Cooking Show: Soup's On! Chicken Florentine w/Pasta, Loaded Potato and Egg Drop Soup

We recently filmed an episode of the cooking show featuring soup recipes.  

My friend, Lisa, joined me.  Lisa and I both agree that soup is one of our favorite things to make when the temperatures dip!

Chicken Florentine Soup with Pasta

Make this soup if you're looking for a change from traditional chicken noodle!  Comforting and creamy, thick and hearty.  Mmmmm.

(Click on the title to be taken to the recipe)

Slow Cooker Loaded Potato Soup

Minimal prep required!  Place chopped potatoes, scallions and chicken broth into your slow cooker and forget about it for 6 hours.  Puree it, stir in cream and cheddar and you're done!

All that's left to do is add a few toppings. Don't forget the toppings!

 Egg Drop Soup

I had never tasted egg drop soup before I decided to give it a go for this show.  I googled it and read a few reviews, trying to put together a recipe that kept the components of positive reviews and omitting things that I wasn't sure about (many recipes listed yellow food coloring as an ingredient...hmmm).

Since I've never had egg drop soup other than this one, I can't tell you how it compares to the egg drop soup that you may be used to!  But I will say that I think this soup is FABULOUS.  I wish the cameras had recorded when Lisa and I were taste-testing for seasoning.  She also had never tried egg drop soup, and when she tasted her first spoonful her eyes flew open and she exclaimed, "WOW! I was not expecting this to be so flavorful!"

If I haven't already swayed you into giving this soup a try, here's one more reason: it only takes 15 minutes to prepare.  

Yes, you read that correctly!  FIFTEEN minutes. From the time you stir your broth, ginger and soy sauce together on your stovetop to the moment you take your first spoonful.  Fifteen minutes is all it takes!

Cooking Show: What to Make When It's Too Hot to Cook!

Our recent cooking show didn't require much cooking.  

My friend, Lisa, assisted me. We focused on preparing recipes that aren't going to heat up your kitchen while you prepare them.  Sandwiches, wraps, tacos, parfaits and drinks!

Creamy-Dreamy Orange Martini

Would you like to make a drink that tastes like a Creamsicle®, but doesn't involve ice cream?  We've got you covered!

The secret ingredient is whipped cream vodka.

 Triple-Decker Club Sandwiches with Lemon-Garlic Aioli

These sandwiches should be made to suit your taste!  Use your absolute favorite ingredients and have fun stacking them together.  Click on the link to be taken to a list of suggested ingredients and assembly instructions.

Chicken Guacamole Wraps

Buying a store-cooked rotisserie chicken from the supermarket means that YOU won't have any cooking to do!  Just stir the ingredients together, wrap and enjoy.

Lime-Cilantro Shrimp Tacos

This was the only recipe that we prepared which required a teensy bit of cooking.  Just about 5 minutes to sauté the shrimp.

As if the heat from the habañero peppers wasn't enough, we decided to heat up the kitchen to cook the shrimp.  

This recipe is crazy delicious.

 Totally worth cooking for a few minutes on a hot night and heating up your kitchen just a bit.

Blackberry Parfaits

My daughters were both enthusiastic taste-testers when I was tweaking this recipe for the cooking show.  It's a fancier version of their favorite childhood summer snack! When they were younger and I was desperate for them to not eat junk food snacks, I would give them skewers of fruit to dip into yogurt with whipped cream mixed into it.  Now, twenty years later, it's their version of comfort food!

Cooking Show: Spice is Nice! Fajita Rice, Cinco de Mayo Salad with Chicken, Ginger Soy Shrimp Salad and Frozen Mango-Peach Cocktails

Our recent cooking show featured recipes to wake up your taste buds.

A bit of spice makes everything nice! 

My friend, Maribeth, cooked with me and we covered all the bases with salads, festive rice, and a fruity, frozen concoction to wash it all down.

Frozen Mango-Peach Cocktails

We've featured this recipe on a previous show, but it bears repeating!! Toss frozen mango chunks, simple syrup, lime juice, peach schnapps and ice cubes into a blender and minutes later you'll be sipping this tropical cocktail.  

Fajita Rice with Chicken

Easy clean-up because you only need one pan! Rice, veggies, seasonings, broth, rotisserie chicken--stir it up, let it simmer, sprinkle with cheese...

 ...add your favorite toppings and voilà!

A fabulous combination of spicy/melty/creamy/YUM.

Cinco de Mayo Chicken Salad with Salsa Dressing

A meal that's easy to throw together if you're pressed for time! 

This has recently been the go-to salad in my house.  I marinate the chicken for 15 minutes (a simple mix of olive oil and spices) and while it's marinating I prep the salad and whisk together the dressing.

 Ginger/Soy Shrimp Salad

If you're in the mood for an Asian-inspired salad, we've got you covered!

Another quick salad where you're going to marinate the protein (in this case, shrimp) while you prep your salad and dressing.  A few minutes under the broiler is all it takes to cook the shrimp!

Cooking Show: It's a Wrap!

Our recent cooking show featured an assortment of wrap sandwiches--Southwestern, Italian and Asian-inspired.

Although each type of wrap has its own distinct flavor, the method of preparation was the same: start with shredded chicken (use a rotisserie chicken!), add assorted veggies, drizzle with a flavorful dressing.

Caprese Chicken Wraps with Honey Balsamic Vinaigrette

Tomatoes, fresh mozzarella and fresh basil. My favorite combo!

Asian Chicken Wraps with Ginger Teriyaki Dressing

Always a hit in my house.  Loaded with fresh, crunchy veggies, it will curb your craving for Chinese takeout and you can pat yourself on the back for making a healthier choice!

Southwestern Chicken Rollups

I unabashedly admit that this is my favorite.  Combine the chicken with the dressing, then customize the rollups with assorted add-ins--avocado, tomatoes, peppers, lettuce.  I'll take the works, please.

Butterscotch Pudding

Pudding from scratch, so creamy and so dreamy!

Cooking Show--Tomato Recipes

I feel like I beat this subject to death...but am I the only one who wants to skip right through winter and into summer?

I'm not even going to pretend that winter tomatoes can compare to summer tomatoes...but cooking with ingredients that remind me of summer is one way to beat the winter blues.  Bring on the tomato recipes!

We started with BLT Salad with Buttermilk Dressing.

So simple, yet so good!  The assorted tiny tomatoes are very sweet and flavorful, drizzled with a creamy buttermilk dressing...I can close my eyes and almost feel like summer is here.  Almost.

Italian Chicken Wraps with Sun-Dried Tomato Vinaigrette

A couple of tablespoons of sun-dried tomatoes in the dressing provide a big punch of flavor!

Creamy Tuscan Shrimp with Pasta

Another recipe where a handful of sun-dried tomatoes add a wallop of flavor!

My friend, Trish, was cooking with me and we discussed adding a few mushrooms in...we ultimately decided against this, but next time I make this recipe I'm planning on adding some 'shrooms!

 Oatmeal Sheetcake with Caramel/Coconut Frosting

Okay, this recipe certainly departs from our tomato theme, but Dan the Awesome Cameraman is a fan of all things sweet. We haven't filmed a dessert since November and I want to keep him happy!

This dense cake is oozing with cinnamon flavor, and the caramel topping (perfectly browned by placing the frosted cake under the broiler for a minute) adds a crunchy texture.

Cooking Show: Copycat Recipes!

We whipped up a few copycat recipes on our most recent episode of the cooking show.

We started with an attempt at The Cheesecake Factory's Georgia Peach. 

What's not to love about a frozen, slushy peach concoction swirled with raspberry puree?

We then moved onto Olive Garden's Zuppa Toscana.

I've been making this soup for 20+ years.  It's soooo good.  It's so good that it makes me forget my aversion to sausage!  To be taken directly to the printable recipe, click here.

If you're not in the mood for soup, we've got a another recipe for you!  Do you like the Sonoma Chicken Salad at Whole Foods?   Stuff it into a half pita like we did, or serve it over a bed of fresh greens.

Click here for the printable recipe!

And finally...

We whipped up a batch of our own version of MacDonald's Shamrock Shake.

Okay, we whipped up more than one batch.  The blender was going non-stop until we ran out of ice cream.  They were a big hit!

Chicken Orzo Soup with Fennel & Kale

Soup's on!

One more reason to be happy that cooler fall weather has finally arrived.  It makes me so happy to finally be able to simmer a pot of soup on the stove and not turn my kitchen into a steam bath, so I took a break from all the pumpkin recipes I've been trying out lately and made this soup!

I switched out a few ingredients from my usual chicken soup recipe, but if you're not feeling adventurous, go the traditional route and switch out the orzo for traditional noodles and use celery instead of fennel.

Today's Playlist:

• "50 Ways To Say Goodbye"...Train
• "Hey There Delilah"...Plain White T's
• "Revolution"...The Beatles
• "In the Next Room"...Neon Trees
• "Paint It Black"...The Rolling Stones
• "Warning"...Green Day
• "Have Love Will Travel"...The Sonics
• "Got To Move"...Cake
• "Hate To Say I Told You So"...The Hives

Chicken Orzo Soup with Fennel & Kale

Printable Recipe

• 2 stalks fennel, chopped
• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 4 cloves garlic, crushed
• 2 large or 3 small carrots, chopped
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 2 cups chopped cooked chicken
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 teaspoon dried rosemary
• 8 cups chicken broth
• 2/3 cup uncooked orzo
• 3 cups chopped kale
• salt & pepper, to taste

Gather your ingredients.

Chop the carrots, onion and fennel.  I pulled off a few of the fennel fronds and set them aside to use a garnish when serving.

In a large (6 to 8 quart) pot, heat the olive oil over medium/high heat.  Add the fennel, carrots and onions.  Crush in the garlic.  Add salt and pepper.  Saute the vegetables, stirring occasionally, until they start to soften and get a little bit of color on the bottom of the pan.

Add the cooked chicken, bay leaf, rosemary and chicken broth.  Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat to a simmer.  Allow the soup to simmer for 15 minutes.  Add the orzo and simmer for an additional 10 to 15 minutes, until the orzo is cooked.  Finally, remove the bay leaf, add the chopped kale and simmer for 10 more minutes.

Season with additional salt and pepper if needed.

Enjoy.

Sonoma Chicken Salad (Whole Foods Knockoff)

Considering that it's summer, and we're all looking for shortcuts at dinner time, and it's been a really long time (about six months!) since I've posted a recipe that requires a rotisserie chicken, ---here you go!

This salad is a riff on Whole Foods' Sonoma Chicken Salad.  Nuts and celery for crunch, grapes and honey for sweetness...I hope you enjoy this as much my family does!

Cranberry-Walnut Chicken Wraps and Baseball Really Does Make Everything Better

I refuse to get on my elliptical machine unless I have something good to watch while I torture myself  exercise.  It is just so gosh-darn boring any other way.

When I couldn't get my ipad to stream a video earlier this week, I went to plan B. Plan B is to read a book while riding my recumbent bike, since reading while standing on the elliptical--a stationary-yet-moving piece of equipment--requires more coordination than I possess.  I love, love, love to read so I was excited to have an excuse not to get on the elliptical (I usually force myself to use the elliptical instead of the bike because I get a much better--read SWEATY--workout).   Sitting and peddling on a bike while enjoying a good story is not such a great workout, but it is so much more enjoyable.

There was a minor problem, however.

This is the book that I have been reading lately.

And by lately, I mean approximately for the last month.  Or even longer, if you go back about 7 years to the last time I tried to read Life of Pi.  And now I digress.

I'm not a quitter.  I hate to start something and not finish it.  I can only remember giving up on one other book, ever.  It was around 25 years ago, Mr. Terrific bought me Stephen King's It, because It was over 1000 pages long.  I read books quickly, and if I'm reading a really good book I start wishing that the book were longer.  Mr. Terrific thought he was doing me a favor by buying me a really long book.

Except I didn't like the book.  After about 600 pages, I decided that I had read enough about children being terrorized by a clown.

Which is more than I can tell you about Life of Pi. The last time I attempted to read this book,  I read over 100 pages and I can not tell you what I read.  I gave up, even though it was on the best seller list, even though a friend of mine (whose opinion I totally respect and trust) told me it was a fabulous book.  I mean, 100 pages was a serious effort, right?  And for me to not even be able to remember what I read--I feel bad saying this--I felt like I was just wasting my time, and all because I was being stubborn and didn't want to quit.

But quit I did, I was happy to stop reading it and never gave it another thought...until the movie that was based on the book won a few Oscars at this year's academy awards.  I didn't see the movie, but I started thinking to myself, hmmmm...maybe I should give that book another go.

So about a month ago, I started reading Life of Pi AGAIN.  And since the only time of day that I can really find time to read is when I get into bed--and since I am on the verge of total exhaustion at that late hour--if there is nothing to spark my interest (read: if something is boring), I fall asleep really quickly.

I don't have a lot to show for the last month or so that I have been attempting to read this book.  Every night,  my eyes immediately just start rolling around inside of my head, anywhere from one word to a few paragraphs into it, which leaves me stuck on page 23.  That's right.  23 pages, in an entire month.  I would usually expect to read 3 or 4 books in a month.  But I'm stuck.  And I do mean stuck.

This is the page that I have been stuck on for the last week or so.  I get into bed, open the book to the page that I have dog-eared (don't judge me) to mark my place, and I ponder why pi=3.14159265 (I can't help it, my math-geekiness always expands it and yes I am jealous of everyone who has memorized more of these randomly-distributed digits than I have), visions of circles and their ratios of circumference to diameter cloud my thinking and then I realize that this tiny little equation is the only thing I have read in this book that I can relate to!!! 

 And then I close the book and turn out the light and lie there thinking that reading before bed is no fun.

Okay, back to the non-streaming ipad and working out on the bike instead of the elliptical...

So the last thing I want to read while working out is Life of Pi, especially when I could be reading something I enjoy.  I decided I would just go ahead and read something else while I exercised.

This is where Baseball Makes Everything Better comes in.

The Bird.  If you are a baseball fan, and you grew up in the '70's, surely you remember him?  I unabashedly admit that I really, really love the game of baseball and I always have...and I bought this book because even though I have always been a die-hard Red Sox fan there is no way that any baseball fan who ever saw Mark Fidrych pitch could not help but like him, and I certainly liked him.  He was so much fun to watch, and he played like he was having a blast: talking to himself, running around to congratulate his teammates, getting down on his hands and knees to smooth the dirt on the pitcher's mound.  

I bought this book a few months ago, and I gave it to Mr. Terrific because I thought he would enjoy reading it, but I am the one who is enjoying it.  I'm enjoying it so much that I have decided I will not ever waste one more second on any book that I'm not enjoying...and I'm probably going to have to remind myself to come back and read this blogpost if I ever get it in my head again that I really should give Life of Pi another try! 

Chicken Tortellini Soup......and a Christmas Towel Tutorial

I have not ever found a vintage Christmas tablecloth that I didn't want to take home with me.

The fabric! The graphics!  The colors! 

Though the tops may be covered with faded stains,

the good stuff remains along the sides.

Waiting for me to frame in a pillow

or embellish towels for my kitchen.

Fifteen minutes from start to finish.

Wanna know how I make them?

First, just like when you're cooking, you gather your ingredients.

You will need:

-An image, cut from a vintage tablecloth.  

-Coordinating rick rack

-Iron-on adhesive (double sided, like HeatnBond)

-Wonder tape (1/8" wide)

-a kitchen towel

You will also need your iron and a sewing machine.

First, I decided on an image.

Should I pick the candy cane?

Or perhaps a wreath, tree or band of merry musicians?

The musicians and the wreath were too big for my towel.  The tree is too similar to the one I used on a towel I made last week.

I'm going with the candy cane.

I cut the image of the candy cane from the tablecloth.  I decided to go with a simple rectangular shape.  No crazy angles or curves.

I did a quick mock-up, placing the image where I thought it should go, and deciding which trims I would use.

If the tablecloth has a coordinating border, I usually cut a strip of the border for the bottom of the towel.  

I did not like the border on this tablecloth, so I decided to trim the bottom of the towel with rick rack.

And I took the rick rack away, just to see what the towel would look like without it.

I decided I liked the way the rick rack looked.

Cut a piece of the iron-on adhesive to iron onto the back of the image.  It does not have to be a perfect shape, you just want to use it to hold the image in place.

See?  Not perfect.

Iron it on, paper side up on wrong side of image.

Peel the paper off, and now the adhesive will be on the fabric.

Do the same with the Wonder tape, adhere it right down the center of your rick rack.

Carefully peel the paper off, and the adhesive has transferred onto the rick rack.

I like to use iron-on adhesive to hold my images and embellishments in place before I sew them.  No pins involved.

Arrange your rick rack and image on your towel.

Iron it into place.  The adhesive bonds almost immediately.  Just quickly glide the iron over the image and rick rack without stopping.

Once the transferring is done, you are ready to sew your image and trims into place.

First, just do a quick straight stitch around the border of the image.

After the towel has been washed, you'll get some really cool texture going on with the stitching around the border of the image.

Then, straight stitch right down the middle of the rick rack.  You could do a zig-zag stitch instead, but I don't want to scare you.  A straight stitch will also get the job done.

And stitch right down the center of the rick rack that borders the image.

And you're done!

No lie, it took me 17 minutes to embellish this towel, and that included the time it took me to take the pictures.

Including this picture of Gus.  I didn't want him to feel left out.