Category Archives: soup

Holiday working and easy soup

How many of you had to work today? Raise your hand!  I am raising mine.  I wasn’t sure if I was going to  have work to do, but I ended up with pretty much a full day.  I kind of was hoping to have the day off because I worked about 3/4 day on Saturday.

My work schedule has been pretty all over the place lately and I have to admit that I am feeling the effects of being unsettled.  Plus I am feeling tired and worn out. I  need to relax about the work a little bit, but seem unable to do so.  It’s kind of hard to do when you control your own paycheck.

Anyway, I totally forgot to take pictures of breakfast and lunch today.  See? My head is just not quite where it is supposed to be.  Which ideally would be a tropical island or possibly New Orleans, but what are you going to do?  :mrgreen:

Pixie has been enjoying the work on the floors.  It’s opened up all kinds of new places for her to inspect.  Like the intake vent.

I laughed when I took this picture, then she tries to disappear into the vent.  Do not need a kitty in the duct work, thank you very much!  We have to make sure to replace the vent covers after we work on an area or she gets in there.

I did take some photos of dinner.  I made an easy cheater soup tonight. Cream of turkey and rice soup.  Only 4 ingredients, 2 of which were these.

I don’t know if I have ever posted a recipe with condensed any kind of soup before LOL!  I normally don’t cook with it, but the grocery store was discontinuing this organic cream of chicken (who knew this could be organic?) – so I bought a couple of bargain boxes.  If I had precooked rice, this would have been the quickest meal ever, but I didn’t.  I just cooked up a bigger batch to have leftovers later.

I used 1 box of chicken soup and filled the box with 1% milk for a 1:1 ratio.  Put that in a saucepan.  Then I chopped up some cooked turkey we have been feasting on for a while now from the big bird my sister cooked a week or so ago.

Isn’t soup pretty much the last thing you make with turkey leftovers?

Once that came to a simmer and heated through, I added 1 cup of cooked rice.

This was pretty good, I have to say.  And easy.  I like easy.

Plus it helped clean out the pantry.  Always a good bonus.

Pink picture of the day came courtesy of my friend Julianne!

Pink bike would be pretty cool to have, don’t you think?
The Breast Cancer Site

Paula Deen, free WW ebook and thank you!

Welcome to Thursday!  The week is almost over.   Pixie says “Wake me when it is Friday!”

I have been using my steroid drops in the eyes for a couple days now, and they are starting to look better!  After a couple months of redness, it is weird seeing more white in my eyes.  What I don’t like?  How nasty these drops taste.  About 5 minutes after putting the drops in my eyes, I can taste them in the back of my throat and they are bitter, bitter, bitter!  Plus it makes my nose run. Yuck.  I have to use them 4 times a day.  I’m not complaining too much, though.   😉

I also want to take a moment to thank everyone for their comments and thoughts via email, on the blog or Facebook.  To those people who think you can’t be friends with someone if you haven’t met face to face, I say pooh-pooh to them!

I made up some ricotta puffs for breakfast.

Topped with a wee bit of lemon curd.  So good!

Work was a little slow, so I was able to catch up on some blogs and read around the internet today.

So, I am sure you all heard that Paula Deen came out with the fact that she has a diagnosis of diabetes.  It’s not all that surprising.  Whether or not her diet itself played a role, she has a lot of risk factors for developing diabetes.  I have sort of been waffling on either side of the issue with regards to her keeping quiet for 3 years and then partnering up with a drug company.

I can understand why you might want to keep your disease private, because it really is nobody’s business – at all. Yes, she is a cook on TV, but she isn’t ever advocating to eat her foods to be healthy.  I would highly doubt anyone looking to be healthy would be trying all of Paula Deen’s recipes.  On the other hand, she is a very public persona and she could certainly use her platform for diabetes education more than partnering with Big Pharma.

John brought up a good point, though, that it might be helpful in a lot of ways because a lot of Paula Deen’s regular audience and fans are the people that probably would be needing diabetes medication and it is a good way to push them to get more information.  I do like that she is not vilifying certain foods like Alton Brown did when he did a complete 180 on his diet.

Time for lunch break!  I mixed up some cooked chicken with light mayo, curry powder, chopped apple and grapes.

With Nut Thins.  It’s one of my GF days.  I actually really like this chicken salad, but only make it when grapes are on sale and I buy them.  I like to be frugal.  My sister calls me cheap LOL!

Afternoon snack time!

I actually had 2 pieces of pineapple, but one went into my mouth before the camera got here.

I did win the fantasy football picks last weekend and normally we eat out Thursday nights, but I have not even thought where I wanted to go!  So, we ate at home instead.  That meant a go-to meal, which is pretty much an omelet for me.

That is sausage and Laughing Cow in there.   The filling kind of fell out when I plated it up.  Still tastes the same, though.

Tonight is getting old school with exercise!  I am going to dust off the Leslie Sansone WATP 3 mile DVD to do.

Also of note, not sure how long this link will be valid for, but you can get a free kindle copy of a Weight Watchers Soup Recipe book here.  So grab it while you can.  And if you are like me and do *not* own a kindle, you can get the kindle cloud reader for free on Amazon as well.  Good stuff.  Free is good.  :mrgreen:

Will be productive for soup!

You know how yesterday I was saying how I didn’t get anything done? Today was a whole nuther ballgame!  I was raining when I got up (Hello Ida remnants), so I had to wait a bit until my gym opened up at 8am.  I had a Zone bar for a preworkout snackie.  Then off to the gym and hit the treadmill for 5 miles.  It felt good to really break a sweat.  You know you are on the treadmill a long time when you see people come in, watch them work out and then they leave, all while you are doing the same thing 😛

I arrived home ready to devour my arm and commenced to cooking some Banana, cashew butter, and apple butter oats.

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These were fantastic!  John was laughing at me because I kept saying “yum” while I was eating them.  Extra hunger = extra good taste.

Off to shop, passed by Great Escape on our way.

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Hit the outlet malls – serious sales going on today.

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And found a coffee mug that’s just right for me!

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We were hungry at this point and headed to Samantha’s where one of the soups of the day was Squash and apple bisque!  I just had to have a bowl with some fresh made wheat bread.

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Soooooo good.  It was a soupy kind of day.  Then it was off to the mall for more shopping.  We actually got a nice start on the Christmas stuff that we are buying.  We will make other things for people as well.

Took a break for this!

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I had a skim latte. John got an eggnog latte.   I am trying to wait until Thanksgiving before I have one, but I had a couple sips of his.  Eggnog is like crack to me.  I could bathe in its creamy goodness 😯

More productivity with grocery shopping and then a stop at the smokehouse to stock up on meat.  We got chicken breast, ground beef, turkey breast, boneless pork chops, and bacon. There are some great benefits to shopping locally if you can.  Boneless chicken breasts at $2.09 per pound!  I love that we can support local farmers and the local processor all in one fell swoop.

All of this happened by 4 pm!  We were on a roll.

Obviously had some fresh meat for dinner – chicken with a slice of bacon and laughing cow!  Yum!!!  It’s amazing how just 1 slice of bacon can add so much flavor.

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And a mondo amount of broccoli!

I am going to relax tonight with the hubby and watch movies.  One of those rainy nights just perfect for that!

Have a great night!

Winter's a comin'!

All settled in now for the day. I got up early this morning and did a 30 minute exercise dvd that had a toning (I hate that term) section afterwards. I knew it would be a while before John got up, so I had a tablespoon of reduced fat natural peanut butter before the workout. It felt very decadent, as I don’t usually eat PB by itself. Yum!

Then, after John got up and showered, we walked to Dunkin Donuts for breakfast, so I got in another 30 minutes of exercise walking there and back. Briskly, I might add – it’s cold! So I had a bagel with light cream cheese. It was a blueberry bagel, and there was a bunch of blueberries in one part of the bagel – they actually fell out of the bagel. Made it tasty.

We are supposed to get some ice and yuck tonight, so we did our grocery shopping and I am now settled in for the day. I wanted soup for lunch, but have been on a roasted veggie kick, so I decided to combine the 2!

I roasted some cauliflower, a sweet potato, and some carrots. Then pureed in a blender with 2 cups of veggie broth. Topped with a dollop of Fage yogurt. So yummy and warm! And in my new bowl that I got yesterday 🙂

I also bought new veggies: Radishes, and raddichio. I am going to roast both of them, in my new obsession with roasting veggies. Will post an update after I try this.