Mandy Forester’s White Chicken Chili

Recently Jeff and his brother, Paul, put a tv in the bathroom.  We get to watch the news or other programs while we get ready throughout the day.  One of the great things about having a tv in the bathroom is that I get to watch Rachael Ray while I get ready a late night at work.  The other day she had a “Top Ten Recipe Downloads of 2009″ show on.  A recipe that caught my interest was Mandi Forester’s White Chicken Chili.

This recipe has tons of options.  You can top it with extra cheese, sour cream, Fritos, add in black beans or corn, you name it.  A dollup of cream cheese would be pretty good in it too I’m sure!  If you are like me, you like delicious, hearty soups like this one.  An extra bonus…you can make it in the crock pot!

Mandi Forester’s White Chicken Chili

1 32 ounce box chicken stock
3 cans white kidney beans
5 cups chicken, cooked and diced
1 16 oz jar of salsa (whatever heat level you like)
1 8 oz block pepperjack cheese, shredded
2 tsp cumin
2 garlic cloves, minced
pepper to taste
1/2 cup finely crushed corn chips (optional)

Here are Mandi’s directions:  Combine all ingredients except corn chips in a crock pot.  Cook on high until the cheese is melted.  You can also cook it on the stove over medium-high heat until the cheese is melted.  After cheese is melted and chili is cooked, add the corn chips (if using) and cook an additional 10 minutes.  Top with extra cheese, chips, or sour cream if desired.

Mandi suggested getting a rotisserie chicken, shredding it, and using that in the soup.  I sprinkled three boneless, skinless breasts with salt and cayenne pepper, then baked them in the oven at 400* for 20 minutes.  When you dice them up and add them to the chili, you don’t have to add any extra pepper this way, plus the salt and pepper make the chicken taste extra yummy.  I also let my chili simmer for a couple hours just so it would thicken up a little.  Plus it made my house smell amazing.  Enjoy!

Southwestern Chicken Soup

My friend, Angela, brought me this soup to work one day and I loved it.  I immediately asked for the recipe and proceeded to make it less than a week later.  She topped hers with cheddar cheese, crushed tortilla chips, and sour cream.  It was, in a word, fantastic.  Thanks, A!

Southwestern Chicken Soup

1 pound boneless, skinless chicken breast, cut into strips
1 bag frozen corn
1 4 oz can chopped green chilies
2 small cans low sodium chicken broth
1/2 tsp cumin
1 tsp season salt
1 tsp pepper
1 tsp olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
1/8 tsp cayenne pepper

Heat 1 tsp olive oil in a pan over medium heat.  Sprinkle chicken with salt and pepper and brown on all sides.  Pat off excess oil. 

In a crock pot, combine chicken with remaining ingredients and cook on low for 6-8 hours.  Stir once.  Top with toppings of your choice.  Some suggestions are sour cream, cheddar cheese, crumbled tortilla chips, guacamole, hot sauce, salsa, etc. 

GDL’s Pasta E Fagioli

I have started to come around on the whole beans-are-a-great-source-of-protein-and-oh-yeah-they’re-yummy movement.  For most of my life, I regarded beans as something I picked out of food.  Thanks to my good friend, Sarah, who introduced me to one of my favorite soups Spicy Taco Soup, I now really enjoy beans.  They are a great way to add flavor to a dish without increasing the fat content.  They also thicken dishes quite nicely.  Now, when I see a recipe that calls for beans, instead of flipping the page, I take a second look at the other flavors in the dish.  I no longer throw out a recipe because of the beans, which opens lots of doors for me!

I saw this recipe in Giada de Laurentiis’ Giada’s Family Dinners cookbook and thought it sounded like a yummy filling soup on a cold day.  I was right.  It was a-mazing.  I loved it.  I couldn’t get enough!  I made it for myself and my friend, Chrissy, and we both liked it.  I thought I’d share.  Aren’t I nice?

Pasta E Fagioli
4 sprigs fresh thyme
1 large rosemary sprig
1 bay leaf
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp unsalted butter
1 cup chopped onion
3 ounces pancetta or bacon, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
5 3/4 cups reduced-sodium chicken broth
2 cans red kidney beans (**I misread and only picked up one can, so my soup had 1/2 the beans she called for.)
3/4 cup elbow macaroni (**I subbed whole wheat rotini instead.)
pepper
1/3 cup parmesan cheese
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

Wrap the thyme, rosemary, and bay leaf in a piece of cheesecloth and tie with kitchen twine.  (**I didn’t have kitchen twine, so I just put the herbs into the soup whole then fished them out later.  Leave the thyme and rosemary on the stalk for easy removal if you choose to go this route.)  Heat the olive oil and butter in a large, heavy saucepan over a medium flame.  Add the onion, pancetta, and garlic and saute until the onion is tender, about 3 minutes.  Add the broth, beans, and sachet of herbs.  Cover and bring to a boil over high heat, then decrease the heat to medium and simmer until the vegetables are very tender, about 10 minutes.  Discard the sachet. 

In a blender, puree 1 cup of the bean mixture until smooth, then return the puree to the saucepan. (**I used my stick blender to blend the soup a bit in the pot so I didn’t have to fool with transferring hot liquid around the kitchen.)  Cover and return the soup to a boil over high heat.  Add the macaroni, cover, and boil, stirring occasionally, until the macaroni is tender but still firm to the bite, about 8 minutes.  Season the soup with pepper.

Ladle the soup into bowls.  Sprinkle with parmesan cheese and drizzle with extra virgin olive oil.

GDL’s Italian Wedding Soup

Italian wedding soup is one of those soups I think everyone can love.  It’s broth, meatballs, cheese, and a few greens.  What’s not to like?  I got this recipe from Giada de Laurentiis’ cookbook Giada’s Family Dinners.  I love her recipes.  I am actually thinking of taking a page out of the Julie & Julia movie and cooking my way through one of her cookbooks.  It’s a thought…

Italian Wedding Soup

Meatballs
1 small onion, grated (**Make sure to grate  your onion instead of chopping.  I chopped mine, because apparently I can’t read, and the meatballs looked like they had tumors all over.
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
1 large egg
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1/2 cup parmesan cheese
1/4 cup bread crumbs
8 ounces lean ground beef
8 ounces ground pork  (**I used 16 ounces ground turkey instead of the beef and pork and they were delish!)

Soup
10 cups reduced sodium chicken broth
1 pound escarole
2 large eggs
2/3 cup parmesan cheese
salt and pepper to taste

To make the meatballs, stir together onion, parsley, egg, garlic, salt and pepper in a large bowl.  Stir in the cheese and bread crumbs.  Using your hands, mix in the ground turkey.  Shape the mixture into 1-inch meatballs, making approximately 75 balls.  You will cook the meatballs in the broth, so just set them aside for now.

To make the soup, bring the broth to a boil in a large pot over medium-high heat.  Add the meatballs and escarole and simmer until the meatballs are cooked through and the escarole is tender, about 10 minutes.  In a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs and cheese.  Add the egg mixture to the soup slowly, stirring with a fork to form thin strands of egg, about 1 minute.  Season the soup to taste with salt and pepper.  Lade the soup into bowls and serve.

**Cook’s Note:  A great way to test the flavor of the meatballs before cooking the entire batch is to fry one up in a frying pan.  I usually flatten one out to make the cooking time shorter and then taste it.  Remember to take into account the other flavors of the dish the meatballs will be joining once cooked. 

Also, these mini meatballs are great to make ahead and freeze.  Just bake them off in a 400* oven until cooked through.  Drain them on paper towels, then put on a baking sheet and freeze.  Make sure they are not touching each other, otherwise they will all stick together.

Update on B

Hello, my fellow food lovers.  Yes, I know, it’s been weeks since my last post.  I have said this before and I’ll say it again…I’m trying to do better.  I have been cooking a decent amount, but I always forget to take pictures of my recipes!  I think this is why I haven’t been posting much.  So, to remedy that, I am just going to post my recipes without pictures for a while and then hopefully it will remind me to take the pictures as I’m cooking.

I have been on a major soup kick for the past month.  I used to think I didn’t like soup, or it didn’t make a filling meal, but I feel completely different now.  I love soup.  Soup and I have become best friends.  I am going to post a few soup recipes today that I tried last week and LOVE!

I have also been doing a lot of crock pot and casserole cooking.  I am ALWAYS looking for more recipes, so if you have any good ones, please pass them along.

On a non-food note, I am getting a baby niece today!  It is very exciting.  In fact, she should be here in less than an hour!  I am hoping to see baby Ashley tonight!  I can’t wait to meet her. 

I hope you all are doing well!

The Push I Needed (Thanks Heather!)

Don’t you love it when you try to talk yourself out of going to the gym, then decide to go, only to have a fantastic workout?  I love it!  That happened to me today.  Today is Saturday (which doesn’t really mean anything to me since I’m in retail and have to work weekends more often than not).  It’s snowy outside and Jeff is home in our nice, warm house.  For these reasons (as well as being lazy) I did NOT want to go to the gym today, even though I didn’t go yesterday.  I posted a status on facebook saying I was trying to talk myself into going. 

My friend, Heather, told me I should go because I would feel great the rest of the day.  So what did I do?  I put on my gym clothes.  (Does anyone else feel more like going to the gym once you put your gym clothes on?  I don’t know what it is, but if I’m feeling wishy washy about going, I am much more likely to go once I’m dressed.  Weird…)  I’m so happy Heather told me to go.  It was just the push I needed to get my butt to the gym!

So I put on my gym clothes and decided I would go and just do 30 minutes.  It didn’t matter what I did as long as I went for 30 minutes.  I also downed a cup of coffee on the way to the gym.  That usually peps me up as well.  When I got there, I noticed two men running right next to the treadmill I like using.  This solidified my decision to run today.  And boy did I run.

Now, I’m still trying to get back into the swing of things after being “off” for over a month.  I’m trying not to do too much too fast, but today I was just “in the groove”.  I love love love days like this.  I wish every day was like today.  I started running and ran for .75 miles, took a .25 mile break, and then ran an additional .5 mile.  I finished my run with an uphill hike and then ran at an incline the last minute.  Wonderful feeling!!!

After that, I was at around 340 calories, so I decided to start my weight training.  I figured the more muscle I have, the more calories I’ll burn, so I needed to start weights back up.  I did arms today so they would be recovered by Tuesday (truck day at work).  I’m going to do legs on Monday so they won’t be uber sore on Tuesday.  I kinda hate that I have to plan my weight training around my work schedule.  Oh well.  Then after I was done with weights I decided to finish up my workout with a short 5 minute bike ride.  I’m not good at the bike or the elliptical because they both hurt my knees for some reason.  *shrugs*  Who knows why.  Running doesn’t bother my knees.  I think it’s crazy.

Anyhow, I burned over 500 calories, which was my goal, and made me feel very refreshed and happy.  Gotta love those endorphins!  Now I’m finishing the laundry, cleaning the kitchen, and taking a shower before I go into work.  I am really pleased with myself and so happy I have started working out and eating right again.  I can’t wait to show off my new body this summer! 

Polar F6 HRM and First Day Back at Neo

Today was my first day back to my gym (NeoLimits) and it felt great!  Carolyn went to the gym one day over her Christmas break and she said she forgot how amazing it felt!  I notice a lot more energy tonight than I have in a while.  Right now, for instance, I am cooking dinner and planning some meals out for the week so I can get my grocery list together.  Jeff and I are going to head that way later tonight.  I was planning on going after the gym, but it was too crowded to go then.  Oh well.

Anyhow, two things happened at the gym today that surprised me in a good way.  OK, well there were three surprises, but only two of them are ones I really care about.

First, I need to explain a little something about my gym.  There are two entrances: one that goes directly into the gym (the front way) and one that opens up into a hallway that leads either to the gym or to the tanning salon (the back way).  I almost always go in the back way because I’m either going to the tanning salon or to the women’s locker room, which is at the end of the hallway but before the actual gym.  The end of the hallway (before the locker room) has a table set up with a scanner that scans your membership card.  Most of the time I just bypass this because it never opened a door or anything, so I thought it was pointless.  I just walked right in.  I mean, it’s not like I’m sneaking in or anything…I’m just lazy and don’t want to dig through my purse to find my keys.  Well, today I noticed they had installed a door between the scanner table and the locker room/gym/etc.  I guess people had been sneaking in a lot.  Crazy.  Wanna hear a funny thing?  For a while (about four months) I was using this entrance and not scanning my barcode and then one day I realized they had not been charging my credit card.  I was using the gym illegally!  8oP  Whoops!

OK, so that was my first surprise but the one that didn’t much matter to me because I’m not sneaking in the gym.  The second and third things involved my new heart rate monitor (or HRM).  When I got on the treadmill, I played with my HRM, turned it on, checked it out and all that, and then began my workout.  About five minutes into the workout, I realized my treadmill had a heart rate on it and I wasn’t touching the silver electrode panels.  What’s this?  Is my HRM sending a signal to the treadmill and giving me an accurate reading?  I quickly texted Carolyn (yes, I took my phone onto the treadmill with me) to double check and she confirmed my suspicions.  How cool!!!

My third surprise followed soon after.  The whole point (or about 95% of the point) of me getting an HRM was to accurately measure my amount of calories burned so I can put them into Calorie King and get a correct balance of calories, thus improving my weight loss.  I checked my watch (part of the HRM) for a readout a couple minutes in and compared it to the treadmill…so far so good.  Then a few minutes later, I checked again.  My watch said one thing and the treadmill said a different number a significant amount off.  I always assumed my treadmill was rounding up (i.e. when it said I burned 200 calories, I really burned 150 or something like that).  Well…I WAS WRONG!  Yay!!!  Today my treadmill said I burned 215 but my HRM said I burned 307!  How’s that for a great surprise!

All in all, today was a good day.  It started off kind of crappy at work, but I got back on track with my diet, got in a workout (in which I ran over 1/2 of it), am making a healthy, yummy dinner, and am getting my energy back!  2010 is gonna be great!!!