Thursday

Winter Cooking

Cold front came through! When Ashley was little, because I love Winnie the Pooh and because I love words, I taught her to say, "It's a blustery day!" when it was, in fact, blustery. Very funny to hear coming from a little golden, curly-haired, round-tummied toddler. And it has been most blustery out here in the desert.

Today is amazingly busy -- I am substitute teaching in PE at the elementary school (yes, me and my boot!), have physical therapy after school, then Ashley has a basketball game until well past my bedtime. I confess I had my alarm set for my 5:30 a.m. bicycle class, but just couldn't do it today. Anytime I do that, I usually lay in bed wide awake feeling guilty for skipping, but not today! Slept that extra hour just fine, thankyouverymuch! With such a busy day that is also cold, it just calls for soup in the crock pot, doesn't it? Today it's tortilla soup. Oh, I have so many yummy soups I love to make!

I put my 'menu plan' on our family calendar in pencil at the bottom of each day's square. I really do it for myself -- my shopping, and to know what to set out in the morning, but of course the kids use it to judge exactly how seriously they should snack after school! A few years ago, Riley hadn't really gotten the hang of reading cursive and I was trying a new crock-pot recipe that the book called, not very creatively, "Crock Beef" -- and that was on our menu.

Riley checked the calendar/ menu and asked, "We're seriously having 'Crock Barf' for dinner?" Which was funny enough -- until I made it. It was awful, inedible, and dinner for Duchess that night. It was basically 'Crock Barf'. A night for Crock Pot meals always makes me think of the night I made Crock Barf for dinner.

Besides a bubbling soup in the crock pot, a cold night at home also calls for homemade chocolate chip cookies in the oven, and/ or a fire to roast marshmallows over. Yes, at this house, if a fire gets going, marshmallows get roasted. I LOVE a golden brown, almost liquified roasted marshmallow.

What about you? When the cold wind blows, you just HAVE to have a big pot of .... ? what? on the stove? Or what baking in the oven?

Also, if you have a recipe to share, feel free to ask to be a contributor to this recipe blog, or just email it to me and I'll post it over there, giving you ALL the credit/ glory, of course.

5 comments:

Lolosblog said...

Because it heats up the entire house, we cook in the oven when it gets cold. Summer time is gone and that means turn on the oven. It could be cornbread, meatloaf or some wonderful home made cookies! Bring on the cold!

Chelsea said...

When it gets cold outside Alec always wants me to make "Grandma Soup". I make a big pot and we wrap up and eat our bowl of soup on the couch watching TV. I love it! We don't have a fireplace in our apartment, but someday when we have a house, I think we'll make a rule, every time we build a fire, we must roast marshmellows, they are the best!

Anonymous said...

I make a shrimp confetti soup that I put over bowtie pasta and let mozzarella cheese melt down into the soup. It is so yummy! I will give you the recipe. Mmm mm mmm!!!

Anonymous said...

Chili.
Whatever else?

Anonymous said...

Gumbo, of course.