This is a great go-to soup to make with three favorite convenience items in the pantry; sun-dried tomatoes, roasted red peppers, and boxed chicken broth. Toss a salad or put together some sandwiches while the soup simmers and you are sitting at the table eating dinner with your family in no time!

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I love everything about this meal. There is very little prep, only minutes of hands-on time, and only 1 knife, 1 Microplane, and 1 pan to clean. You pop it in the oven, set the timer, and go about your business.

I wish I would have created this fabulous recipe, but alas it was the lovely Nigella Lawson. I have a few minor revisions. For instance – the addition of one of my favorite ingredients – smoked paprika.  Enjoy!

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In May 2000, when Connor turned nine, we took a family trip to the east coast; Newport, Rhode Island,  New Hampshire (including the Ben & Jerry’s factory), Philadelphia, New York City (Statue of Liberty, Broadway, the Empire State Building, Times Square, etc.), Washington D.C. (Smithsonian, White House, Capitol, all the monuments, etc.), Colonial Williamsburg, Arlington National Cemetery, and Mount Vernon.  The highlight of that trip for Connor – and about the only thing he remembers, besides celebrating his birthday – was his first taste of lobster (Yes, that is the actual moment in the photo above)! He immediately fell in love and ate lobster at every meal it was available for the rest of the two-week vacation.  His happiness came to a screeching halt when we arrived back in Arizona and he learned that lobster was a seriously special treat, not an everyday staple, like say, peanut butter, and jelly sandwiches.

He still loves his lobster and I know that when he sees this post, he’ll be begging me to make it for him when he comes home this summer.  I love him to pieces, so I will!

The other guilty pleasure I want to show you is this fabulous vintage grocery store scale I purchased on Thursday at Sweet Salvage. Isn’t it amazing!?!  It obviously needs to be calibrated… or maybe I’ll just let it be.

Back to the lobster … I read an article about this over-the-top sandwich made by the Devilicious Food Truck from San Diego, California, and had to try and copy it at home. It was a major success!

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This is what your life looks like when you are looking through puffy watery eyes.

All blurry and miserable. Puffs and NyQuil, that is what got me through a full week of a massive head and chest cold.  I did my very best to keep it to myself and not pass it along to Dave. I slept in another room every night and washed my hands like a criminal trying to wash away the proof. It didn’t work. I’m over it and he has it in full force.

Luckily for him, I know how to make chicken soup! Stat! Quick, easy, tasty, cold-curing chicken soup.  And just in case the bug travels from this keyboard, through the internet, and onto you… you can make it too.  Get yourself to Costco, stock up on Puffs and NyQuil, and pick up one of their huge-breasted five-dollar rotisserie chickens.

Seriously, these are huge chickens with the breast meat weighing in at more than the entire amount of meat you’d get from a grocery store chicken! One and a third pounds of breast meat in the case of this particular bird!

I was actually going to title this post – “Big Breasts”, but considering all the spam I already get (the post that gets the most spam is titled “Manly Man Salad”) … yeah, I just don’t want to attract any more of that sort of attention!

So, back to the soup. Put in any vegetables you like or have on hand. I can’t stand cooked carrots, but Dave loves them, and since this soup IS for him – in went the carrots. I also had leftover sliced potatoes and a roasted poblano pepper – in they went. I have previously spoken of my affection for the under-rated and overlooked broccoli stems, they are in there. You get the point, whatever suits you and your family’s taste – put it in.

As for the chicken itself, I put in mostly dark meat and save those big breasts for sandwiches and such, you do as you please.  See – there is nearly a pound of dark meat for the soup.

After you pull off all the meat, you’ll use the chicken carcass to enrich a box of purchased chicken broth. You will be on your way to feeling at least 90% better in no time.

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It is officially Christmas time in the Hopkins’ home. Connor drove home from Flagstaff on Wednesday afternoon, Marissa flew in from San Francisco yesterday afternoon, and Dave’s mom, Pat, flew in from Illinois last night. The gang’s all here, time to celebrate! Nothing like a nice hot bowl of soup to get the party started, well that and a glass of wine…

When you taste this creamy, thick, and rich soup you will swear that is it loaded with cream and fat… but no, the only fat comes from 2 tablespoons of olive oil, and that is divided into 12 servings, so nearly fat-free!

And the color, oh it is lovely – thanks to the last-second addition of a bunch of spinach leaves. Check out this photo of the soup with and without the addition of spinach, just to show you the lovely transformation the spinach makes to the end result.

Healthy? Oh, this soup is plenty healthy… cauliflower, broccoli, potatoes, and spinach – on mine! Plus it uses the usually discarded broccoli stalks. I almost never discard broccoli stalks, they are flavor-packed and delicious! For instance, when I stir-fry, I use a vegetable peeler on the tough outer part of the stalk and then slice them up and throw them in the wok. No need to peel the stalks for the soup, they will get plenty tender during the simmering stage.

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It’s been raining for the last few days, so the weather is perfect for a steaming bowl of soup. But you already know how much I love soup, so really it doesn’t need to be raining to be the perfect day for me!

As I was working on the computer yesterday, I took a break to check in on  Facebook, and right there on my wall, I saw this post from Chelsea’s Kitchen (yes, the same Chelsea’s Kitchen that serves THIS amazing Brussels Sprout Salad).

“Chelsea’s Kitchen is the perfect place on a rainy day to get some good ‘ole comfort food. Try our potato fennel soup with crispy shallots and parsley!  It’s amazing!”

Mind you, I had no intention of driving the 9 miles, in the rain, to eat a bowl of soup and lunch all by myself.  But… I did have a fennel bulb, potatoes, and shallots in my own kitchen.  Although I don’t know if this soup is anything like the one served at CK… I can assure you, it too is amazing!

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… is kinda of red and green, which makes this very pretty appetizer or brunch pizza perfect for Christmas.

Naan can be found on the bread aisle at most grocery stores, at Trader Joe’s, or at Costco. And smoked mozzarella with other specialty cheeses. But if you can’t find the mozzarella, substitute smoked Gouda.

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Can you tell that I’m running out of ideas for post titles? Well, I am.  It’s hard to be creative with these things, day after day. 🙂  I may soon resort to Pork 5, Chicken 27, and Salad 34. Whatever, this is a pork recipe…

I used up the remaining rhubarb-strawberry compote. If you didn’t make the compote, you can still make this recipe, just substitute jam or preserves. I also had small portions of three different onions in my fridge; red onion, sweet onion, and a large shallot, so I combined those to make up the 1 1/2 cups needed for the sauce. Any type of onion will do. The recipe works equally well with pork loin or pork tenderloin, whichever you prefer or find on sale.

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Dave adores smoked salmon. This is a dish I make for him every now and again and I’m always on the lookout for new ideas. I recently found an intriguing salad, featuring smoked salmon, in an old Gourmet magazine that I’m going to give a try. I will let you know how it turned out in a day or two… until then, I give you this classic – which we enjoyed with our Roasted Silkie Chicken a few nights ago.

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Steak and blue cheese are a classic combination. I discovered a 4-pack of rib-eye steaks in the back of the freezer and although there are only the two of us, I grilled up all four steaks. I used the extra two to make this pasta dish a couple of days later. Any leftover beef will do, just be sure to slice and cut it up directly from the refrigerator.  When the beef is cold, it is easiest to find and cut out the fat that is marbled throughout.

I purchased a wonderful 6-pack of organic pasta imported from Italy at Costco. In it, there are two packages of casarecce, two packages of penne, and two gemelli. I chose the gemelli for this dish because the other two styles are meant to hold lots of sauce. This dish has minimal sauce, so the gemelli works best out of the three. If you want to use penne or maybe fusilli, I’d advise throwing in a can of undrained chopped tomatoes to make the pasta saucier.

A funny thing I noticed was that the pasta packages are 17.6-ounces in weight, instead of the usual 16-pounces. Since I generally run on about 2% brain capacity on any given day, I was thinking, “What’s up with that?”  It took me quite a while to notice that the other weight on the packages is 500 grams.  Finally, another 3% brain powder kicked in and I figured out that this was true Italian pasta, so of course, it would be measured in grams and the ounce weight was just placed on there for us metric-challenged Americans. Grazie Garofalo Pasta, I need all the help I can get when it comes to math!  Oh… and it’s really good pasta too, so pick up a 6-pack the next time you’re in Costco.

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