Some Past Food and Some Future Fun

***UPDATE: I fixed my giveaway links, which I had COMPLETELY messed up this morning! Plus, soup and quesadilla picture added below! Sorry for my Friday morning absentmindedness!***

First, a couple more contests to note:
– Yet another Mix My Granola Giveaway. I keep noting these because I LOVE the idea for this product/service/website. Even if you aren’t going to enter the contest, look at all the options they have for mix-ins…so many choices!! So fun! Check out  Healthy and Sane for Elina’s Mix My Granola Giveaway!
– Bridget at Yogurt and Berries is giving away some chocolate goodies!! A great way to stay sane if I’ve ever seen one!

I don’t have any new recipes from this week, because we grabbed food on Wednesday and last night we took our leftovers from Monday and turned them into a casserole. There isn’t really a recipe for this…I literally took everything we had leftover, stirred it all together in a casserole dish and baked it for about an hour or so. The beets tinted everything this really pretty pink/red color and the French bread got nice and crunchy. I didn’t use all of the leftover gravy because there was a lot, but I put in just enough to coat everything and keep it moist. I was really pleased because it mellowed out a lot-not a lot of lemon flavor at all. It was a very comforting bowl of dinner and we used up all our leftovers! Hooray! No pictures 🙁

I do have a meal we made a few weeks ago that turned out really yummy and a nice warming dinner during the cold spell we just got over! Plus, I just realized I never posted it, even though I took pictures!

When I was growing up, we had tomato soup (Campbell’s) and grilled cheese all the time. I have known this meal as long as I can remember, and it was probably one of the first things I could make by myself. I went through a lot of grilled cheese and tomato soup stages growing up. No dipping the sandwich, dipping the sandwich before every bite, crushing Ritz crackers into the soup before eating the sandwich, finishing the sandwich before touching the crackers, the soup could only be mixed with milk, the soup could only be made with water, when I started cooking I had to use exactly half milk and half water, Ritz crackers were not good enough and I needed oyster crackers…I’m sure there are some I’m forgetting. I was pretty obsessive about things like this…I would decide there was a “right” way to make or eat it, and I had to do it that way for a while, until I decided there was a new “right” way. When I was little I didn’t want crusts on my grilled cheese (which I think is a pretty common kid request), and I remember babysitting my younger cousin and being really annoyed that he would want me to cut off his grilled cheese crusts! Except that by then I loved the crusts, so after I’d cut them off his sandwich I would dip them in my soup and eat them myself…think grilled cheese sticks instead of sandwiches. One way or another, grilled cheese and tomato soup has always been one of the most satisfying things for me when it’s cold out, and I assumed that everyone identified with this meal in some way.

Several months ago I realized that Matt had NEVER had tomato soup! I was absolutely shocked…how did you go 23 years without ever having Campbell’s tomato soup and grilled cheese? This was nuts! I quickly taught him the ways…with both Campbell’s and also some more organic, boxed brands perked up with fresh basil from our summer herb box and a few other variations. Matt has always loved grilled cheese (what’s not to love?) and he has really enjoyed pairing it with tomato soup, although he is not a fan of the Campbell’s condensed soup…maybe you have to get hooked on that when you’re little enough to not have a sense of what makes a soup “good”?

So we had a few leftover flour tortillas and cheddar cheese from our taco party, a box of Pacific Natural Foods Tomato Soup from Ken’s Market, and a variety of canned goods (I always stock up on tomatoes, beans, etc. when they are on sale). So we made a new grilled cheese and tomato soup variation! Cheese quesadillas (sprayed with cooking spray and cooked in a frying pan) and Mexican tomato soup (1 box PNF soup + 1 can black beans + 1 can diced tomatoes w/ green chilies + some red pepper for spice).

Delicious and SO easy! This obviously made a ton of soup, but I had it for lunch the next two days at work. I am always blown away by how many meals we can get out a few canned goods and some basic ingredients…it makes my thrifty side smile. Think how cheap that is per meal compared to if we had eaten out each time instead of eating that meal! I’d say the entire meal cost less than $10 and we got 2 dinners and 2 lunches out of it! Crazy!

 

Some other fun that will be coming up and I’ll have more info about:
– Blogger Bake Sale, hosted by Meghann. I’m planning to contribute something to go up for sale, so keep an eye out for more info about that! If you’re interested, contact Meghann for more info! 
– Guest post on Dori’s blog
– All new design for this blog!
– A side job doing some editing that will result in a good chunk of income, but will most likely make me super busy for a few weeks and result in a little less posting until it’s finished. Hopefully it will also result in lots to post about once I am finished with the editing!
– We’re getting artichokes in our next CSA box and I have never worked with them before! Excitement and/or chaos should be forthcoming!
– Both Dori and Santana have birthdays TOMORROW, 3/21!!! Happy Birthdays!!!

This entry was posted on Friday, March 20th, 2009 at 10:29 am and is filed under Family, Fun, interwebs, Life, Matthew, Puppy, Writing, Yum. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.