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Daughters were going out (which they do a lot lately!) but needed dinner. Husband was hungry from a full day of work. What to do? Needed a quick, nutritious, delicious, low-carb meal for all.
It's been a very snowy winter here. Over forty inches of snow has fallen in the last week. My quest for fresh vegetables gets more and more difficult. I'm actually trying to survive through bulk fruit and vegetable purchases from warehouse clubs. Occasionally I get to a supermarket that is stocked and I buy what looks good and fresh and (always trying!) organic.
We are a house divided by hard boiled eggs. Younger daughter and I love them. Dear husband and older daughter can't stand to be in the same room with them. One of the reasons a lot of people don't like hard boiled eggs is they say they smell awful. Well, what makes hard boiled eggs smell strong is over cooking them. If you have an egg that gives that strong sulfur smell you also have an egg that has a dark green/blue/black line around the yolk when you cut it open. Go ahead. Cut one open. I'll wait.
I've made chicken soup forever. (Except for a few months when pregnant with younger daughter...couldn't do it!). Always with noodles. Always. And what do I have to give up to maintain my low carb existence? NOODLES. There are no noodles in this soup but I promise you won't miss them.
Putting this soup in a pot is simple. The labor intensive part happens at the end, to prepare it for service. I make a big pot of this often and freeze the leftovers (like all the soups I make). I do not buy commercially prepared canned soup. There's no need to.
This is just good soup. It is, as my mother would have said, "good for what ails you" soup. This soup, as a friend of my older daughter said, rocks. This soup was born out of my necessity to not give up my grandmother's chicken soup.
Years ago, more than twenty, a friend gave me a cookbook from her hometown of St. Louis. In it was a recipe for a vegetable beef soup using ground beef. It seemed like the perfect solution for a young married couple with kids and not a lot of money. This is a great soup. Easy. Inexpensive (I've done it a number of times with ground turkey and that is delicious too). And healthy. It is a meal in itself. Certainly some good cheddar cheese and some whole grain crackers would be a welcome addition. A nice side salad too. Perfect for one of the first cool nights of autumn or during a blizzard.
One food we all crave when we have our delicious grass fed beef burgers is fried potatoes. I've made sweet potato fries. And they're good, but sweet potatoes have a high sugar content. The fiber in them helps to lower their glycemic load, but they're not as naturally low carb as a fresh zucchini! And who doesn't need a new way to make zucchini?
I love eggplant. I love them fried by themselves. I love them mixed with other vegetables. I love them cold after they've been roasted. I love them anyway but raw. But I hate all the steps it takes to make an eggplant parmesan casserole. (As much as I love to eat an eggplant parmesan casserole!). When I was growing up we had a neighbor, Ida Argenti. Mrs. Argenti made the best eggplant parmesan! The best. And it took her all day! She peeled and cut the eggplant. Salted and sweated it to get out the bitter water. Made tomato sauce from juicy ripe Jersey fresh plum tomatoes. Her casserole was always eight or more layers high. Absolutely heavenly!
September 12 was a special day at the farmer's market I patronize. As a result of an email voting campaign, the Collingswood Farmer's Market was voted the BEST small farmer's market in the entire USA. As if I didn't know that already.
Nearly everyone shrieks when you say tuna casserole is for dinner, but, to me, it is one of the great comfort foods of our time. Now my mother used to make a tuna casserole with cream of celery soup and tuna and crackers that really was horrible. But I ate it anyway. I grew up in a house where the choices for dinner were what was served or be hungry.
One afternoon when I was barely a teenager my mother and I went out to lunch at a fancy theme restaurant. It was in Flemington, New Jersey. The theme was colonial New Jersey. I don't remember what the actual dish was called but it was essentially macaroni and cheese with some vegetables and canned tuna. It was delicious! And it was a revelation. Together, my mother and I gradually figured out the recipe and we never had tuna casserole made with soup and crackers again.
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