Here is the last of the week’s worth of slow cooker recipes. This was the perfect thing to get me back into a blogging routine and a great way to feed visiting family while we were on the run.

We are finishing as we began, with a yummy soup. I’m pretty proud of myself for limiting the soup recipes to only half of those put forward.

To recap – A week’s worth of slow cooker recipes:

Wild Rice and Shredded Chicken Soup

Balsamic-Dijon Glazed Baby Back Ribs with Great Northern Beans

Lemony Turkey Meatball and Orzo Soup

Ropa Vieja

Mississippi Pot Roast

And here is todays…

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I’m doing my best to not just make all of the “week’s worth” of slow-cooker recipes into soup recipes. But it’s hard! I love soup!!! Especially this one. It is so lite, so lemony, so satisfying, so M-mmmm good!

My brother-in-law, Roger, is visiting for the week. He, Dave, and Connor devoured it. Which is a good thing I suppose, since I’m running out of room in the fridge. The thing is bulging at the seams with the ingredients for the upcoming recipes and with all the leftover baby back ribs and beans from the other night.

Connor had the day off work, so Roger, Con, and I went to a couple of breweries yesterday afternoon and tasted some beer flights. Our favorite stop was the Sleepy Dog Brewery which has a Groupon promo going on right now. If you go, you have to try the Wet Snout Milk Stout, it is out-of-this-world good! I found out they have it on tap at Hopdoddy right now too. Guess where else we’ll be taking Roger before he heads back to the Illinois snow?! Ah, snow, this soup would be the perfect remedy for a snowy day, pretty great for a sunny day too!

Lemony Turkey Meatball and Orzo Soup

1 large egg

1 pound ground turkey

1/3 cup Panko breadcrumbs

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon dried crushed rosemary

Zest and juice of 1 large lemon zest, divided

3 tablespoons olive oil

1 medium onion, peeled and chopped

3 carrots, peeled and thinly sliced

2 garlic cloves, peeled and minced

8 cups (2 quarts) chicken broth

3/4 cup orzo pasta

1/3 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

1 tablespoon fresh rosemary leaves, minced

1/2 cup fresh Italian parsley leaves

In a medium bowl, lightly beat the egg. Add the ground turkey, Panko, salt, dried rosemary, and the lemon zest (set aside the lemon juice) and mix to combine well.

Heat oil in a large non-stick skillet, when oil is hot, use a 1- tablespoon scoop (or two spoons to make meatballs that are one 1-tablespoon in size – but the scooper is The Best!) to make the meatballs and drop into the skillet as you scoop them out. Do not overcrowd the pan. Use a spatula to turn the meatballs and brown on all sides.

As the meatballs brown, transfer to a slow cooker and continue making meatballs and transferring as they are browned until all the turkey mixture is used. You should end up with about 30 to 32 meatballs.

Sauté the onion and carrots in the same skillet, just long enough to bring up the brown bits on the bottom of the skillet, for a minute or two. Scrape into the slow cooker with the meatballs. Add the garlic and broth and cook on HIGH for 2 hours.

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I have complete faith that my Arizona Cardinals will win the George Halas Trophy in the NFC Championship Game game today – along with their ticket to Super Bowl 50!

Just like I have faith that this soup can help cure, or at least bring relief to, the flu.  The flu is traveling like wildfire and now Dave has it.  I made this soup for him last night and he’s on the mend today, in time for the big game.

I found the version of the recipe when a friend posted it on Facebook. It sounded like the perfect remedy, especially after giving it a few healthier tweaks. Now it’s ready to share with you.  Round up the ingredients, pop it all in a slow-cooker and it’ll be ready for kickoff at 4:40 PM!

It is soul-soothing and absolutely fabulous, just like the Cards! #riseupredsea #birdgang

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I serve crudités at every gathering I host. It’s the guaranteed way to have something for everyone.  All vegetarians, vegans, guests with allergies, and dieters are happy, and quite honestly relieved when they see a big old tray of fresh veggies on a platter.

If you have leftover vegetables at the end of the party, obviously, it’s easy to just snack on them throughout the week. But another way to use them up is to turn them into soup.

That is exactly what I did after Marissa & Jeff hosted a “Go Cardinals” party at the Cards vs. Packers game last month.

The same two teams will face off at the University of Phoenix Stadium this Saturday. Look for me in the stands!

I’ll be a few rows up, around the 40-yard line. On the Arizona side – of course!

Over the years, I’ve shown you nearly a dozen ways to serve crudités.

You can use any and all leftover vegetables for this soup.

Chopped onion is the only additional vegetable needed.

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It is always a good idea to use seasonal produce in a centerpiece, especially on a Thanksgiving table. After all, the holiday is all about bounty and nothing looks more bountiful than beautiful fruits and vegetables.

Of course, we don’t want to be wasteful either, so using that produce for meals in the days to follow is a must!

Our Thanksgiving centerpiece consisted of pomegranates, tangerines, persimmons (later used in a salad) baby zucchini, and pattypan squash (sautéed as a side dish that weekend) along with the winter squashes of butternut, acorn, and delicata, used for the following soup recipe.

The recipe is the same one I used for a cooking class last Wednesday at Les Gourmettes Cooking School. The only difference was that instead of seven cups of mixed squash, I used 3 cups of butternut along with red bell peppers and sweet potatoes.  The variation for that soup is included.

Here is one more photo from our holiday dinner – one of the place settings.

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This soup is a lifesaver. It has single-handily helped ease the pain from my head cold!

The recipe comes from Barbara Fenzl’s Les Gourmettes cooking class. I enjoyed it after the class on Wednesday night and then again for breakfast yesterday morning. I also brought home some leftover asparagus, so I chopped that up and added it to the soup. Soup may not be your typical breakfast, but it works for me!

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Let’s say that you want to make little tea sandwiches for a Holiday Ladies Luncheon or Open House.

You buy a few bunches of radishes for the tea sandwiches. You cut off the tops, and the radish leaves, and you toss them in the trash or the compost.

Stop right there! Don’t throw them out! Make a delicious radish leaf soup instead!

This is a recipe that I made for my series of cooking classes at Les Gourmettes Cooking School and shows the good old Irish way of making the most of everything.

Be sure to wash the radish leaves well. Really really well! Radishes tend to have quite a bit of sand and dirt.

Do ahead and spin dry, line a plastic bag with paper towels and store the radish leaves in the crisper for up to 3 days.

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The only course I plated for the Fall Picnic was the soup, the rest of the meal was served buffet style. As a result, I didn’t get a decent photo of the soup. I’m going to try and make up for it with quite a few in-process cooking pictures and a bunch of decor photos.

The first thing I do when I set about to create a theme for a party is to hunt and gather from around my house for decorating items. For this dinner party, I was thinking – of picnic baskets, blankets, thermoses, wicker, plaid, pumpkins, and squash.

I had two main areas to decorate, the buffet table and the dinner table. We’ll get to the buffet table in a later post, today we’ll focus on the dinner table. I started with a plaid throw as the tablecloth and plaid salad plates.

The centerpiece was a rustic stand with fresh pumpkins and squash above and below, a garland of fall leaves, a couple of candles, and my Bundt Pan Pumpkin from last year’s craft class.

Add in the setting sun…

… and it’s easy to have a pretty table!

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Peggy had a Día de Muertos (Day of the Dead) party on Halloween night. The day before, I was at her house helping her make posole, just so I could give you her recipe.

The sacrifices I make for you lovely people!

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Aaron Chamberlain, co-owner and head chef from St. Francis, recently taught at Les Gourmettes.

He made this soup, which he simply calls Pumpkin Soup. As you’ll see, it is much more than just pumpkin soup.

Aaron uses a combination of squashes to create a more complex flavor. If he wants to call it Pumpkin Soup, so be it. I call it good!

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