The MAYBE Soup

Today we are making a different kind of sausage soup. Now really, there is nothing like the original sausage soup that spurred my kitchen adventures over a year ago. That recipe is spicy sausage, diced potato, and kale in chicken broth. Nothing better. So I was, of course, skeptical to hear about this recipe, but it looked different enough. Also I already messed up the ingredients so it will truly be my own creation, as inspired by THIS.

WARNING: I've had better. read all the way through before you get inspired.Also, no disrespect to the link provided, I did things a bit differently than she. (was that correct grammar? differently? is that a word?)

I’ll call this:

The MAYBE Soup

Ingredients:

-carton of chicken broth

-1 big thing of sausage, chopped up

-2 cans white beans

-1 can full of fresh chopped tomatoes

-4 sprigs thyme (my new favorite ingredient as of recently)

-1 white Onion, chopped

- 4 small cloves Garlic, chopped

So before I read the recipe, I started with olive oil and garlic, and then I added chopped onion, but then the garlic burned, and then I read the original recipe, and it said to start with sauté-ing sausage, then adding garlic and onion. This is why I will never have my own cooking show.  Here are the directions as I did it, In red I’ll put what I should have done.

To Do:

.)    Chop 4 small cloves of garlic and add to olive oil at bottom of soup pot.

.)    Chop small onion and add to pot. Cover and cook until translucent. Maybe also don’t cover it, and just stand there and mix it around until the onions are cooked enough.

.)    Add sausage, turn heat to low and cover, stirring occasionally. After the sausage looks good enough…

.)    Add 1 Can worth of chopped tomatoes (the original recipe said one can diced tomatoes, but I was feeling like we hadn’t done the fresh food thing in a while, and I’ve been missing vegetables, so I thought, what the hay. Let’s just buy some tomatoes, it will take me 2 minutes to cut them, and I’ll feel way better about whatever I’m making.

.)    Add 1 cans of beans (these are a pain to cook from scratch. Hence, the cans.)

.)    Add 4 sprigs of thyme

.)    Add 1 carton (32 oz, 4 C, 1 Qt) of chicken broth.

.)    The recipe that I started from says to cook for 30 minutes, but I’m going to cook it all day because this morning was when I had time to make it and tonight is when I will have time to eat it. May add some water later as well.

.)    At the very end, I will add 6 oz. of fresh spinach, and probably some fresh basil. We also bought fresh-ish Parmesan so we’ll try that too. Wish me luck. 

Survey says:

This was super salty- use less chicken broth, more water, we also simmered it basically all day which probably made the broth more concentrated. Spinach was good, but truly do use recommended 10 oz. We only used 5-ish oz. and it was lacking. Also, I would just as well make my old stand by and swap spinach for kale, beans for potatoes, and sausage with spicy sausage, leave out the tomatoes and call it a day. David seemed more excited about this one. My stomach respectfully disagreed. 

#tbt unsure...eating healthy

4/24/2014: I'm pretty sure that this was a GRE practice prompt. Haven't read it, just cleaning house so leaving it here. 

Eating healthy is becoming an increasing challenge in today's society. Aside from going to backyard markets, it is almost impossible to find even the purest food: vegetables, that have not been enhanced as GMOs. Although we necessarily go to restaurants expecting the healthiest food, as a population, we should continue to make ourselves aware of what we are putting into our bodies. Restaurants can help to educate the public by including nutritional information on their menus. This will not only help the food corporations keep themselves in check, but it will help us to make good nutritional choices for ourselves on a daily basis.

Corporations rely on advertising to reach consumers. By advertising food in a way that makes it seem fresh and appealing, corporations are able to attract a group of consumers that might otherwise never reach out and try their products. In the '90s, McDonalds presented McDonalds Salad Shakers. Salad in a cup, covered in dressing seemed like a refreshing and healthy snack on the go. Compared to their other products like frozen chemically enhanced meat and starch products, Salad Shakers were presented as the healthy choice. While this may have been true, the dressing and croutons made this seemingly fresh and healthy choice worse than other non-McDonald's options however, it's convenience and presentation in advertising made it the perfect excuse for a salad. Had consumers been aware of the nutritional information of the dressing, and the types of vegetables in Salad Shakers, they might have realized that it was not only not half as healthy as they may have believed at first, but that it was also not worth the money they were paying compared to a potentially healthier snack from a different restaurant. If restaurants are forced to list nutritional information, it will help to educate the public and eliminate the impact of questionable and false advertising.

Being educated about our food choices is the best thing that we can do for ourselves nutritionally. Knowledge is power and it is vital that we take the power of food back from large corporations such as Kraft and Nestle. If we are able to visually observe the nutritional value of what we are putting into our bodies, we will also eventually learn positive and negative correlations with the outcomes of healthier and less healthy foods. Although it may take time, eventually, we will be able to see the physical manifestation of positive eating habits versus negative eating habits. By making ourselves aware of what we are putting in our bodies, it will give us the opportunity to make our own choices and decide our own fate.

It is imperative to our bodies that we are made aware of what we are eating on a daily basis. Although some may say that people don't go to restaurants to eat healthy, every meal counts and we should at least be given the option to be aware of what we are eating. Several food chains have successfully begun to advertise the calorie counts of their products and it has created an empowered new generation of eaters and consumers. People are beginning to return to the basics of food, shopping solely at healthy food markets and using less processed products. The struggle between corporations and those who wish to eat healthy will continue until the consumer can decide to take the power back into his own hands and demanding nutritional information is a step in the right direction to take back our food and our bodies.

1. Advertising is law in our society. If nutritional information is not present, and heavy advertising is, then there becomes a fine line between false advertising and bending the truth. Corporations have already taken over most food production in America and the least that we can do as consumers is be aware of this fact. Consumerism and corporate success depends on the trust of the consumer. If we can be aware of our choices, this begins to give the power back to the consumer.
2. knowledge is power- if people know what they are eating, they might think twice about ordering it, specifically in fast food and mass produced food settings such as subway or Pizza Hut.

#ThrowBackThursday - Thanksgiving 2012 Blog

Cleaning off my desktop on my computer. Apparently this blog has been sitting there for a year and a half. Let's see what young Charlotte has to say about her first rodeo...

So we had thanksgiving, and then right after I went away for 2 weeks to train for my NEW JOB! Which meant that I took zero time to write about anything. So 1 month later, I am FINALLY getting around to blogging about Thanksgiving dinner. My overall review of myself on Thanksgiving was that I tried way too hard. Next year, Trader Joes boxed stuffing, definitely, may do something interesting with the turkey, but other than that, I'm hoping to stick to the absolute basics. (Although, I will never give up on my own home made gravy. NEVEEERRRRR!!!)

Appetizers (Completely unneccessary, btw.)

Spinach Artichoke Dip

-spinach

-2 cans artichoke hearts

-1/2 C mayonnaise

-1/2 C sour cream

-1 C jack cheese

-1 C pepperjack cheese

ok Directions: mix all of these ingredients and bake at 350 for 30 minutes. Review: This was seriously like the grossest thing I ever ate. I was so mad because Tina spent a TON of time on the artichoke hearts. It was super spicy, and NOT SPINACHY. I may work off of this recipe in the future, but it just did not have enough jack cheese and had way too much artichoke. It was GROSS.

Meatballs

-ground beef (Whatever size, like 1 lb is usually good)

-bread crumbs (1/3 C)

-Parmesan Cheese (1/3 C)

-1 egg

-spices

Directions: mix everything together, add some garlic powder or minced garlic, salt, pepper, basil, marjoram, if you don't add all these random little things, they just taste like big dried out balls of ground beef. And Meatballs can simply be so much more than that!!! Roll into a little smaller than a golf ball and bake on a tin foil lined baking sheet for 15 ish minutes. Since it's beef, you can really cook it as much or as little as you like (At least that's what hear). Once you're comfortable combining these ingredients and knowing that it will come out to be at least a 7 out of 10 meal, then you also know how to make meatloaf. Just do the same thing but with twice the amount of meat (any two kinds, works best, you're choice) and throw it in the crock pot and add a can of seasoned tomato sauce. 8 hours. Bam. Meatloaf. Reveiw: For thanksgiving, these were actually really good before actual dinner since we usually eat around 3 and it's such a weird time. The once change I would make is to make these a day or two before and just heat them up on the actual day because there is so much going on in the kitchen.

Main Course

Bacon covered/stuffed turkey aka Larry the Bird

-carrots

-celery

-rosemary

-bacon

-a turkey

Directions: Take out the innards of the turkey, if yours is like ours was, the neck and the rest will be in two separate bags/sections, so make sure you get both out. David named out turkey Larry. So take your Larry, and put him belly down (There is lots of recent discussion about putting the bird top down, I have no idea. We did it the old school way. Sue us. I'll probably do it breast down next year just to see what happens but I mean, how exciting is it really going to be. Its a dead bird.) . Stuff Larry with some cut up carrot, celery, and rosemary. Because of this recipe, we also put some bacon in him for good luck. Then we took the rest of our bacon (probably one and a half packs total) and wove it across the top of Larry. We started to just lay it across, but David knows how to do a lattice, and we thought that would look all Woman's Day and fancy so we went with that. If we had had the right backdrop, it would totes have been magazine worthy. We also put a cheese cloth over the whole thing to tuck him in for the warmest nap he ever had. We put him in one of those tin, crummy potluck dishes from the grocery store that you take buffet food to church in. It was great because we didn't have to clean it after. It was not so great because we had to make sure that it didn't crumple when we were putting Larry in and taking him out of the oven. We also had to buy a baster (thank god I remembered when we were at the grocery store) and we basted him every 30 minutes. It was great because both the turkey and bacon drippings covered the bottom of the pan. I don't remember how long we cooked it. Like 3 or 4 hours or something like that.

Sides

Cranberry Apple Sausage Stuffing

-4C cubed bread

-4 turkey sausages

-1/2 Chopped onion

-3 stalks of chopped celery

-1 ½ tbsp sage

-3 small stalks of de-leaved rosemary (the leaf part)

-1/4 tsp thyme

-1 small golden delicious apple

-½ C dried cranberries

-1 tbsp minced parsley

-Turkey liver finely chopped

-2 C turkey stock

-¼ C melted butter

Directions: I won't bother with the directions because I didn't actually read them, which I think is why it was such a mega fail. So whatever. If you already know how to make stuffing, this is a delicious mix of ingredients.

Trader Joes Corn Bread stuffing

-boxed stuffing

Directions: I'm actually in the air over Ohio on my way to my parents house right now for Christmas and when I get there, I am going to BEG my family to get this stuffing for Christmas dinner (which is the exact same thing as Thanksgiving dinner at my parents house ever since my dad won the turkey> ham debacle back in 2010.) David and I tried a sample of this stuffing at Trader Joe's, bless their samples, and we were h-o-o-k-e-d.

Home Made Regular Stuffing

-fresh baked bread 3 1/4 C

-celary 4 stalks celery

-mushrooms ½ C

-onions1 small onion

-chicken broth ½ C chicken

Directions: Standard, whatever that means, read them from online somewhere but if you're just going to have plain stuffing then in my opinion, you may as well just get it from a box at the grocery store.

Green Bean Casserole Dish

-cream (like maybe a quart, enough to cover the amount of green beans that you are making)

-butter (Paula Dean says as much butter as you want, but you're making a rue with it and the cream, so just guess)

-mushrooms ¾ C

-Green Beans

-breadcrumbs

Directions: Combine cream , butter and minced mushrooms in a small sauce pan and let simmer on low for 10-15 minutes (pay attention to it! It will burn faster than you can say “I was busy with the turkey because it's more important” because if you don't burn this, you will find that it will be just as important, I swear. Butter the casserole dish and put green beans in it. I would chop them up to make serving easier. Cover the beans in the mushroom cream sauce (Guess what, I tricked you into making cream of mushroom so that you didn't have to use that canned concentrate stuff. Now don't you feel super healthy?). Cover everything in bread crumbs to keep it from drying out on the oven. Bake at a happy 350 degrees for 35 minutes. Instead of breadcrumbs, I might also add a little water to the bottom and cover with tin foil so that the beans can steam. But what do I know. Review: The mushroom sauce was in my opinion, amazing.

Mashed Jersey Sweet Potatoes

-2 large Jersey white sweet potatoes

-butter

-flour

-nuts

-brown sugar

Mashed Potatoes

-potatoes

-butter

-cream

-salt

Directions: I hardly think that mashed potatoes need directions seeing as someone once named this dish very wisely, but there seem to be a million and one opinions on how to make this the “best mashed potatoes ever.” So obviously I need to give my own input. Cut potatoes into small cubes if you're paying attention and have a good knife, and large pieces if you're busy with other things or have a crappy knife. Potatoes can over cook easily and my dad thinks that it makes them watery and that they lose their rich-ness. Cut into size accordingly. Once they are cooked, grab the mixer, this allows them to get extra air for fluffiness, but it also causes them to cool down very quickly so this should be the very last thing you do before you sit down to eat (unless you bake them after, then you're on your own). Add butter (like at least 3 to 4 tablespoons if not more), and add a little salt and pepper. Also add whole milk or cream, whatever is closest (save a little cream from the mushroom sauce maybe?). EAT.

Home Made Gravy

-drippings from turkey and bacon

-pepper

-big ol' scoop of minced garlic

-1/2 C white wine

-flour to thicken

-innards

-carrots, celery

-rosemary

-1/2 C turkey stock

Home made gravy directions: So for the homemade gravy that I made, I talked with my dad, stole parts of his recipe, and we both decided that our gravy was way too intense. But I don't know how to water down liquid fat, so just read this recipe maybe and take something away from it and make your own. Boil innards with carrots, celery, and rosemary with water as the day goes on. After you take out the turkey, add the drippings to a new pan, and strain the juice from the innards and veggies into the drippings pan. Season with minced garlic, pepper and other spices (DO NOT ADD SALT AT THIS POINT). Add ½ C turkey stock and white wine. Let the mixture boil out for a while. This is mostly it. I added flour to thicken but I think if you just let it cool a little, then it will thicken up seeing as ours was a solid block of turkey jello the next morning when we took it out of the refrigerator.

Crescent Rolls

For dessert we had oreo ice cream and pumpkin pie (super duper tasty, Tina made it!) The apples that I was going to make pie out of are still sitting in our refrigerator so that's awesome. Good thing we eat healthy around our house.

Tips:

1. Plan out the dishes you will use to bake with for each recipe so that you have enough. David had to run out half way through the day and spent like $10 on a baking dish because that was what was available on Thanksgiving, the rest we got for a DOLLAR at the Dollar Tree.
2. pay attention to the baking temps for each dish. If some dishes need to be hotter, but the turkey is already in, I put them towards the top of our oven because it's hotter up there.
3. DON'T micro manage like I did. Sorry guys! John and Tina played video games all day and chopped stuff for me. In my defense, we have the second tiniest kitchen known to man, but still. I did this poorly.
4. Make breakfast. And coffee. Lots and lots of coffee.
5. Once you are done with coffee, switch to wine.

NEW CHALLENGE!: Since David and I have gotten into the same habits of food choices so I thought to mix it up, we would take on the 30 Dates around the World challenge that I made up. So we are going to take food and maybe movies from 40 different countries and have theme nights for the next 12 months!! We kicked it off with America on Thanksgiving, but then I was gone, and now David is gone, so we are basically starting in January. If you have any suggestions for us for recipes or movies to watch, send 'em over!

Charlotte's First (Second) 5K

Today I walked a 5K. The last time I ran a 5K I was in high school. This all started about 2 months ago when I …well I don’t really remember what motivated me, but I ended up in a running shoe store with an incredibly enthusiastic running shoe store owner.  This nice gentleman told me lots of things about running, and slowly building up a pace, and all kinds of wonderful easy doable things I could do to turn myself into a runner. One of the things he told me about was the Sue Paterno 5K for Special Olympics. Now, I don’t know how to explain a State College person, but it’s a thing. You think you know an obnoxious USC fan, or an overzealous Oregon fan. That’s adorable. Penn State is CRAAAAYYYYYYY. This is how much people love Penn State: there’s a “State College Vortex” that people ARE HAPPY ABOUT; it’s only warm (but still deathly humid) three months out of the year, and people not only tolerate the cold, BUT THEY’RE STILL OVER THE MOON ABOUT BEING HERE (so basically the weather is solid about 1 month a year) ; people wait in line for over 2 hours to get ONE TINY BOWL OF ICE CREAM from the Penn State Creamery; 80,000 people go to football SCRIMMAGES<- 5="" a="" driving="" each="" hours="" make="" nbsp="" of="" out="" p="" this.="" to="" way="" weekend="">

This is just some of the explanation. You really have to personally witness a tailgate to understand the insanity of this. This nice shoe sales man is more State College-y than any other person I have ever met since we moved here.

This wonderful man informed me of this annual fundraiser for Special Olympics, lead by Sue Paterno, a preserved local hero in this town. He told me that two months probably wasn't enough time to be able to train to run a 5K. This particular gentleman really likes his running.

Long story short, here I was, standing in a big group of people at the foot of Beaver Stadium, getting ready to walk a 5K.

The walk itself, yeah, it was a thing. I might have enjoyed more of a stroll than a power walk. My favorite supporters were two people holding up a sign that said “Embrace your pace!” Although we weren’t the last people across, some people could have run three 5Ks in the amount of time it took us to walk this one.

As we approached the stadium (the finish line is the 50 yard line on the football field), Pharell’s “Happy” came on. I was sandwiched between two of my favorite people (David and Pat, one of the sorority advisors) and I was feeling great! We ran to the finish line. It was an amazing experience running down the corridor of people screaming and cheering for us as we finished!! 

The feeling I got after crossing the finish line was…well it was embarrassing. We walked a 5K for peet's sake. But HOLY CRAP WAS I ONE HAPPY CAMPER!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Going forward, the plan is to get general health and well being checked up from my doctor, and then to keep going for it! (Slowly.)