My Mexican Pumpkin soup

Mexican pumpkin soup. I used a butternut squash, 2 onions, 6 potato’s, non dairy cream, a little vegetable bullion and 2 table spoons taco spices. Oh and a can of pinto beans. It's great, and will be even better tomorrow! I just made it up myself. I don’t generally use recipes. You chop the veggies together, boil them in lots of water, mash them with a hand mixer and then add the beans, and other stuff. It makes a warm and filling soup. It is totally vegetarian. I was tired of pumpkin soup with curry. I'm going to try canning this. Make sure and use a non dairy cream if you want to can this. Dairy can be canned, but it's a harder process. I’ll use coconut milk.

Here is a video about what you can can. And she gave a web site that gives you instructions on how to can. http://pickyourown.org/

Bean soup

This looks very good. Everyone is telling me I'll have good things to can in the summer and fall, but you can can soup even now. Why wait? I want "fast food" available to feed my family. Food I cooked, that I know is good. I might use a different recipe...but the idea is very good.

beef soup canned

I got some books on canning food for Christmas. Here is a video on canning potato's. I'm looking at all kinds of ways to keep the food we grow in our garden. I'm going to try this. I'm also going to make soups and chili to can. I want stuff I can just pull off the shelf and heat up for lunch. Food I know is good because it's home made.

A good gift idea

I copied this from CNN.
http://eatocracy.cnn.com/2011/12/13/gifting-from-your-kitchen-a-toffee-tutorial/?hpt=hp_bn8

It looks really good and I think it would make a super homemade gift.


English toffee recipe
Makes almost 3 1/2 pounds

Ingredients:
-1/2 cup water
-2 teaspoons of butter, melted, to brush foil
-2 cups sugar
-2 mounded tablespoons light corn syrup (this makes the texture less like peanut brittle)
-1 teaspoon salt (if using unsalted butter)
-3 cups chopped pecans
-12 ounces milk chocolate chips
-6 ounces semisweet chocolate chips
-1 pound of unsalted butter, or 1 pound of lightly salted butter if opting out of the salt

Tools to make it easier on yourself:
-Candy thermometer
-Double boiler
-Heavy-bottomed medium saucepan
-Two 1/4-inch 15" x 20" plywood boards
-Pizza cutter
-Wide heavy-duty aluminum foil

Instructions:

-Tear off 23" in length of 18" wide heavy-duty aluminum foil and brush the matte, non-shiny side with butter. Fold up 2-1/2" on each end and 2 -1/2" on each long side, forming a makeshift pan. This should leave you with a 13" x 18" surface on which to pour the hot toffee. This fits perfectly on the plywood with some room around the edges. This will function as your “pan” for the toffee. An actual pan keeps in the heat, which doesn’t allow the toffee to set up as quickly. The board will also keep the hot candy from scorching your work surface.

-Measure out the water and add corn syrup, stirring the two together.

-Pour this mixture into a medium heavy-bottomed saucepan. Add sugar and butter and clip your candy thermometer to the side of the pan before it gets hot. Turn on the heat to medium high, stirring constantly.

-While this is cooking - it should take a while to reach 310 degrees Fahrenheit - put water in the bottom component of the double boiler and turn it on low. Pour your chocolate chips into the top component and melt chocolate. Once the chocolate is melted, turn it off and it’s ready to spread on the toffee

-Chop pecans and have them ready to sprinkle on the finished toffee.

-The candy is going to start bubbling and thickening, and eventually turn a caramel color, until it reaches 310 degrees (the “hard crack stage” in candy making).

-When it reaches that temperature, remove from heat immediately.

-Carefully pour candy onto foil evenly. If need be, you can grip the plywood base to tilt it in the right direction if it doesn’t spread.

-If you use these exact measurements, wait 4-5 minutes before cutting the toffee. If you use a smaller space, you will need more time for the candy to cool.

-Using a pizza cutter, (blunt is best; sharp will go through the foil, but if all you have is a sharp pizza cutter, use a light hand), run through the toffee length and width wise to create 1-1/2 inch squares. (If your pizza cutter doesn’t leave an impression, it’s still too warm and you might want to wait another minute before trying again). This will help the toffee to break later, rather than forming definite squares.

-After cutting, lift the top part of double boiler off and dry the bottom of it so it doesn’t drip onto the candy. Take a spatula and spread a thin layer of chocolate over the top of the toffee. You can use just enough to cover the surface, but thickness is up to personal preference.

-Then, liberally sprinkle the chopped pecans on top of the melted chocolate.

-Place an unbuttered sheet of foil on top of the toffee and tuck foil around edges. Place your second board of plywood on top and flip it over.

-After flipping, remove the top board and let sit for 1-2 minutes before you remove foil. If you peel the foil and it starts to stick, wait another minute and it should come off.

-Once you peel off the foil, repeat the chocolate and nut process.

-Cover this with another piece of foil and the second plywood board, and flip it over again.

-Remove the top piece of foil and retaining the bottom piece of foil, slide it off of the board and onto a wire cooling rack.

-Sit the wire rack in coolest room of your house. The toffee needs to cool for at least a few hours.

-After it is cool, break the toffee into pieces. It usually breaks where pizza cutter went through. If it isn’t breaking into even pieces, it doesn’t matter.

-Store the toffee in wax-paper lined tins at room temperature and it will keep for weeks.

Pad Thai

Pad Thai is the National dish of Thailand. It's not so hard to make, so we decided to give it a try! Here is some history of the dish. Thai prime minister Luang Pibulsonggram decreed the Pad Thai recipe as a national Thai dish sometime during Word War II, and that the dish is a very important part of Thai culinary history. Further research says that Pibulsonggram popularized the dish in an effort to reduce rice consumption so there was more to export to other countries, and some sources also say that after the war, the Thai government used Pad Thai as part of their plan to decrease the unemployment rate of the people by adopting a new trend of noodle-making and noodle-house dining.
Most of you know that Philip and Thomas were both adopted from Thailand. Our family loves Thailand. I hope we can even travel there in 2011. We will see what comes!

Before you begin to cook this dish you prep everything. You will need...


One chopped onion
5 chopped garlic cloves
2 cups chopped spinach greens
2 cups chopped firm tofu
10 large shrimp, or 2 cups small shrimp
1 pound of soft rice noodles (you can just take the dried noodles and soak them in cold water for 15 minutes).
3 eggs
6 table spoons of Pad Thai sauce
2 cups bean sprouts
1 cup chopped green onion.



In a hot wok with oil, you brown the onions and garlic
then add the tofu
when that's browned add the shrimp and spinach greens
do not over cook the shrimp
then add the noodles and some water (maybe a half a cup of water). Put the lid on the wok and let it steam the noodles for about 2 minutes).
Then stir in the eggs and let them cook.
Finally add the bean sprouts and green onions.




You serve this with freshly cut cucumbers, tomato's, lime. It taste wonderful with lime juice squeezed over it.