablespoons melted butter

Preheat oven to 375° F. Place shortbread cookies into the work bowl of a food processor, and pulse until finally ground. Poor butter in through feed tube and pulse until combined. Empty into a 9-inch springform pan, and pat evenly along the bottom of the pan. Bake for 10 minutes. Remove from oven; cool.

 

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Another delicious no-bake dessert is this decadent (and decadently easy) Chocolate Cheesecake Dessert.

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Beans, Beets, and Bleu Salad

No doubt about it, I love salads! I particularly love my Green Bean Salad; it is perfect for summertime. With our mid-summer heat and humidity, I was craving that salad today. I was out of tomatoes, so started thinking about other things that would pair well with green beans. I was looking for a variety of colors, a variety of tastes, a bit of crunch, and a pungent bite. I got all of those things in this salad that I call Beans, Beets, and Bleu Salad -- an amazing blend of tastes, textures, and color, along with a wallop of nutrition. It makes an excellent main dish salad, or a wonderful side salad, and pairs particularly well with grilled meats. Give this a try, and see if it doesn’t become one of your new favorite salads as well.

Beans, Beets, and Bleu Salad

1 pound fresh green beans, trimmed and halved
1 9-oz. pkg. Melissa’s Steamed Golden Beets
1/2 cup walnut halves
1/2 cup Melissa’s Dried Tart Cherries
1/4 cup red onion, finely chopped
1/2 cup bleu cheese crumbles
Your favorite vinaigrette

Blanch beans in boiling water for five minutes. Drain, rinse, and plunge into ice water to stop the cooking process.

While beans are cooking, rinse and quarter beets and chop onion.

Place all ingredients into a large mixing bowl, toss with dressing, and serve.

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If you lack the adventure to try beets in a salad, give this version of Green Bean Salad a try.

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Amaze Me Monday

Busy Mondays

Merry Monday

Over the Moon

Celebrate Your Story

Inspire Me Tuesday

Tuesdays with a Twist

The Scoop

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